In response to "J Street U?opens doors for Israel conversation"?(Forum, Oct. 6): We at J Street U have facts and figures, and our members have a strong knowledge of the complexities of the Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli conflicts. Many of us also have deep personal connections to the state of Israel. We have started this organization at Brandeis in order to combat the idea that a person must support all of Israel's policies to be a Zionist-a proposition paramount to the idea that we all needed to support President Bush's war in Iraq in order to be true Americans. We understand that there are many perspectives in this issue and that yours is valid. But we interpret policies differently, and J Street U was not created at Brandeis in order to sling facts and figures back and forth between groups of different opinions.

J Street U was started so that all students on this campus understand that Zionism is a movement derived from individuals with a personal belief system, and within that movement we find that there are all types of Zionism. Jeremy Sherer, like all the other members of J Street U at Brandeis, wants more than anything to see the state of Israel prosper peacefully. We also don't want to allow ourselves or any other student at Brandeis to be told we aren't real Zionists or to be told we don't support the same cause because we don't approach the issue from the exact same perspective. As Jeremy pointed out, multiple voices and varied interpretations have always been and always will be central to the culture of Judaism.

I hope everyone will realize that Jeremy's op-ed was not an argument about our positions on specific issues with the Israeli-Palestinian debate but rather a commentary on the refusal of some American Jews to recognize the growing number of voices who do not feel adequately represented in the American Israel lobby, and the quickness with which people are willing to dismiss a legitimate point of view because it is not the one that so many have hung tenuously to for so long with obscure results.

-Jeremy Konar '10