On behalf of the organizers of the “Palestine 101” activity that was held last Tuesday, I would like to state the following points in response to the opinions raised in the Daily.

Yes, we were showing the Palestinian perspective of the problem and we were single-sided, otherwise we would have called the activity “Middle East 101,” and that stems from our belief that CNN, FOX and all of the media means in this country adopt the Israeli perspective and ignore the Palestinian perspective.

Nevertheless, one hour was given for discussion and everyone was welcome to state their opinion about the Middle East. Unfortunately, some who have criticized our activity weren’t present or came for a few minutes and conveniently sat next to the Daily reporter to give their negative opinions and leave without giving the event a fair share of their time.

Despite the fact that the event was sponsored by the “Muslim Student Association,” none of our panel members were Muslim. Even the Palestinian panelist was a Palestinian Christian. Additionally, for the comparison between the humiliation that the Palestinians suffer because of the Israeli occupation and that of the Jews by the Nazis, it was a five minute power-point presentation that is comparing human suffering in both cases, and we don’t want the Palestinian suffering to end up with something similar to the Jewish Holocaust. I prefer to read an opinion criticizing the content of these slides but unfortunately none of the opinions commented on these contents.

Finally, I apologize to the Jewish community that the memory of the Holocaust would bring sorrow to them, but I believe that the Holocaust should be a lesson for all, and that we are humans first and suffering doesn’t have a language or a religion. The pro-Palestinian vs. pro-Israeli way of thinking should end, and a pro-right, anti-wrong way of thinking should replace it. A way of thinking that has humans believe that a suicide bombing in Tel-Aviv is wrong and a massacre in Jenin is also wrong.

Sameh AL-Shihabi

Graduate student

Industrial engineering