Dear Editor:

Kevin Funk’s column published on Feb. 11 presents many disturbing facts… Dear Editor:

Kevin Funk’s column published on Feb. 11 presents many disturbing facts regarding the complexities of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet the numbers he puts forth do little justice to the reality of Israel’s situation. He condemns the military aid Israel receives from the United States, but has no problem with the same military aid the United States and Europe are supplying to the Palestinians each day.

He bemoans the Palestinian casualties, but neglects to mention that, every day, 12 to 18 suicide bombers are stopped at the checkpoints at “the Fence.” Moreover, Mr. Funk fails to mention that the thousand or more Israelis dead from the Palestinian war are overwhelmingly women and children who were murdered in their homes, schools, cafes and shopping malls. This stands in stark contrast to the Palestinian war dead, of which the overwhelming majority of the casualties include military combatants, terrorists and homicide bombers, and yes, to a lesser (though no less tragic extent) innocent civilians who were unfortunately too close to the combat zone that Arafat has inflicted on his people. The blood indeed flows on both sides, but while Israelis are targeting military combatants and terrorists, the Palestinians are almost exclusively targeting Jewish civilians.

What should be learned from Mr. Funk’s article is there is a lot of bad information out there, and a lot of newspapers willing to publish it. This isn’t something you are going to understand after reading one column. Only when people understand all sides will there be a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Hillel Jewish University Center of Pittsburgh Taking responsibility for your actions and for their consequences

Dear Editor:

Taking responsibility for one’s actions and for the consequences that flow from those actions is critical. It is a point that Kevin Funk missed in his diatribe against Israel in The Pitt News. His mean-spirited, offensive column fails to acknowledge the need to take responsibility and fails to distinguish between acts of terrorism and actions taken to stop terrorism.

Comparing terrorism, the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians, with defending one’s country by taking retaliatory actions against groups that have killed innocent children and families, is not only abhorrent, but also indefensible.

Israel has decided to build a security fence to keep out or deter the terrorists. This is not a permanent border. This is not Israel’s initiative. The security fence is the fence that we could say Hamas built. It is a reaction of a country to its people’s call for security in their daily lives. It is a changeable and temporary solution to very legitimate security concerns.

Israel has a moral, historic and innate right to exist, and the 60-year battle by those who find a Jewish state in the Middle East unacceptable will not erase that right. Israel as a Jewish homeland is neither an artificial nor a 20th-century creation. For more than 5,000 years, Jews have lived and maintained Jewish life in Israel. The “creation” of the state by the United Nations was recognition by the world of the Jewish state’s permanence and legality. Since 1948, certain Islamic fanatics have done everything to destroy Israel militarily. Having so far failed to destroy the state of Israel militarily, the effort to “demonize Israel” to death has begun.

It is time to learn how to discuss difficult issues without demonizing one side, and it is definitely time to demand that the Palestinian leadership take responsibility for their campaign of terror.

Bettysue Feuer, Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League