The Briefs column of Monday, March 11 does so little to serve its supposed purpose, to be briefly informative of issues in the news that are not campus related. It demonstrated a blatant instant of selectivity in compiling what had earlier been reported on "Mideast violence," a generalization obediently and frequently used in mainstream media to disguise what has actually been going on for more than half a century of multiple colonial injustices against Palestinians under occupation. It is outrageous that only the Jerusalem caf?(c) incident was made to appear instead of presenting the whole picture of what has recently happened - a picture that is horrifyingly stained with the blood of 50 Palestinians, mostly civilians, killed in less than 36 hours Thursday and Friday, of whom 17 were cold-bloodedly shot at by Israeli soldiers from inside a Palestinian ambulance they had ambushed earlier in a Gaza village.
The attack on the Jerusalem caf?(c) came as part of a cycle of violence that is not at all a mindless series of incidents in vacuum. It has rather been a result of the systematic suppression of the Palestinian people and the persistent denial of their rights. Unless the Israeli occupation is abolished and the rights of Palestinians acknowledged, there is little hope of a peace that will last. And the misleading association of the struggle of the Palestinian people with the currently preferred rhetoric of "terrorism" could no longer blind or silence the devastating moral and material sufferings of the Palestinians. Occupation is unethical and is the true violence.
The Spectrum should ride a wave other than selectivity if any credibility were to be attributed to international issues covered or commented on. Victims are victims no matter who they are or how they have been killed, and The Spectrum's choice to mention Israeli victims alone is both manipulative and uninformative. "We want to hear from you" is a nicely worded invitation for more feedback and contributions from The Spectrum readers. Some readers might find it a good idea to verbalize a similar call, for the paper this time, "we want to hear the full story from you," or else avoid the many pits of simplistically and one-sidedly addressing issues that are far complex and multifaceted than what the Briefs column could accommodate.
