June 1993, Page 30

Other People's Mail

Some letters by or to other people are as informative for our readers as anything we might write ourselves.

The True Cost

To the Chicago Tribune, March 31, 1993

I am writing this letter to correct a major error printed in the March 9 issue of the Tribune under the heading: "Clinton urged to stem U.S. aid to Israel, Egypt. " The article stated, "Israel is collecting $3 billion total aid. "

The true total aid to Israel in 1993 is as follows: on budget: $3,091,000,000; off budget: $1,180,000,000; interest paid by U.S. on above: $50,000,000; U.S. loan guarantees to Israel 1993: $2,000,000,000; compound interest on previous grants (1951-1992); $5,000,000,000.

Total 1993 grants, interest, loan guarantees and compound interest: $11,321,000,000.

The $8 billion mistake your paper made is precisely what the pro-Israel forces in the U.S. want to hide, and your newspaper is now aiding and abetting in the continued deceit of the American people.

David P. Yohanna, Chicago, IL

ADL Defense Faulty

To the San Francisco Examiner, March 22, 1993

The letter from Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman (March 10) in defense of ADL's spying on Arab Americans has ominous implications for all of us who are concerned with preserving our First Amendment rights. Foxman apparently believes ADL has the right to determine the limits of criticism American citizens may exercise against Israel, a nation the ADL appears increasingly to be serving in a quasi-governmental capacity.

The U.S. and Israel are the only governments that consider the PLO to be a "terrorist" organization. The U.N. and the U.S.'s close allies (Britain, France, etc.) recognize the PLO as being the official representative of the Palestinian people. Many Palestinians in the United States, in addition to supporting the creation of an independent Palestinian state, contribute to social, health and educational facilities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, operated by member organizations of the PLO. American Jews support, far more substantially and with tax-exempt donations, organizations that provide similar services to Jews in Israel.

What Foxman is saying and the ADL has been proving is that while it is prepared to defend the "civil rights" of Arab Americans as a protected "minority, " it is unwilling to grant them the same political rights being freely exercised by Jewish Americans but will do everything it can to undermine those rights. If the ADL and Foxman believe that somehow this comes within the organization's mandate to combat anti-Semitism, I would suggest, as a Jew, that they are dangerously distorting the meaning of the term.

Jeffrey Blankfort, San Francisco, CA

About the ADL

To the Los Angeles Times, April 26, 1993

In an article on the "ADL spy network" (April 17), the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League was quoted as saying that the ADL has a "right to educate the public about what critics of Israel say and write." What he is implying is that Americans who criticize Israel are suspect.

I challenge the ADL to educate the public about what many respected and credible Jewish critics of Israel say and write. Many Israelis and American Jews are working hard to bring self-respect to Israel, to pull it out of the scandal of its human rights violations and flouting of international law.

In your editorial (April 14), you appropriately acknowledged the ADL's good works in combatting racism, and we join you in that. Then you went on to express your understanding of why the ADL would surveil such groups as the KKK and the White Aryan Resistance but gently scolded them for collecting information on respectable organizations such as the NAACP, Greenpeace, and the United Farm Workers, plus several members of Congress.

In the files seized by police from the ADL's offices, 4,500 of the 12,000 names contained in those files were names of Arab Americans—clearly the principal target of the ADL's politically motivated spying. Yet, in your listing of the "good guys," Arab Americans were conspicuously absent. Can you imagine how offensive and dangerous your implication is? While I would assume it was inadvertent, you have many readers who might not.

Donald S. Bustany, President, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination committee, Los Angeles, CA

To the Los Angeles Times, April 26, 993

We members of the Cousins Club of Orange County long admired the Anti-Defamation League for its purported purpose of exposing individuals and groups who threaten the ideals of our democratic American society. Our organization is based on principles of understanding the needs and yearnings of two disparate peoples closely related in their quest for peace, and searching for solutions related to the struggles and strivings of their respective kin in Israel/Palestine. Knowing we can flourish best in an open and free society, we are especially sensitive to any activities which threaten or inhibit such freedom.

Our members have long held the ADL in high esteem, above petty partisanship and beyond immediate expediencies such as those manifested by seemingly less idealistic organizations. We therefore are distressed to learn of alleged long-term activities of the ADL in its compilation of lists of people whose opinions were not in accordance with their own. We are especially disturbed to learn of covert sales of these lists to the foreign governments of Israel and South Africa.

