Unpaid teachers led to strikes that closed public schools for months. Students were left unable to pay tuition. Without travel documents approved by Israel, Palestinian academics cannot travel abroad. Movement between Palestinian universities is seriously curtailed by checkpoints. These realities constitute a de facto boycott imposed by Israel on Palestinian academia. However, no university president has spoken out. Their condemnations are targeted exclusively at those who call for an academic boycott of Israel.

Why does the Free Press classify murder victims as sex-trade workers or people who may have been mistaken for sex-trade workers? Why is the possible involvement of the victim with the sex trade always highlighted? Does this shed a different light on the crime? Is it any less heinous when a murder victim is someone whose life has led him or her down a possibly desperate path to the streets? And why does the Free Press speculate? When listing 15-year old Cheryl Duck among the sad statistics of unsolved murders, you state: "It's not known if Duck engaged in sex-trade work." Why mention it then? The same applies to Jamie McGuire and Velicia Solomon. Often people who are involved in the sex-trade or live on the streets are extremely vulnerable individuals with very few options. It seems particularly unjust to treat any of these people so callously. The front page headline beside a picture of a young woman with sad blue eyes gazing from a pretty face framed by blond bangs reads Tragic end of a lost soul and no-one can deny the truth of that statement. But they can and should be the words beside every one of the pictures accompanying the article on the unsolved murders. To state an occupation is one thing, to make it the pivotal point of these heartbreaking stories is just wrong.