Editor,
This letter is in response to the multitude of columns and letters on the Middle East this semester in the Daily Lobo.
I am neither a Jew nor a Muslim by birth, nor do I have much understanding about the issues in the Middle East. Yet, I have fragmentary glimpses of the pain of the people in this area.
Jews are a long-suffering people who have been persecuted through many centuries and in many countries. They were a community who had no home to call their own in the way I can call India my homeland.
As an international student, I can see how finding a home at last in Israel is powerful and anchoring for the Jewish community. I urge different campus community members to refrain from hurting or demonizing members of the Jewish community for loving and being loyal to their homeland.
At the same time, I do also know that Israel was not created on empty land. The previous inhabitants had their own culture, tradition and home. The land was not donated, and there were not any interfaith services or workshops to ease the transition.
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I can see how such uprooting might cause bewilderment, fear and anger among the previous inhabitants. I urge the Jewish community to find ways to empathize with the pain of these people.
I know there are many more issues, and I am nobody to speak on it. Yet, if you can, I ask each group to find resolution and forgiveness deep within their religious traditions and cease from hurting anymore.
On another note, I was concerned with Sagi Ginossar's letter in May 12's Daily Lobo.
I agree with Ginossar that the human rights situation in India is dismal. Not only the Muslims but Buddhists and Christians have also been very poorly treated in my country.
People who live in the northeast of India suffer from regular atrocities by the Indian Army, as do the poor farmers on the Indo-Bangladesh borders. I accept and am ashamed that so-called practitioners of Hinduism have done the same thing all people in power do - practice corruption and prejudice and maintain power at all costs.
At the same time, does it mean that I have lost my right to speak about issues in the world I am living in as a world citizen? Why should anybody wonder about the origins of interest in any country?
Americans who write in the Daily Lobo about the Middle East are not held accountable for the injustices occurring within their country. Is it not a fact that a developed and wonderful nation such as the U.S. is unable to provide its poor with healthy, pesticide- and hormone-free food?
Does that discount Americans from speaking about the Middle East? Do Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Nepalese, Kenyans and Trinidadians have the right to speak about world issues? Or is it reserved only for the developed world in Europe and North America?
Although much of this world has been broken by lawful nation-state boundaries and so-called cultural walls, I believe we have but only one human civilization. It is for us to keep and care for.
Bhavana Upadhyaya
UNM student