We Cousins Club members who are Jewish Americans were particularly proud of an organization which we thought spoke for the entire Jewish community in its stated goals of exposing those whose purposes are antithetical to the welfare of both Jews and non-Jews.

Those of us who are Palestinian Americans also held the ADL in high esteem, even using it as a model of integrity upon which the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee is based. Our disillusionment and despair are therefore made more acute by recent disclosures of alleged secret activities of the ADL, which emulate organizations such as the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan.

We urge the U.S. government to thoroughly investigate these alleged covert activities. Further, we urge that the ADL make full disclosure of its secret agenda, promising it will cease and desist from such activities in the future.

Rose Mendelson, Sami Odeh, Cousins Club, Buena Park, CA

ADL Spying

To the Los Angeles Times, April 20, 1993

When I heard about the spy operations of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL), I didn't think much of it at first. That is, until I received a letter earlier this month from the San Francisco Police Department informing me that files under my name were confiscated from the home of a police officer recruited by the ADL.

In targeting Arabs and Muslims indiscriminately and without any reasonable cause, the ADL has shown itself to be a paranoid organization bent on creating enemies to justify its own existence. Many of us who are on the ADL list have long worked to alleviate the mistrust that exists between Muslims and Jews, and have worked hand in hand with them on common causes, including the ADL-sponsored "A World of Difference" campaign. Personally, I feel stabbed in the back. This is an organization dedicated to fighting discrimination?

It is ironic that the ADL would be spying and keeping files on Arabs and Muslims whom it deems to be hostile or dangerous. Surely the organization is old enough to remember a time when similar lists and files were kept on Jews who were considered to be dangerous as well. It seems that instead of building bridges between Jews and Muslims, the ADL is more interested in tearing them down and building walls.

Shahed Amanullah, Muslim Public Affairs Council, Los Angeles, CA

"Self-Made Refugees"

To The New York Times, March 28, 1993

As "general in command of all Israeli forces in the West Bank" during the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Uzi Narkiss writes that he cannot "think of any action taken by the Israeli Army that would have caused civilians in the [occupied] territories to become refugees" during the war (letter, March 23, 1993).

Perhaps I can refresh his memory. Israeli planes dropped napalm on civilians seeking safe haven on the East Bank of the Jordan River. My mother's cousin, Sami Awediah, lost two sons and a niece in one such raid. His daughter was severely burned, he and another son received lesser injuries. Awediah had been a high-level employee in Jericho's municipality. His death several years ago in Amman, Jordan, ended his tormented life as a refugee.

Narkiss tries to fix the blame for the refugee status of Palestinians on Jordan. Not even Saddarn Hussain has argued that Iraq's Kurds and Shi'i, who rose up in armed rebellion after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf war, must endure an interminable refugee status in the neighboring countries where they sought safety and shelter.

Palestinians would gladly give up their refugee status in Jordan and other countries if Israel would allow them to live, in peace in their native country.

Nabeel Abraham, Brighton, MI

From the King David Hotel to the World Trade Center

To the Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, NY, March 7, 1993

On July 22, 1946, at noon, six members of Menachem Begin's Irgun Zvai Leumi entered the King David Hotel in Jerusalem through a rear entrance. They held the kitchen staff at gunpoint while placing seven milk cans full of gelignite and TNT on the ground floor. A tin-ling device, based on acid eating through a wooden plug, was set to ignite 722 pounds of explosives at 12:43 p.m. The explosion occurred seven minutes early, and the pressure wave burst the hearts, livers and lungs of the people working on the floor above. The entire six-story secretariat wing of the hotel collapsed, generating a lethal shock wave of debris.

The face of a typist, torn from her skull, was later recognized on the sidewalk pavement. A witness described what looked like "miniature colored parachutes" fluttering in the breeze outside the King David. They were the dresses of female office workers who had been blown through windows.

Ninety-one Britons, Arabs and Jews were killed then and there by that most successful of terrorists, Menachem Begin. This remorseless fanatic claimed that the deaths were the fault of the British for not having evacuated the hotel; he claimed that he had given 20 minutes' warning. In fact, had there been an evacuation, even more people might have been killed standing in the deadly zone around the hotel.

Begin went on to become a Zionist hero and the prime minister of Israel. We also know that the United States became his principal ally—never mentioning the murders at the King David Hotel. We abetted his invasion of Lebanon. All the while, the U.S. people never considered that misdeeds in the Middle East could have repercussions in our homeland. That is, until the bombing of the World Trade Center. We will read few analyses placing this dreadful criminal act in its historic context as a reaction to our own historic support of terror out of Zion.

