Implicit bias

A Letter to Burlington Free Press    May 13, 2001

        Palestinians and Israelis have been fighting for years. Blow is traded for blow, in a spiral of mutual retaliation.

        But our media report incidents in one way: Israel always attacks in retaliation for Palestinian violence.

        This formulation implicitly puts the Palestinians in the wrong, since it implies that they started it and the Israelis are teaching them a lesson.

        Israel has herded Palestinians into ghettos-like enclaves and is attacking their dense civilian populations with high-tech terror weapons and undercover death squads. The chaos of suffering among the Palestinian is making their lives unbearable.

        This is a crime against humanity, and it should be reported as such.

PETER LACKOWSKI

Jericho