Siddiqui Responds to Uspensky’s ‘Groundless Rhetoric’

To the Editors:

It is very hard to pinpoint exactly on which groundless rhetoric of Natasha Uspensky’s letter to the Review to start this letter on. Ms. Upensky, with all due respect, was too quick to call Students for Free Palestine “ignorant” and “biased” upon her own understanding of our functions and goals for this organization, undermining our levels of intelligence and experience in this particular area of activism.

The entire purpose of “Locked in: A Week of Education about Palestine” was about (and yes, let me state the very obvious) educating mainly the College campus and ourselves about the situation in Palestine. I would like to ask Ms. Upensky whether she had a chance to take part in any of the events we had organized that week? If so, Ms. Upensky would have noted that our speakers (coming from Black Voices for Peace, SUSTAIN, Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel) made a clear distinction between institutional, state-funded, military violence and individual and/or rebel-group-based violence. This is not to provide a justification for violence, but what frequently seems to happen when talking about Israel-Palestine is this complete isolation of the causes and context of the different forms of violence that is taking place in that region. Violence manifests violence. For this understanding, Ms. Upensky needs to go deep into the question of who has a claim on that land. Her complete dismissal of the topic of territorial occupation is quite honestly what oversimplifies the conflict and thus the violence she talks about in her article.

Though in the form of a disclaimer, Ms. Upensky and many who take her stance on this matter need to understand that there is nothing simple about wars and human sufferings. The posters for “Locked in” and the display in Mudd library A-Level were there exactly to problematize that notion of that simplified version of violence and the question that follows: What about the violence from both the sides?

And who ever said that the U.S. is justified in its “War Against Terrorism”? Most activists and scholars of several different backgrounds on this campus, around the country and the world are vehemently against this war, as are so many against the state of Israel and its occupation of Palestinian territories. My question to Ms. Upensky is the exact same as she had presented to us, how can she not be paying attention to the facts of the situation? Also, how justified is the claim that pro-Palestine is automatically equivalent to anti-Semitic? I would be very careful as to whom that term is applied to and how it is applied to certain individuals and situations.

I noticed that Ms. Upensky is a first-year. Let these questions of mine be a welcoming party for Ms. Upensky to the liberal institution she so very pleas for. A true liberal institution, I personally believe, is an academic space where thought provoking and challenging ideas and cutting edge academic works are welcomed as well as critiqued constantly. I absolutely agree with Ms. Upensky on this matter that Oberlin College is far from that utopian liberal institution most of us wish for. From my own experience, last year around mid-April, I remember crying in the MRC because there was a huge celebration taking place outside of Wilder bowl for the Israeli Independence Day. For millions of Palestinian refugees and Palestinians in general and those of us aligning to Palestinian self-determination, call that day “al-Naqba” or the Terror. There is a historical reason behind that alternative name for that day. The organizers of the Israeli Independence Day last year as well as this year failed to provide any alternative information on the current situation of Israel-Palestine and more so, the other side of the story behind the emergence of that day. SFP revitalized this year to provide, to the best of the members’ abilities, a balance of the information available on the situation in the Middle East. We are in no way imposing our points of view on anyone, rather submitting alternatives so that students can come to their own conclusion on this matter.

For someone who is so adamant about striking a balance, I really do not understand why Ms. Upensky would have any problem with SFP, right?

–Shahana Siddiqui
College junior