Ronald C. Johnson, Pittsford, NY

References:

By Blood and Fire, The Attack on the King David Hotel, by Thurston Clarke, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1981.

Terror Out of Zion, the Violent and Deadly Shock Troops of Israeli Independence , 1929-1949, by J. Bowyer Bell, St. Martin's Press, 1977.

Misunderstanding Muslims Means Misguided Policies

To the Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, NY, April 2, 1993

When a Rochester television station called me after the World Trade Center bombing, now being linked to Muslims, I thought: "They never would have called and asked a Catholic cleric about violent IRA activities in Britain."

We see that in the news repeatedly: the media have not thought it necessary to generalize about the violent propensities of the self-styled Christian who was involved in deadly shooting in Waco, Texas; nor was it considered appropriate to generalize about the religion of the suspect in the Florida killing of a physician who performed abortions.

If so-called militant Muslims are to be identified by their faith, shouldn't all others be similarly identified? Especially if they invoke God as justification for their violence?

Islam is a religion of peace. The word "Muslim" means a person who believes in peace with conviction. The Holy Qur'an strongly condemns and rejects terrorism. Any person who sheds the blood of an innocent person or spreads mischievous terror on the earth is considered as killing humanity.

Yet if I were raised in America and subjected to the steady onslaught of stereotypes, I would most likely react to Muslims with fear and suspicion too...

We are entering a new era. There are more than a billion Muslims, many times the population of the United States and nearly one-fifth of the people of the world. Jews, Christians and Muslims share a common history and heritage. If Ishmael and Isaac, the two sons of Abraham from whom these three religions claim their origin, together could bury the dead body of their father, why then cannot these three religions work together for global peace?

The root problem between the predominantly Christian West and the Muslim world today is not religious but political. When Britain militarily dominated most parts of the Muslim world, its representatives forcibly demarcated national boundaries. Even though that was decades ago, it was done unilaterally, and predictably it left a legacy of friction, suspicion and turmoil. The Middle East was divided into tiny states. Palestinians were kicked out of their homeland. Kashmir was given to India, despite the wishes of the Kashmiri people. The same happened to many states in Muslim Africa and Asia...

American foreign policy has failed to adjust to the new aspirations for democracy within Islam. Among the areas that cry out for a fresh look and support are the Muslim/Christian intifada in Israel and Palestine, the freedom movement in Kashmir and the Bosnian victimization by the Serbs ... Let United States foreign policy be guided by even-handedness and peaceful coexistence, rather than high-handedness and military coercion.

And on a grassroots level, let Americans learn more about Islam to avoid unfounded fears of Muslims and their faith.

Mohammad Shafiq, Executive Director of the Islamic Center, Rochester, NY

Who is Permitted to Derive Benefits From the "State Lands?"

To Haaretz, Tel Aviv, March 26, 1993

It is a pity that Meron Benvenisti ("Facts and Repressions," Haaretz, March 18) fails to mention a pivotal yet carefully concealed fact about [Israeli] policies in the territories. The settlements and the "state lands" in the territories are intended only for Jews. Those who excuse that discrimination by invoking the military service criterion need to be reminded that a Druze who has served in the Israeli army is nevertheless not eligible to reside in a settlement or benefit in any way from the "state land." But an elderly Jew who emigrated only yesterday from Brooklyn and has never served in the Israeli army and never will is perfectly eligible, even if he refuses to become an Israeli citizen.

The right to settle [in the territories] and the monetary benefits tied to settling are automatically granted to converts to Judaism, whether they come from Peru or from a tribe living near the border of India and Burma. But they are denied not only to any Palestinians, even the ex-servicemen among them, but also to any Gentiles. Nearly 70 percent of the area of the West Bank and about 30 percent of the area of the Gaza Strip already have become "Gentile-rein, " even officially so.

We have created a regime of apartheid. It is more repulsive than anything that ever existed in South Africa. The settlements are just one manifestation of this regime.

Israel Shahak, Jerusalem

A Long-Time Democrat

To President Bill Clinton, The White House, Washington, DC, Feb. 25, 1993

Dear President Clinton:

As a long-time Democrat, I voted for you and your vow to make changes in our government's practices—and stop the influence of "special interest" groups. I am particularly interested in the Middle East, where I lived before, during and after the creation of the State of Israel. I was there during the activities of Jewish terrorist gangs and the murder of the U. N. mediator, Count Bernadotte, by one of diem, the Stem Gang, then led by future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. I am also concerned over our so-called "special relationship" with Israel.

