First, addressing the MidEast conflict is a major task to undertake, and anyone who tries to do it puts him/herself in a precarious position because of the myriad sides, opinions and issues within issues, no doubt causing backlash by someone. An even more difficult task is to address the conflicts within just one side of a larger conflict. I admire the task that Joe Goldberg attempted in his last column (Two views, one conflict Jan. 15), but not the way it was done.

Argument and discussion are integral and positive points within the Jewish culture. Goldberg’s desire to decipher and articulate these outer and inner conflicts within Judaism have proved to be a pattern in his letters and columns. But they are not meant for a college newspaper. The worldwide conflict is, itself, too wide to be formatted into a quarter of an editorial page, let alone the personal conflicts that need rather be addressed within communities, in Jewish magazines and papers, in discussions and within the self.

Goldberg’s column was a reaction to Laura Held’s letter to the editor (Stereotypes don’t unify, Jan. 8) that voiced disagreement with an opinion that he submitted to The News (A different kind, Dec. 4). But Goldberg’s Jan. 14 column used Laura’s name and unsaid words to disqualify her argument and legitimize his own. The column simply should not have run. The News should have considered its inappropriateness and recognized it as a humiliating and derogatory means to win an argument. Knowing Laura for five years, I was jarred over what “she” was saying, because the arguments attributed to her are not ones she would set forth, at the very least not without a great deal of backup.

I encourage the conflict Goldberg capitalizes on to be discussed in the proper setting, not in a school newspaper where most people don’t care or don’t understand the situation. Perpetuating an argument in the Northeastern News will not solve the problem nor do much for a writer’s dignity.

The two views, one conflict that Goldberg struggles with will not end, and his pieces on the topic have done nothing more than try to sort out a personal crisis. By driving Laura and her made-up, false words into the ground, he won his own argument, but how far will that really go? It only made him as good as the “uncooperative arrogance [that] is quite common among certain types of Jews, especially Israelis (A different kind, Dec. 4).”

— Emily Keeler is a junior English and

philosophy and religion major.