I have been troubled by the way I was quoted in the Feb. 11 Collegian.

I participated in a performance of Israeli folk dances at the international coffee house Feb. 9, and after the performance one of your reporters approached me and asked a puzzling and ill-formulated question which I made the mistake of attempting to answer.

Although I am somewhat embarrassed by the inarticulately formulated sentence attributed to me, it is an accurate quote, and I would happily live with its inclusion in the article were it not for the preceeding sentence which claims I said my "thoughts are far from Israel and the gulf war." That's not what I said, and is certainly not what I meant.

I can't remember the precise wording of the question, and am not sure it made grammatical sense, but it was something like this: "What kind of connection do you feel between your dancing and the war that's going on right now and what's happening to Israel?"

My reaction was that I do not particularly associate Israeli dancing and the war with each other. I love Israeli dancing and do it to relieve both war-related and other tensions.

The article left the impression that I am indifferent to what is happening. It also tried to set up my statement in opposition to that of Becky Peretz, a wonderful dance teacher who it is my pleasure to know, who expressed her concern for her loved ones and everyone in Israel.

I am very concerned about what is happening in the region, and about what my Israeli friends are going through right now. I also have a friend in the U.S. Army, and I am worried about her.

I did not then and do not now want to go into my opinions of the war, which are very mixed. I'm simply trying to correct the misleading representations of my statements in your article.

I will say, though, that I spent a summer in Tel Aviv and find the idea of the bombardment of familiar places by ballistic missiles disturbing. This bombardment is pointless destruction, unlikely to further Iraq's cause.

I was reluctant to talk to your reporter about the war, because I feel very upset and torn inside about it. It was far from my mind that evening because I was having fun. I was taken by surprise by your reporter's question, and my hesitation to attempt to answer it seems to have been mistakenly interpreted as indifference.

I do want us, humanity, to find a way to bring about peace in the Middle East and in the world.