<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:garamond, new york, times, serif;font-size:16px"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2570"> <a id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2569" href="http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letters-editor/2015-01-10/legalisms-trivialize-painful-circumstances.html">http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letters-editor/2015-01-10/legalisms-trivialize-painful-circumstances.html</a></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2571"><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2771"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2869" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; line-height: normal;"><span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2868" style='color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";'><font id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2867" face="Calibri">This responds to Michael LeRoy’s accusation that Steven Salaita is
guilty of “cyberbullying” (Commentary, 1/4). My experience of Salaita, through
his scholarly writing, talks, and tweets, does not lead me to believe that he
advocates harming anyone. Instead, I believe he is in enormous pain regarding
Israel/Palestine, both as a person of Palestinian-American background and of
informed social conscience. In this context I find LeRoy’s words to constitute
a careless form of slander.</font></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2771"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2872" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; line-height: normal;"><span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2871" style='color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";'><font id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2870" face="Calibri">From my perspective as a Jewish-American advocate for social
justice, I have also been in enormous pain regarding Israel/Palestine, for
substantive reasons that I have not exactly kept secret. This results from not
only Israeli occupation and violence against a defenseless people—which could
not proceed without U.S. taxpayer support—but the ethnocentric and racist
narrative that is promoted by the mainstream media and Jewish institutions (in
my name).</font></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2771"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; line-height: normal;"><span style='color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";'><font face="Calibri">LeRoy adds legalistic trivialization to the repertoire employed by
the local Jewish establishment to avoid addressing the <i>substantive</i> issue
of Israel/Palestine. This can only be explained by profound ignorance of
historical and current realities.</font></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2771"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2987" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; line-height: normal;"><span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2989" style='color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";'><font id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2988" face="Calibri">But perhaps I’m misinformed. Perhaps over 18 years of voracious
scholarly reading, critical thinking, and writing, I’ve missed something. Once
again, all I can do is invite LeRoy, Cary Nelson, Robert Silverman, and other
Jews to join me in a public presentation of our <i>substantive</i>
understandings of the conflict. The local Jewish community deserves better than
the ongoing distraction of the Salaita affair as neurotic displacement, while
Israel’s steady descent into colonialist madness proceeds in our names.</font></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1420906894414_2771"><font face="Times New Roman">
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