Submitted by Giorgio S. Frankel, Feb 29, 2008 16:43

I really can't understand why professor Judith Jacobson and other Columbia's peace-loving professors should be so angry at professor Yinon Cohen for having said, back in 2002: "For thirty five years an entire people, some three and a half a million in number, have been held without basic human rights. The occupation and oppression of another people have brought the State of Israel to where it is today."

The fact is, Israel has been oppressing another people for forty years now. This is the crude truth and anybody knows it. If professor Jacobson feels "offended" by this truth, that is her problem. May be she thinks that Mr. Avigdor Lieberman or general Moshe Yaalon would have been a much better choice for teaching at Columbia but,again, this is her problem. Professor Cohen's criticism of Israel's policy in the occupied territories is perfectly legitimate and formulated in a irreprenhensible way. One doesn't have to share his ideas to recognize his intellectual integrity.

As for Mr. Herbert Kaine's comment ("Tehran on Hudson"), it seems that you didn't find it "objectonable". Well, it's simply sickening.

Best regards

Giorgio S. Frankel, Torino, Italy

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