I found Wednesday's cartoon, featuring Yasser Arafat and positioned directly over an editorial entitled "Defying Stereotypes," to be a shocking and abysmal representation of the level of ignorance and stereotyping concerning the Middle East that pervades both this University and the United States.
All Middle Easterners have become grouped as terrorists and are now the butt of America's jokes and the objects of our propaganda. As he is neither omnipotent nor omnipresent, Arafat can no more prevent all radical, zealot bombers from their missions than American officials were able to stop Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma or Eric Rudolph in Atlanta before they carried out their plans. It is unreasonable to expect Arafat and the Palestinian Authority to be able to foresee and control the acts of individuals, and it is even more unreasonable to make the rest of the Palestinian population guilty by association for the acts of a few deranged individuals.
It is obvious that Arafat does not want suicide bombings to continue to occur -- they only retard and destroy the goals of the Palestinian people and make Palestinians appear inhumane and detestable in the eyes of the world, despite the fact that the vast majority of them are just like you or me, simply trying to live safe, normal and peaceful lives.
Wednesday's cartoon demonstrated to perfection the grossly biased media representations of the Middle East and Palestinians and the new sort of "racism" that America appears to be freely and guiltlessly partaking in.
Elizabeth Henderson
Sophomore
Political Science and History
