Letters to the Editor

Fair trade is there if you just know where to look

Thanks for your expose on the lack of fair-trade beverage options on campus (“Fair Trade brew overlooked choice,” March 9). Natalie Hein has done this campus a great service. However, she neglected to point out that there is at least one coffee shop on campus that serves exclusively fair-trade coffee and espresso. “Untitled” Coffee House in the Broad Arts Center has only fair trade options. Customers gladly shell out the extra 10 cents for a higher-grade cup of coffee. With a host of new furniture and amenities, Untitled has become a comfortable and socially conscious haven of workers rights and caffeinated bliss.

Jack Nicolaus

Fourth-year, theater

“˜Right to exist’ hotly debated, other facts missing from column

In his column “Boycott of Israel not the right answer” (March 4), Samuel Sukaton claimed that Hamas did not recognize Israel’s right to exist. In doing so, he ignored the fact that the new government of Israel, headed by the Likud party, also fundamentally opposes the Palestinian state’s right to exist. Its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, has publicly called for alternatives to the two-state solution that strongly resemble the conditions imposed on the native population of South Africa during the apartheid regime.

Had Sukaton included this fact, he could not have made the claim that it is only Israel that is concerned about its future ““ Palestinians are rightly worried that the new Israeli government will forever bury its chances at an independent state established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In addition, Sukaton criticizes academic boycott and divestment campaigns as ineffective and claims instead that an “embarrassed community of nations” was responsible for the divestment that eventually tore down apartheid in South Africa. This view makes two critical errors. First, it ignores the fact that those governments only took action after being pushed to do so by universities, corporations and a morally outraged civil society.

Second, he implies that our university shouldn’t follow its principles if those actions are not likely to make an impact. I doubt that UCLA would be the proud institution that it is today if it followed this kind of defeatism.

Rahim Kurwa

Research assistant, UCLA Empirical Research Group

Congresswoman betrays alma mater with USC bill

Recently I read something so unbelievable, so hideous, so incredibly asinine that I threw up. Well, not really, but I wanted to, and most likely so will you.

Amid economic instability and the news that AIG suffered a $61 billion loss last quarter, the largest in American history, the House of Representatives convened to consider a recently proposed bill. This bill does nothing to slow unemployment, improve education, or provide much-needed economic relief. It is a bill written by Congresswoman Diane Watson of California’s 33rd Congressional District (Culver City) that proposes “Commending the University of Southern California Trojan football team for its victory in the 2009 Rose Bowl.”

I kid you not: an entire bill dedicated to USC. As a taxpayer, I am appalled that Ms. Watson is wasting my money and this country’s time by proposing such trivial matters, especially in light of the worst recession this country has seen in over 20 years.

Furthermore, by doing so, she makes a mockery not only of our esteemed system of government, but also of the citizens who elected her and trusted her judgment in these most trying times. There is no doubt that some of them are among the many nationwide who have lost their jobs or homes, and a pat on the back for USC is little consolation for this, no matter how avid a fan.

To make matters worse, Watson is a UCLA graduate! She is using her high status to promote our crosstown rival and their, well, let’s just say “sanction-friendly” football team.

In response I ask two things. One, that the university revoke Ms. Watson’s degree and alumna status not just for blindly supporting USC, but also for her recent transgression from the sanctity of her position. Second, I ask that each and every person who is even mildly upset by this to write or call Congresswoman Watson to voice your displeasure. We may not be in her district, but that does not mean that we should stand idly by while our time, money and votes go to waste.

Andrew Dushkes

Second-year, global studies

Professor’s opinion offensive to both Jews and Palestinians

I was surprised by the space given to Judea Pearl’s correction in the Daily Bruin (“Professor misquoted in Israel article,” March 9). Rather than correcting a quotation, Pearl was given space to articulate a position offensive both to Jews and to Palestinians.

Anti-Zionists do not claim that Jews are not entitled to protection as a group, nor do they claim that Jews should not have collective rights. They do however engage in the important question about whether Jews should be organized into a “nation-state.” Jews have been debating this question for a century and a half. To label such views as prejudice is to silence legitimate critique and ignore a significant part of Jewish history and the Jewish relationship to Zionism.

Jews have lived throughout the world for millennia. Fifty-nine percent of us have chosen to live outside the state of Israel, despite enticements from the Israeli government, because we have multiple identities and because our Jewish identity is not dependent upon a relationship to any particular territory. Many minority groups exist this way. Many cannot be weeded out from the societies they live in and carved into separate nation-states to comport with Pearl’s notion of liberation. We, like other similarly situated minorities, have the right to live as Jews where we are and to include being Jewish as one aspect of ourselves.

