Claims about Israel were incorrect

Austermuhle cited Noam Chomsky's opinion that Israel has openly supported Saddam Hussein's treatment of the Kurds and described Chomsky as a "respected author, professor and lecturer." Chomsky is all of those things, and he is also an unabashed hater of Israel who has proclaimed many times that Israel should never have been granted statehood by the United Nations.

Incidentally, Israel sent military advisers in the 1960s to help the Kurds defend themselves against the Iraqi government at the time.

Austermuhle complained that the United Nations has "been extremely lenient when dealing with Israel." That is an interesting statement, especially when one considers that in 1975, the United Nations voted 72-35 to equate Zionism (the movement for Jewish statehood) with racism. That resolution was only reversed in 1991. Of the 185 member states of the United Nations, Israel is the ONLY one that is never allowed to sit on the Security Council.

Austermuhle misinformed the entire State College community by writing that "Israel is a nuclear power and poses a threat to many countries throughout the area. Israel is not a stable state, and it has claimed that it will use nuclear weapons at the slightest provocation." Israel has possessed nuclear weapons since the 1960s and has never used them.

However, in that same time, the Arabs have waged war on Israel thrice, in 1967, 1973 and 1991. Israel lost 3,000 young people just in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. In 1991, not a single Israeli fighter jet took flight and not one bullet was fired against Iraq even though 39 Scud missiles landed in Israel, courtesy of Saddam. Thirteen Israelis were killed by the Iraqi attacks, and this small state showed restraint above and beyond what was asked of it by the international community.

Regarding the stability of Israel, I can assure Austermuhle that Israel is among the world's most stable democracies, one which enjoys a thriving economy and the freedom to reject or support political agendas.

Austermuhle thinks it is good that "Iraq has stood up in defiance to the imperialism of the United States." It is time for Austermuhle to stand up in defiance to the lies and historical revisions which have distorted his image of the world.

Sahar Oz
Penn State Israeli Student Association founder

NBA players deserve their large salaries

Let me first say that I believe that NBA players are grossly overpaid, and I would love to see teachers' salaries increased for all of the hard work they put in and effects they can have on young people's lives.

My mom is an elementary school teacher and even though she is a great teacher and a great person, nobody is going to pay $50 to watch her teach her class, and no fifth grader is going to walk around the playground with an athletic jersey that has "MRS. PERKINS" printed in bold letters on the back.

It is a simple case that the men who are fortunate enough to play in the NBA are so talented that they raise enough revenue for the league to justify their lofty salaries. If they weren't receiving the money they were generating, the owners would be keeping it for themselves. Sometimes salary scales aren't fair and don't represent the amount of work people do.

It is amazing that people always want to put down NBA players for making the kind of money they do. The fact is that thousands of people have tried and failed to be a professional athlete. If they are going to work their whole lives toward achieving that goal and are in the tiny minority of those who make it, then they deserve the spoils that go along with being a professional athlete. You rarely hear stories about people who worked their whole lives and risked everything to become a teacher and eventually lost out to the competition. This is an everyday story in the NBA.

People give up everything to get a shot at it and most fail. To those people who do make it, I say give them as much money as they want because they took on the one-to-one-million odds of becoming and NBA player and they came out on top.

Dan Perkins
junior-finance