University of Virginia Library

Tragic Display

I wonder if the people who put
up the display in Alderman Library,
as a part of Palestine Week,
understand how truly tragic that
display is? And one wonders
whether passers-by have done no
more than glance at it, and accept
or reject it as their political feelings
dictate?

The display shows the painful
life of Palestine refugees and calls
for the alleviation of their misery.
It enforces this call by quoting
sources from Al Fatch to Martin
Buber, the use of Buber suggesting
that the makers of the display are
not anti-Semitic. But what, I think,
should make all of us as unhappy
with the display as we are with the
plight of refugees, is the display's
strong implication that a solution
of the Palestine question must
involve the most radical of all
human activity: killing people.

The display inherently supports
the terrorism and warfare of certain
Arab military groups. It supports
the idea that the future of the two
million Jews of Israel must be
decided through the military
conquest of Israel by an Arab army
of fighters for freedom. It is
murderously ironic that the same
display that calls for the victory of
the Al Fatch militarists disclaims
any desire to "push Israel into the
sea" — or even to decide Israel's fate
by other than democratic means.

One may understand, perhaps
this strange disclaimer by the
possibility that, to these people,
killing for a political ideal is not
killing. They quote Charles de
Gaulle for proof.

The truth of the matter is that a
busload of Israeli schoolchildren
blown up by terrorist bombs, or a
farmer shot down as he works his
field, is no more attractive than the
homelessness of an Arab boy. If we
make ourselves as ruthless as our
worst enemies, we will become as
detestable as they.

And the new society that will
rise from blood and ashes will be
built, after all, out of blood and
ashes. No one should deny, for the
sake of a political idea, the stink of
human truth.

Stephen Margulies
Grad. 3

—Ed.)