Long ago, this newspaper publicly issued a values statement, a portion of which reads, “We value seeing matters from a diversity of viewpoints, experimentation and, both personal and social redefinition. We aim to challenge ourselves and the opinions of others through voice-laden think and research pieces, which beg the greater questions while considering every cog in the machine.”
If you do these kinds of things you’re going to make people angry on occasion. New ideas or old ones re-examined in different ways can sometimes ‘feel’ wrong at first. Like, our early embrace of gender affirming pronouns initially rankled some, but today that treatment is the industry standard.
We would remind our readers that we once ran an ad campaign chiding that if we hadn’t pissed you off in over a month, it meant we were not doing our job.
By now, you see where we’re going.
Today, we are publishing an editorial on the Corvallis City Council’s consideration of what amounts to a boycott targeting Israel. It’s a long read. And we are not naïve. It feels like if you’re going to say anything about Israel lately, the social etiquette demands it should be somehow disapproving or prefaced by something that is. We’re not going to do that.
The goal is to examine how Jewish people here, in our shared community, may view what the Council is considering. We’ve had quite a deluge of emails on the subject. And the one spoiler-alert we can give you is right in the editorial’s headline; the Council could in one fell swoop redefine how Jewish people perceive what Corvallis is about.
The stakes are high. So, we are also freshly running our reporting on how the boycott proposal came to the council, and the view of one of our readers who turns out to have some foreign policy chops.
We suspect there may be a vociferous response to the conclusions that we draw. But that’s never stopped us. So, fire off those emails. But before hitting send, consider this; most of the folks we’ve talked to have asked for confidentiality. Far more than usual. There is a hush that has set in.
So, we are thinking there is a more compassionate and less punitive path forward. A path that is more unifying.
And on another note, if you’re curious about our full Values Statement, you can click here to give it a read.
Do you have a story for The Advocate? Email editor@corvallisadvocate.com