The creation of a Jewish state is only one path proposed for Jewish liberation. Whether a Jewish state achieves this objective is still a matter for debate. In insisting that anti-Zionism is pernicious, Pearl denies Jews who disagree with his view the right to define ourselves according to our own beliefs and circumstances.

Moreover, his view allows the dominant cultures we live in to continue to view us as outsiders and to tell us that if we don’t like the rights they give us, we should move to Israel.

As a Jew and as an American, I find it repugnant that Israel’s institutions and national character prioritize Jews, even those of us who enjoy citizenship and full lives elsewhere, at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians, who have lived on that territory for centuries. Anti-Zionists want to see that any solution proposed for the Israeli-Palestinian impasse be based on equality for everyone regardless of origin. A significant number of those living under the control of the State of Israel are not Jewish. How can they be expected to accept that their homeland is structured to exclude them and accommodate another group of people?

In the 21st century, the world is undergoing unprecedented levels of transmigration across borders. Each society has to deal with its citizens having multiple affiliations and identities. France is no longer for the French, and Germany is no longer for the Germans, as both must now accommodate large numbers of people from other parts of the world. Anti-Zionism reflects this new reality by insisting that the Israeli-Palestinian impasse be solved through increased focus on citizenship and civic responsibility as opposed to national or religious supremacy.

Pearl’s ardent pro-Zionist position collapses being Jewish (a cultural, religious and/or ethnic identity) with being a Zionist (political support for creating an exclusive Jewish state) and consequently accepts Israel’s policies of dispossession, discrimination and occupation of Palestinians as a necessary part of Jewish self-determination. This is morally troubling for anyone who cares about the future of Jews and Palestinians alike.

Rachel Roberts

Graduate student, UCLA School of Law

Similarities exist between apartheid and Israel conflict

In his column “Boycott of Israel not the right answer” (March 4), Sam Sukaton was wrong to state that there are no similarities between apartheid South Africa and Israel. Palestinian and Israeli activists, scholars who study the historical dynamics of apartheid and colonialism, and even South African activists and officials have indeed made such comparisons.

The aim of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign is to put pressure on the Israeli government, whose systematic policies of violence and discrimination are at the heart of the suffering of Palestinians and the obstacles to peace. We should ask ourselves how we would view statements that called for “coexistence” between blacks and whites in South Africa without simultaneously demanding the abolishment of apartheid itself.

It is not the call for boycott, divestment and sanctions that is unrealistic but rather the insistence that there can be peace and equality between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians without challenging the institutions that structure the settler-colonial dynamic between the two people. Sukaton’s understanding of how apartheid fell in South Africa is lacking clarity.

The “pressure from an embarrassed community” he vaguely references was the result of grassroots movements that forced their governments to politically, economically and culturally isolate apartheid South Africa. The notion that mere embarrassment changes regime policies is quite naive. Perhaps Sukaton should research not only the voices against boycott, divestment and sanctions, but also those who support the campaign, such as South Africa’s Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu, who argues that “there is no greater testament to the basic dignity of ordinary people everywhere than the divestment movement of the 1980s. A similar movement has taken shape recently, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. We should hope that average citizens again rise to the occasion, since the obstacles to a renewed movement are surpassed only by its moral urgency.”

Ziad Abu-Rish

Graduate student, history

Abortion arguments do not educate and lack accuracy

As a UCLA student committed to protecting women’s reproductive rights, I found last Thursday’s column “Educate yourself about abortion procedures” (March 5) both infuriating and ridden with inaccurate claims.

First, Bowers’ claim that pro-choice is a moniker for pro-abortion is downright ridiculous. The pro-choice movement fights to protect a woman’s right to make an educated decision about her own body and to protect her health and safety. Abortion-rights organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, advocate pregnancy prevention and family planning first and foremost.

Similarly, the 12-page insert that Bowers claims is the most “honest and informative feature in the student paper” is ridden with false information, considering that the insert was cited as factually incorrect by some of the most well-educated and well-researched members of the reproductive health field.

As for Bowers’ stance on Proposition 4, she fails to address the underlying issue: A majority of Californians voted “No” because parental notification laws are extremely hazardous to the safety of young women. In states that currently have parental notification laws, research shows that these states do not have a lower teen pregnancy rate, but rather that teens who face unplanned pregnancies are forced to resort to dangerous back-alley abortions or go across state lines.

Let’s be realistic; we all know that the answer to preventing teen pregnancy is sex education about both abstinence and birth control, not forcing teens into dangerous situations in which they lack access to counseling and safe medical care.

In conclusion, I am very surprised that the Daily Bruin would run an ad that may lead UCLA men and women to believe falsified information. Bowers’ column is a poorly researched attack on UCLA students who advocate and fight for equal rights, both a women’s right to choose and the right for same-sex couples to marry.

Rebecca Gindi

Third-year, political science

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