Less than half a day after members of Cornell community peppered the Arts Quad with flags and signs protesting the war in Gaza, those same signs lay in a heap inside the Green Dragon Café. Around 2 p.m., as the 1,300 black flags — signifying each Palestinian and Israeli who died in the attacks — blew in the February breeze, the accompanying signs were destroyed, stolen and discarded.

In President Skorton’s most recent Sun column, he rightfully encouraged members of the Cornell community to engage in reasoned discussions on the current events in Gaza. If we are to have a constructive dialogue, though, we must acknowledge the facts and discard the lies and double standards. Unfortunately, several recent Sun articles are plagued with numerous such fallacies. I am compelled to write this piece to address a few of those faults.

To the Editor:

Re: “The Wrong to Remain Silent,” Opinion, Jan. 27 and “Gaza Razed: Will Israel Be Held Accountable?,” Opinion, Jan. 29

A few evenings ago, I found myself sitting around the dinner table, participating in a heated discussion sparked by Ariela Rutkin-Becker’s “The Wrong to Remain Silent.” I suppose I should pity Ms. Rutkin-Becker, for she is unable not only to feel the great pride in American Jewry that I felt listening to my peers that evening, but also to see the flaws in her passionate logic regarding the “laws of humankind.” Perhaps these are the same laws that govern the “social contract” of our “enlightenment philosophers” to which Munier Salem so admiringly alludes.

I hate the fact that I feel the need to defend the legitimacy of my ideas to you before I have typed a single, substantive sentence, but I’m afraid that such is the nature of the current discourse surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Discourse and discussion have become polarized into what feels like two distinct groups: those that support the state of Israel, and those that support the humanitarian Palestinian cause.

It’s lonely to be a person who feels like he can relate to both Israelis and Palestinians in the wake of the newest cycle of violence in the conflict. It’s even more frustrating to read columns that are painfully shallow in depth and unnuanced in their treatment of the recent hostilities.

To the Editor:

Re: “Gaza Razed: Will Israel Be Held Accountable?,” Opinion, Jan. 29

I was deeply disturbed by Munier Salem’s Op-Ed, “Gaza Razed: Will Israel Be Held Accountable?” I am sincerely saddened by the loss of Palestinian civilian life, and I will not claim to agree with every specific action Israel takes. Nonetheless, Mr. Salem’s insistence on Israel's total accountability for the conditions in Gaza reflects a lack of understanding about the situation. Israel is simply pursuing its right to self-defense, a right guaranteed to all nations by Article 51 of the U.N. Charter.

This column made its humble beginnings with rants on coffee-drinkers and adjectives. I am proud to say that it has grown up and is ready to address more consequential issues.

Now I would like to outline three facts:

(1) Guantanamo Bay is an American Gulag.

(2) The Israeli initiative in Gaza is nothing less than an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

(3) Universities are a place for liberal minded hipsters with no sense of morals or direction who will cling to any fleeting cause just to increase their sense of self by the smallest of margins.

Do you see how important it is not to exaggerate things?

In his column today, President Skorton urges university citizens to engage in debates and discussions about political conflicts, particularly that in Israel and Gaza. While we agree with Skorton that an academic setting is the best place to foster such political engagement, we hope that he and the University do more to encourage these dialogues.

As campuses across the United States reopen after winter breaks, the recent Gaza conflict has been on many people’s minds. This is particularly true at Cornell, which has substantial and activist communities of Jewish and Islamic faiths. Many of us here feel the anguish of the situation in the Middle East.

Some students, faculty and staff have requested that I take some sort of action, or make a public statement in Cornell’s name. These communications have caused me to think again about the role of universities — and university presidents — in events outside our campus but not outside of our hearts and minds.

Ariela Rutkin-Becker wants to know what I want to know, and the bomb-loving crowd won’t tell: “What I want to know,” she wrote on Tuesday, “what burns me up at night is how are so many other American Jews not red-in-the-face, infuriated, embarrassed and righteously indignant now with Israel’s response to Gaza’s rocket-fire?” Ms. Rutkin-Becker, unwillingly and unknowingly conscripted by her temple sisterhood into the Stay-Here-in-America-but-Send-Money brigade of the Israel Defense Forces, isn’t the only one with a presumptive synagogue.

To the Editor:

Re: “The Wrong to Remain Silent by Ariela Rutkin-Becker,” Opinion, Jan. 27 & “Gaza Razed: Will Israel Be Held accountable? by Munier Salem,” Opinion, Jan. 29

Having read the two most recent Opinion columns on the situation in Gaza, and the resulting flurry of responses, I have been silent for long enough. I worked as a medic in Ashqelon, Israel when the Qassams were falling. We knew when a rocket would hit 20 seconds in advance, and all one could do was wait, not knowing where it would strike. Ariela Rutkin-Becker surely does not know that terror, as I do, for she referred to a program to relocate Israeli youth as a cause she “never would have personally supported.”