There’s not enough room in the Technician opinion pages to have a substantive conversation about Israel.  

However, we felt the need to reply to your Nov. 6 opinion article because you mischaracterized our event, and our guest Neil Lazarus, as spreading propaganda. In fact, our program was exactly what we described: an overview of the world’s only Jewish state. 

You might have missed the point of our program, which was to share one person’s perspective of living in Israel. Our community is pluralistic and diverse, and we disagree about many things, but we do agree on the importance of Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state that provides fair treatment of minorities in a way otherwise unseen in the region.

As Jewish students, many of us have been to Israel and have relatives and friends who live there. This conversation feels personal for us. Like you said, anti-Semitism does still exist; just last week, anti-Semitic flyers were distributed in Pittsboro, which is less than 30 miles from our campus. Israel is the only Jewish state in the world and in the face of rising anti-Semitism in the U.S. and Europe, we think that robust dialogue that doesn’t demonize Israel or hold it to a different standard than other nations is vital.  

This dialogue is part of a bigger conversation, and we hope it continues.

Kayla Rosen a senior studying communication, Josh Kennedy a senior studying civil engineering, Julia Sagerdahl a junior studying business administration and Emily Johnson, a junior studying psychology contributed to this letter.