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In “Our politics continue to divide us” Shirel Guez misrepresents the sign put up in the Shapiro Campus Center by JewishVoice for Peace (JVP) in a way that aggrandizes Israeli and Jewish suffering and excludes the crimes perpetrated against Palestinians.

The sign was JVP’s contribution to the Brandeis Zionist Alliance’s commemoration of Gilad Shalit.

In her article Guez describes the tragic story of Gilad Shalit in great length and condemns the comparison between the Israeli soldier and the 189 Palestinian prisoners as “ridiculous and unheard of.”

The media’s obsessive concern for Gilad Shalit–or rather, its lack of interest in the fate of the Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel –creates a serious imbalance in our perception of the conflict. These 190 prisoners (Shalit included) are the victims of systematic civil rights abuses.

Never tried in a court of law, they are kept in a kafka-esque nightmare where they are not given the reasons for their imprisonment nor the conditions for their release.

We do not mean to say that Shalit’s imprisonment is just, but while Shalit’s name makes headlines, the Palestinian prisoners are disregarded because they do not fit into a predetermined narrative.

JVP’s sign seeks to remind the Brandeis Community that Gilad Shalit is not the only captive involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Guez says herself that it is only by truly acknowledging the suffering of others that we can understand the conflict.

If only she and Israel’s apologists would follow that advice.

-Paraska Tolan ’11