Anniversary of the occupation of Palestine
Hundreds of human rights and international governmental organizations and millions of people around the globe have called for an end to the Israeli occupation of the occupied territories (the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem) and for a just and equitable peace.
June marks the 40th anniversary of the ongoing Israeli occupation. Because the United States has played such a key role in supporting Israel’s illegal occupation, both financially and diplomatically, people in the United States have a special obligation to speak out and pressure our politicians to end their support for this unjust situation.
This weekend, there will be rallies against the occupation in hundreds of cities around the world, including Boulder and Denver. As a Palestinian-American, I urge you to come and add your voice in calling for justice for Palestinians and an end to the Israeli occupation.
Julia Blechar, Louisville
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This week marks the 40th anniversary of Israel’s “pre-emptive” conquest of what remained of the Palestinian homeland. There had been provocations against Israeli interests, but the only invasion was by Israel outward, quadrupling Israeli-controlled territory.
While Israel was soon forced to give up the Egyptian Sinai, it refuses to this day to comply with all international directives to withdraw from its more prized booty: the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights. To the contrary, Israel has systematically consolidated its control, expanding its settlements while making life less and less possible for the indigenous Palestinians.
Forty years now of slow ethnic cleansing – subsidized by 4 billion of your dollars every year.
Kirk Peffers, Denver
Cowboy boots – and attitudes – in D.C.
Re: “Capitol Hill cowboys,” June 5 news story.
Since you saw fit to devote almost one-third of Tuesday’s front page (and two-thirds of page 11A) to cowboy boots as a “powerful political statement in Washington,” I thought I’d add my two bits. Frankly, I think the ink and space would have been more effectively utilized taking a hard look at the cowboy mentality there, but hey, I’ll go along and forward the following lyrics, courtesy of the Smothers Brothers in the 1960s:
As I walked out on the streets of Laredo,
As I walked out in Laredo one day,
I spied a poor cowboy all wrapped in white linen,
Wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay.
I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy.
I see by your outfit you are a cowboy, too.
We see by our outfits that we are both cowboys.
If you get an outfit, you can be a cowboy, too.
I submit that the second verse is what really lies at the root of the article.
Leslie A. Howitt, Fort Collins
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Freedom of expression and Ward Churchill
Ward Churchill should have known better than to compare some victims of Sept. 11 to Adolf Eichmann. No epithet could be more hurtful, or more inappropriate. Since an attack on them was seen as attacking all of us, we grabbed the flag and started waving frantically.
But this isn’t about the flag or about attacking our homeland. It’s about freedom of speech. Even people who offend our patriotic sensibility have First Amendment rights. Don’t they?
Two years after disclosure of the faux pas, why is this still fodder for vacuous columnists and pandering politicians? Because the controversy is the gift that keeps on giving. Cast a stone at Mr. Churchill and your popularity increases. Why stop? Would politicians Hank Brown, Bill Owens and Bill Ritter still care about this fiasco if they didn’t gain by it?
Instead of letting CU handle the transgressions of Ward Churchill, if any, the pseudo-patriots came rushing to the scene ready to lynch. The goal became to impugn Mr. Churchill’s integrity as a scholar, fire him and claim that justice was done.
Destroying Mr. Churchill’s career will not redeem the insult heaped upon the Sept. 11 victims, but it will diminish our freedom of expression and our reason to be patriotic.
Walt Heidenfelder, Lakewood
Breaking the “cycle of underachievement”
Re: “A case study in dropping out, digging in,” June 1 Jim Spencer column.
Jim Spencer’s column highlights the role of family and school counselors in Ismael Zaragoza’s quest to graduate from North High School. Fortunately, with support, Ismael put forth the final effort to graduate, bucking the “cycle of underachievement.” Unfortunately for other students in Denver Public Schools, support staff such as social workers are staffed at one- third the national standard. Thus it is imperative that students and families who have benefited from education or caring adults persevere until they can say, “Having made it over the wall, I wanted to throw the rope back over for others.”
Joe Weber, Denver
The writer is a social worker at George Washington High School.
Rep. Udall’s Iraq vote
Re: “Changing course in Iraq,” June 6 guest commentary.
I read Mark Udall’s column in your paper with a sense of what I will call “tragimusement,” a mixed emotion of tragedy and amusement. Tragedy in the sense that Udall covers his attempt to appease potential right-wing voters for his 2008 senatorial campaign with the notion that to vote against the $100 billion supplemental spending bill (this is on top of a $400 billion defense appropriation for the year) would somehow leave our troops abandoned in the Iraqi desert with no plane ticket home. Regarding amusement, I am amused that Mr. Udall thinks any literate voter, especially Democrats, will buy his lame triangulation strategy. Yes, it worked for the Salazar brothers, but the 2008 election will be far different from 2004.
Frank Ohrtman, Denver
. . .
Congressman Mark Udall’s guest commentary provides a disappointing explanation for why he submitted to George Bush and voted to fund an extension of Bush’s Iraq war. In November, voters resoundingly voiced their desire to end this war, yet we now have Democrats voting to extend the war with billions more taxpayer dollars and thousands more U.S. soldier casualties. As a life-long Democratic supporter, I am disappointed and I now have no choice but to withhold support from those Democratic congresspeople who voted to send billions of our tax dollars and thousands of our brave soldiers off to fight and die in a futile war.
Kyle Sandersen, Denver
Anniversary of D-Day
I am disappointed and angry to find nothing in Wednesday’s Post, except the Mallard Fillmore cartoon, concerning the D-Day landings in Europe in 1944. The blood sacrifice of the kids of the “Greatest Generation” that historians confirm changed the course of history for Europe and the United States is not worthy of a mention a mere 63 years later? Those kids who fought in World War II and survived now are dying at the rate of thousands a day. I feel sorry for those kids, now old men, that the editors of the leading newspaper in the Rocky Mountain region care not about them.
Dan Callahan, Centennial
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