1992 LETTER on Palestine: Holocaust II? (my published letter to the editor)


"I’m Jewish, and I’ve covered wars. I know war crimes when I see them." -- Peter Maass, April 9, 2024, The Washington Post.

What Do I Think

Peter Maass' article in The Washington Post reminded me of my own letter to the editor published on May 15, 1992 in the Daily Pennsylvanian (Volume CXIII, Number 61, page 7). It can also be found at https://www.thedp.com/article/1992/04/letter_holocaust_ii, but without the opening paragraph and publication date.

The opinion refers to an article, "Being There" by Jordana Horn, published in The Daily Pennsylvanian, Volume CVIII, Number 47, 8 April 1992) 

1992 Letter to the Editor

Jordana Horn's column "Being There" (DP 4/8/92) describes her feelings when she visits the site of the Holocaust about 40 years after it happened. Is it ironic that her very own article will be used in the future to portray the emotions felt when an American Palestinian visits the Palestinian homeland in the year 2020, about 40 years after the intifadah. I ask the Israelis if they want a Palestinian in the future to look back on the Palestinian struggle for independence and say, "I felt that I too was a survivor, from a generation removed, when I walked out of the crematoriums alive." Probably not. But this is what will happen. 

Open your eyes and look to see what the Israeli soldiers and settlers describe as everyday events; they all see the Palestinians "gripping the barbed wire fence, wanting to tear it apart as its jagged edges clawed into my hands." 

I ask the Israelis to take heed of Jordana Horn's warning and when you "read the captions, the statistics and sequences of events," do not put up a barrier or "feel an inner glass wall forming between myself and my emotions, and I did not want to fight it, because it would be a temporary anaesthetic numbing me to terrible tremendous pain." 

Listen to the "thousands of beating hearts" in the Israeli occupied territories and stop and think of the 21,000 Palestinians who have been killed since 1988. Will this be all looked upon as a holocaust? 

GALEEB KACHRA Engineering / College '94

Why Should You Care

What do you learn from history and do you apply it to your daily lives? 


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