Student groups respond to Palestinian officials' recent bid for United Nations membership by holding public discussions on campus.

Cornellians urge U.S. support for a peaceful two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. 

Omer Ben-Zur '12 on Israel: We have learned to yield and use with no remorse a sword in one hand and hold an olive branch in the other — the sooner the population in the Western world is able to understand why, the better.

To the Editor:

Re: “Race, Empire and Palestine: A World View,” Opinion, Oct. 22

We are former Sun columnists who have written in the past about the Arab-Israeli conflict, and understand that the issue is fraught with complexity. While we are proud that The Sun publishes a range of viewpoints, rambling columns that feature demonstrably false “facts” undermine the credibility of the Sun as a whole.

To the Editor:

Re: “Race, Empire and Palestine: A World View,” Opinion, Oct. 22

I was deeply offended by this column. The author’s claims of Israel’s imperialism and racist policies simply do not bear out in practice.

The author appeals to the discredited notion that Zionism is racism in order to support his claim of Israeli apartheid. He also confuses Judaism as a religion with Jews as an ethnic group. Zionism is the belief in an ethnic Jewish right to self-determination in the historical Jewish homeland, the type of right the author surely supports for Palestinians.

[Editor’s Note: This column is the second installment of a two part series, the first half of which appeared in yesterday’s Sun.]

Editor’s Note: This column is the first installment of a two part series, the second half of which will appear in tomorrow’s Sun.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of listening to one of my friends give a presentation about his summer in Palestine. During the summer, my friend worked as an intern with a human rights group in the West Bank. The part of his presentation that I remember most is his trip to the village of Bil’in. During his brief stay in Bil’in, my friend took part in a protest against a wall that separates the village from a nearby Israeli settlement. The wall cuts off 60 percent of Bil’in’s farmland, in an economy that is heavily dependent on agriculture. Moreover, the International Court of Justice and the Israeli High Court have both ruled that the wall is illegal. The villagers of Bil’in have peacefully protested against the wall every Friday for the past four years. And every single Friday, their protest is broken up by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), who often throw canisters of tear gas to break up the peaceful protests. Sometimes, they even fire live rounds at the protestors. This, of course, is less likely to happen when the media or international supporters are there to take part in the protest.

To the Editor:

Re: “The New Berlin Wall,” Opinion, Sep. 28

The author’s comments concerning the Israeli-Arab conflict were divisive and showed little knowledge of the Jewish people or Israelis. Concerning skin color, if you had a group of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims all dressed the same, it would be impossible to tell the difference between the two because both range from white to black. It would be easier to interview them and tell the difference by their accents. While polygamy has been outlawed in Judaism, there are Jewish women who cover their hair like Arab women as a sign of personal and familial respect. And in terms of religion, Islam is the largest undisputedly monotheistic world religion according to Jewish law. That’s saying a lot, because monotheism is a huge deal in Judaism, Jewish law is picky and Islam is not the world’s largest religion.

To the Editor:

Re: “After Gaza Protests, Groups Attempt Dialogue,” News, Sept. 29

Robert Malley, the program director for Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group in Washington, D.C., addressed a modest crowd inside Goldwin Smith’s Hollis E. Cornell auditorium yesterday evening.

Malley, who is widely regarded as an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, gave an insider’s perspective on the nature of the crisis and offered a uniquely anecdotal appraisal of the problems currently facing Israel, Palestine and the United States.