Editor, Daily Nexus:

I wanted to express my disappointment and disgust with UCSB for inviting Hanan Ahsrawi to inaugurate our new Center on Middle East Studies. Having Ashrawi inaugurate this center is an insult. Ashrawi is a propagandist for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) – a known terrorist organization – and her anti-Israel and anti-American rhetoric casts a very negative shadow upon the new center. Her distortion of the truth regarding the events in the Middle East is an affront to all Americans. Israel is our country’s top ally in the region and the only true democracy in the Middle East. Our university should be humiliated for inviting a known propagandist and hate speaker to our campus. It is even more disgraceful that this new center did not have a speaker from Israel, the only pro-American country in the region, to debate Ashrawi on her distorted message. This shows the imbalance of this new center and is a disturbing prelude for the future of UCSB. I urge the student body to be wary of this new department and to question the information given to you by your professors. The fact that this center chose a person like Ashrawi to inaugurate it sends a strong message of its anti-American and anti-journalistic intentions.

ELI RABER