Weir's speech aimed at emotions, not intellect
Special to Student Life
Alex Scheinker
Issue date: 4/21/04 Section: Forum
In response to Rose Kowalski's article regarding Allison Weir's Israel-Palestine speech, I would like to let you know what I thought of Ms. Weir's presentation and what she had to say after her presentation when I had a chance to ask her specific questions. The talk started with Ms. Weir claiming to represent information that the American media does not present. In her studies she did not mention popular papers such as the New York Times or The Washington Post, or CNN; no, she told us about a group of newspapers I have never heard of before, and what they represent in their news. Pretty much everything that she claimed would have been false if she had done the same study with one of these more popular news sources. Besides the very specific, self-serving choice of media to represent, for maybe an hour straight, Ms. Weir talked in a low, sad voice, showing photograph after photograph of dead Palestinian children. Her explanation of their deaths was that "Israeli soldiers shoot Palestinian children in the head". After the talk I asked Weir, since Israel has such a powerful army-one of the most powerful in the world-and since according to her, "Israeli soldiers shoot kids in the head," why there have been fewer than 4000 Palestinians killed in total. This is in over 4 years of intense conflict, and that number includes militants and suicide bombers. If Israeli soldiers really ran around shooting kids in the head, wouldn't they kill more people in 4 years than America has killed in Iraq in one month? There was no real response, just a sad look and a repetition that many children are shot. I next asked Weir why throughout her depressing talk, she never once mentioned the reasons for the Israeli army check points and curfews and fences. Why did she never mention that the reason the Palestinians are living in such horrible conditions are the result of Israel defending itself, and that these extreme security standards in fact prevent 80 percent of attempted suicide bombings? And that if there was no security and all the bombers got through then the number of dead Israelis would equal or exceed that of the Palestinians? To this she replied that the fences were useless; they did not prevent attacks, and they were simply there to oppress the people. Although at this point I realized I was talking to a completely irrational person, I continued out of curiosity to probe her for more information. I asked her about suicide bombings, and what the average Palestinian thinks of them. She told me that most of them condemn them; while I doubted the validity of that claim, what she said next was really astounding. She told me that Israeli soldiers are invincible-that they are bulletproof. I wasn't sure if I heard her correctly, so I asked her, "You mean people never come up to them and shoot them and kill them?" and she said no, they have armor, they are bulletproof. I wondered what this miracle armor is and why American soldiers in Iraq don't borrow some from Israel.
