The Danbury News-Times recently published a disturbingly inaccurate and one-sided article about Israel in its Perspectives pages. (Aug. 28) "One Summer in Gaza," a news story by a member of the paper's staff, violated the newspaper's basic covenant with its readers: to insure that apparent statements of fact are really true. As readers objected, the paper's response was, in many ways, even more disconcerting than the original article.

The story featured a young man named Chris Towne who had just returned from four weeks in the Palestinian territories under the auspices of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), in a program called the Palestine Summer Encounter. But the News- Times' failed to meet journalistic standards when it described the ISM program as providing an opportunity to "work with Palestinian non-profit organizations."

In fact, Palestine Summer Encounter participants are political activists in an organization that endorses terrorism and the destruction of the Jewish State. They spend their time in aggressive demonstrations involving such "actions" as dismantling security barriers and impeding police searches for bomb factories and the arrest of known terrorists.

Young Mr. Towne returned from his summer experience imbued with hatred for Israel, and "unabashed" in his enthusiasm for the Palestinian cause. The News-Times printed the Palestinian propaganda Towne gave them as straight news, even though it included many half-truths and a number of outright untruths...

Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, author of Sharing the Land of Canaan
Stanley Heller, founder of the Middle East Crisis Committee
Haidar Abushaara, of the Palestine American Congress
Additional Panelist To Be Announced.

... After many students had already left for the summer, Qumsiyeh sent an email to all Yale Coalition Peace (YCP) members, an anti-war group, in which he linked Jewish support of Israel with support for the then current war in Iraq.

In the email, Qumsiyeh wrote that "the U.S. occupation of Iraq illegal and immoral (sic)" and that the YCP should "continue to challenge the hegemony of the U.S. on the Arab world." Although such opinions are certainly acceptable and even welcomed at a university that encourages the exchange of ideas, Qumsiyeh closed his email with a chilling statement: "I include here the list of members of Yale Students 'for Democracy,' the pro war cabal . . . I think you will find the list informative. Note that there is significant overlap of this list with the 'Yale Friends of Israel' listserve."

Qumsiyeh then listed the Yale email addresses of 64 students, which contained students' full names, whom he claimed belonged to Yale College Students for Democracy (YCSD), a group that supported the war in Iraq.

However, the people he listed belonged not to YCSD, but to the Yale Friends of Israel (YFI) itself...