Wildcat's one-sided coverage of Mideast has been ongoing

Paul Snodgrass's letter, "Wildcat irresponsible in lack of diverse Mideast protest, activism coverage," (Friday) raised an extremely important point and exemplified a major fault of the Wildcat. The tone of Snodgrass's letter was much more polite than the Wildcat deserves.

The one-sidedness of the Wildcat has been brought up before. I know this because I brought the issue up last year myself. The Wildcat's response was to print my letter and then continue with its biased reporting. Monday's event with Josh Ruebner, co-founder of Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel, and a panel of other Jewish perspectives was a very refreshing and positive discussion. The discussion even featured a far-right Israeli perspective, which attempted to explain the roots of the conflict by quoting an incredibly ignorant and racist Israeli official who implied that the root of the conflict is that "Palestinian people do not love their children as much as they hate the Jews." It was very refreshing to see that not very many people agreed with such an unintelligent view of the conflict, and it showed that despite differences in opinions, most students' perspectives are more moderate than one would believe.

It should not be a surprise that students and faculty can have an intelligent and academic discussion, but because of the Wildcat's failure to report such discussions and its willingness to report one-sided events such as the Israeli "peace" rally, the two sides are represented as foes or opponents, instead of as two different perspectives working together to bring understanding to each other.

The fact that this issue has been brought up before along with the Wildcat's recent failure to report Monday's event proves that the Wildcat is either incompetent or that it is deliberately trying to silence the voices of moderates in an effort to devalue the suffering of the Palestinian people while promoting the idea that all Israelis want peace and that Israelis are the only victims in the conflict. Promoting such simplistic and untruthful ideas, not only by the Wildcat, but all across America, has led to a very limited and incomplete understanding of the conflict by most Americans, and the effects of such biased reporting can be seen in the rise of extremists on both the Israeli and Palestinian side and in both sides' ever increasing disregard for human suffering.

Armand Navabi
computer science senior

Bible, Ten Commandments say murder, killing not same thing

I would like to respond to Mark Konty's claim that the Ten Commandments forbid killing ("Stance against death penalty moral, consistent with Bible," Wednesday). Please note that I am assuming Mr. Konty's respect for the Bible as a source of morality.

Mr. Konty, if you look in your Bible, you will find that the commandment is actually "you shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13). The word in the original Hebrew manuscripts of the text is "ratsach" (raw-tsakh'), literally meaning "to dash in pieces (a human being), especially to murder (Strong's Concordance)." The King James Version does translate this word to "kill," which is the foundation of most misconceptions about this verse.

According to the context here and the Hebrew Scriptures in general, killing and murdering are two different actions. This commandment forbids murder, which is the "malicious killing of one human being by another" (Webster's New World College Dictionary). The situation is the same in the New Testament scriptures as well. Jesus repeats the commandment above and then directly associates the action of murder with anger (Matthew 5:21-22). God also clearly forbids the killing of innocent people (Exodus 23:7, Deuteronomy 21:9).

On the other hand, in the Bible, God does not forbid forms of killing that he authorizes, e.g. war and capital punishment. In fact, God commands that his followers appoint judges and officials to uphold the moral laws He has given, and render just decisions for the people (Deuteronomy 16:8). Some of these, if broken, carried a penalty of death, e.g. murder.

So the Bible does NOT forbid "killing, period," as you stated. According to the Scriptures, one does not employ "situational ethics" when he believes that it is morally wrong to kill, for example, a human fetus while supporting the execution of a murderer. He is simply reflecting the morals that he received from a perfectly just God. I don't know about other people, but that is how I justify my position on the death penalty ÷ looking not to my view of what justice should be (which is biased and flawed because I am an imperfect human being), but to the absolute truth of a Supreme Being who is morally set apart as flawless.

Bill Nye
geography senior

Construction workers should be more courteous with their dirt

You would think that with all this construction, the least they could do was to water the dirt. Just today, I was walking to class and got pelted by a huge windstorm of it. Just a thought!

Joe Mancuso
sociology junior