Varsity Respond

Varsity's editor responded with a 'Private and Confidential' email. This required further complaint to point out the problems with the Clare College Choir Tour article before Varsity apologised and agreed to publish the following:

In our article ‘Choir’s planned tour causing discord’ (issue 705) we wrote that during the 2008 Israel Palestine conflict “1,400 Palestinian people were massacred”. We would like to clarify that this number includes Hamas militants. In addition, we wrongly wrote that since the Six Day War, Israel “has continued a policy of military occupation in [Gaza].” Israel unilaterally disengaged from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

They also published the following letter:

The offensive factual inaccuracies in ‘Choir’s planned tour causing discord’ only serve to reduce the quality of this publication. I do not accept Varsity’s decision to act as a mouthpiece for the PSC. Was this a comment piece masquerading as a report, revealing Varsity’s political alliances? Or was this just symptomatic of rushed student journalism? Either way, the pro-active inter-faith work of the Clare College Choir Tour was unreasonably diminished. I commend their project and wish them luck in their efforts to build bridges, not boycotts. (Jake Witzenfeld)