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Change in Chronogram Letters Policy

DEAR READERS: Please accept our sincere apologies regarding Chronogram’s non-response to incorrect statements in Brad McDuffie’s letter to the editor in the June issue. Chronogram’s policy has been to reprint, unedited, and without response, any and all letters we receive in an attempt to increase the volume of letters received from readers, and to allow our readers to openly debate.

Although this policy has produced the result we had hoped for, the numerous letters we received in response to McDuffie’s erroneous statements have caused us to rethink our policy. As Ken McCarthy writes in his letter below, we agree that Chronogram must take our “responsibility as a source of news and information for residents of the Hudson Valley more seriously.” As a result, we have changed our letter policy. Letters to the editor will be limited to 300 words, longer letters will be subject to editing, and erroneous statements will be addressed. Our letters this month reflect this change, except in the case of Washington, DC, Gannett News Service national correspondent, Greg Barrett, who we have doubly erred against, and thus have allowed doubly to respond. Lorna Tychostup, Senior Editor

Setting the Record Straight

TO THE EDITOR: Why do your editors allow letters to the editor at Chronogram to go unchallenged? The letter in your June ‘03 issue that addressed the Chronogram's Rachel Corrie story was misleading and perpetrated falsehoods.

In his April letter to the editor, Brad McDuffie states that Rachel Corrie, an American activist killed March 16 in the Gaza Strip by a 50-ton Israeli military bulldozer, was trying to defend the home of Palestinian terrorists, "the same type of suicide bombers that crashed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001."

Such hyperbole only serves to polarize an issue that already swims in emotion, and it further clouds clarity and truth. No one, including the Israeli Defense Forces [IDF] and the Israeli Advocate General, has said the home of Palestinian pharmacist Samir Nasrallah, where Corrie stood her ground, was a target because of terrorism. An IDF investigation presented in April to some members of the US Congress said the IDF was in Rafah for "routine terrain leveling and debris clearing" alongside the plain concrete house where Dr. Nasrallah lives with his wife and three children.

However, IDF soldiers told an Israeli TV news station that they had been conducting "an exposure" in Dr. Nasrallah's neighborhood. In other words, the two US-made armored Caterpillar bulldozers that played cat-and-mouse with the activists on March 16 were in Rafah to clear brush and dig up dirt in an effort to find buried explosives.

While this might be true—Corrie had written in an e-mail to her parents about explosives buried in Rafah—it is also possible that Dr. Nasrallah's home was about to fall victim to a buffer area created by the IDF alongside its security wall. Corrie certainly believed this. This 40-feet-high metal barrier is intended to separate the town of Rafah from the Egyptian border, where militants have been known to smuggle across explosives. Whereas Dr. Nasrallah's home used to sit back from the security wall, separated by a row of Palestinian houses, it now is on the frontline of construction. The other houses have been razed, according to the international activists and journalists in Rafah.

But we may never know the true objectives of the IDF on March 16 because so much appears hidden—including the cause of Corrie's death. An Israeli pathologist in Tel Aviv wrote on March 20 that the breaks in Corrie's shoulder blades, ribs, and spine were likely caused by a "mechanical apparatus." The subsequent IDF investigation given to Congress states definitively, "Ms. Corrie was not run over by a bulldozer."

Unchallenged letters such as Mr. McDuffie's can perpetuate falsehoods when they contain errors of fact and/or draw false conclusions.

For example, in a March letter, Dr. Meyer Rothberg took issue with an interview I conducted in Cairo with Dr. Fathi Arafat, a pediatrician and the younger brother of Yasir Arafat. When I failed to answer Dr. Arafat's question: “Does the United States control Israel or does Israel control the United States?” Rothberg suggested I revealed an anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias. Truth is, like many of the best brains Arab and American, Muslim, Jew, and Christian, I do not have an answer that fully explains the multi-layered dynamic between the United States and Israel. But even if I did have the answer, I would not have offered it to Arafat. As a journalist, I am trained to never inject my own opinions in an interview for fear of polluting the candor and subjectivity of the interviewee.

Greg Barrett, Washington, DC

Vitriol from Tivoli

TO THE EDITOR:

You've told me via correspondence that the Chronogram does not fact check the letters to the editor it publishes.

In light of the disgraceful slander you published about Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old US peace activist murdered on March 16 by the Israeli military, you might want to reconsider your policy.

For reasons I can't fathom, you gave prominent placement to a letter published by someone identifying himself as Brad McDuffie, which included racial slurs and out-and-out falsehoods about the facts of Ms. Corrie's life designed to sully her reputation.

Fact: Corrie did not burn an American flag. She burned a crude drawing of an American flag. And even if she had perpetrated the “despicable” act of burning an actual US flag (a legal, if ungracious, act of protest here in the US), how does that justify her murder in cold blood by the military of a foreign government?

Fact: McDuffie makes the bizarre claim that Corrie died while defending the home of a “suicide bomber” from being bulldozed. A very dramatic and emotional portrayal of the situation—for those who can't think. A suicide bomber is by definition dead and thus incapable of owning property. The house slated to be destroyed by bulldozer belonged to members of the accused’s—emphasis on the word accused’s—surviving family.

What kind of justice is it to destroy the home of people who are related to someone accused of a crime? It's the kind of due process you'd expect from Nazi Germany.

Finally, McDuffie's letter goes on to state that Palestinians living in Gaza are incapable of remorse. Truly amazing. Not that racist comments like this are made, but that your publication would go out of its way to give them a platform.

Ken McCarthy, Tivoli

All Good People

TO THE EDITOR:

I was dismayed by the recent letter decrying the “relocation” of “straight, white, middle-class Christians” in this area. We praise diversity but not that kind, I guess. What intolerance and what ignorance, especially when we consider that without straights the human race would shortly face extinction, without the middle class that pays most of the taxes (there go social services) without Christians taking the lead, slavery would have lasted much longer than it did, and without Christians like Las Casas, Sierra, and DeSmet among many others, the Native American Peoples of North and South America may not have survived at all! We should welcome all good people regardless.

PS: And let’s not forget: the status of women is highest in countries touched by Christianity.

Dick Murphy, Beacon

Praise for Ruthless Self-Honesty

TO THE EDITOR:

When I moved to this area from Brooklyn, I noticed the local free paper of events, Chronogram. I knew what to expect as I had seen their ilk before. You know, one of those cheaply printed publications that tells you what is happening in the area as a means for distributing local advertisements. Occasionally I would be stuck somewhere waiting on line and would pick it up and read it for something to do. At first I was very surprised when I would find articles that were both well written and sometimes more than interesting—almost verging toward profound. I mean, after all, this was not a literary magazine, but a free rag created to sell ads, right? Over time, I began to realize that something unusual was going on at Chronogram. It was not what it appeared to be. There were original articles and fiction that showed a passion for true spirituality—ruthless self-honesty in the pursuit of personal, communal, and societal growth. Controversial articles addressing issues that our corporate-owned and censored media can no longer touch. They sent a reporter to Ground Zero right after 9/11. Did the Kingston Freeman do that? Explain why a free paper looking to sell ads sponsored sending a reporter to Iraq to provide a look at the human beings who lived amidst the huge stockpile of weapons of mass destruction that we were going to eradicate to make the world safe once again. Every business knows that taking on controversial subjects risks losing advertisers. So what on earth is going on at Chronogram? I don’t know, but I suspect that instead of being an organ for distributing advertisements masquerading as a chronicler of local events, it is really a vehicle for people who are serious about making the world and the community a better place, to support and express themselves. What a great model for us all on how to manifest right livelihood. Thank you for being a shining example that compromising one’s values is never necessary to be successful.

Rob Cohen, via e-mail

Has SHARP No Decency?

TO THE EDITOR:

Re: Todd Paul’s "Building A Solution" [June ‘03]: As the writer of the Article 78 [lawsuit] described as a NIMBY by Jane Todd of the SHARP Committee, I feel compelled to respond to her inaccurate portrayal. My neighbors and I all avowedly support the HUD Section 202 Low Income Elderly Assisted Housing Program. I spent quite a bit of my personal funds, time, and energy to enclose over 1,000 square feet of garden space in the seniors' back field with the help of neighborhood residents. We filed the Article 78 because of deficiencies discovered in every aspect of the project, from planning through construction, including the recent granting of permission to expand. We have been lied to repeatedly concerning the scope and scale of the intended project, and my neighbors and I have lost faith in SHARP’s ability to competently administer a project of this scale. Ignorance of 40CFR122 governing stormwater runoff has resulted in repeated flooding of hamlet properties with only partial remediation carried out by SHARP. Improper engineering of the physical plant has resulted in sanitary septic systems that are severely undersized, according to a NYS Department of Health sanitary technician and my professional engineer. Town of Olive Local Law 1, of 1997, allowed a doubling of density for this project, if clustering was employed, resulting in 19 units on 10 acres. The remote three-acre back field is the preserved greenspace resulting from clustering the units. A HUD administrator asked two other neighbors and me to support a variance to build five more units in the woods adjacent to the existing project. A cursory examination of the application for variance revealed a plan for 20 additional units in the preserved field. Of 27 people listed in the application, only three were sent notice of the public hearing, the three whose favor was curried with the lie about "five units in the woods." The public hearing was a travesty, a Hitleresque charade that is now resulting in a civil rights violation lawsuit, to be filed in federal court. We welcomed the seniors, and doubled the zoning density to accommodate them, but placing them in a remote farm field is contrary to HUD Section 202 regs, negates the clustering provision of Local Law 1, and goes against any sense of common decency.

Charles Blumstein, via e-mail