More and more Americans are becoming fed up with our tax dollars going to Israel as it kills teenagers, blows up houses and breaks up families through deportations. We have turned Israel into an armed bully that refuses to abide by numerous U.N. resolutions and continues to violate human rights. Six U.S. presidents have all stated our policy that Israel must get out of the occupied lands and return to the 1967 borders. An independent Palestinian state was decreed by the U.N. at the time it decreed a Jewish state in 1947.

Enclosed are copies of pertinent publications—the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and the Link. I am sure you cannot personally read these, but hope that you can have a member of your staff do so for you, and at least give you the highlights and important facts.

About "special interest" groups, there is none more powerful than the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, with its financial and political power over our Congress. The U.S. should join the rest of the world in insisting that the Palestinians have their own country. No nation can reconcile a sincere concern for freedom and human rights with subsidization of Israeli abuse and mistreatment of the Palestinian people, whose only crime is their desire for self-determination in at least a portion of their own land. They will never receive justice and there will never be peace until the U. S. sees to it.

Elmer C. Singelyn, Menlo Park, CA

Please Learn About Muslims

To President Clinton, March 26, 1993

I have been thinking about writing you for a while to tell you how I feel about the media singling out and describing Muslims in negative terms.

I would like you to know that Islam is a religion of peace and harmony. As you know, more than six million Muslims live in the U.S.A. and the number is increasing every day. Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, despite the oppression and aggression Muslims are facing. As you know, the foundations of contemporary Western civilization were laid after those of the Islamic civilization, when the West was living in the dark ages.

I ask that by your example you discourage the media from stigmatizing Muslims, that you have more trust in us, and that you help save Muslims around the world. Attached is a paper on Islam from the Institute of Islamic Information and Education, P.O. Box 41129, Chicago, IL 60641-0129. It will give you a little bit more information. Please read it. May God help you in the right path.

Maher Muhtaseb, Houston, TX

Out With the Sacred Cow

To President Clinton, Feb. 20, 1993

Recently, you, Budget Director Leon Panetta, Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen and other Executive Branch officials have been asking members of Congress and the public "where would you cut expenses? "

May I respectfully suggest one cut that all have forgotten or are afraid to look at is the most sacred of sacred cows: foreign aid.

As a taxpayer, I am willing to make any reasonable sacrifice to reduce public debt. But I am unalterably opposed to having my government, already more than $4 trillion in debt, borrow $16 billion annually to GIVE to foreign nations. A $16 billion cut in foreign aid would go a long way toward reducing the budget deficit.

Said S. Kabalan, Rocky River, OH

cc: Senator John Glenn, Senator Howard Metzenbaum, Congressman Martin Hoke, Congressman James Traficant

What Did We Learn From the Holocaust?

To The Washington Post, April 15, 1993

How ironic. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington will be a powerful vehicle for ensuring that future generations will continue to learn of man's infinite capacity to brutalize his fellow man.

Yet will the lessons of the Holocaust be learned? The media give daily testimony to the carnage in Bosnia-Herzegovina. A whole people is being systematically destroyed—driven from homes, murdered, raped. Caring people in "civilized" countries cry in outrage at the atrocities being committed against Bosnia's Muslim population.

Zbigniew Brzezinski recently wrote on the need for enhanced moral consciousness. He said, "The global crisis of the spirit has to be overcome if humanity is to assert command over its destiny. " We move toward a global economy. Are we also moving toward a collective commitment to human rights?

It's more than half a century since the horrors of the Nazi regime. Another time, another people. But what did we learn from the Holocaust? Do we care?

Mary M. Germain, Plainsboro, NJ

Others Perished Too

To The New York Times, April 20, 1993

In "U.S. Can't Feel Proud of Holocaust Role" (letter, April 10), Regina Winder Barshak laments the lack of effort by American and Russian armed forces on behalf of Jews during World War II. This is an old complaint and ought to be put to rest once and for all.

Yes, allied soldiers did come upon the concentration camps "unintentionally. " But why should they have had a plan to rescue Jews? They had everything they could do to win the war, a war in which 365,000 American fighting men were killed, plus a million wounded, and in which as many as 10 million Russian civilians were murdered. Given such losses, Jews the world over should honor, not diminish, their effort.

Also, Ms. Barshak has obviously not read the Goldberg Report of 1984. This was prepared by a committee set up to make a determination on some of the very same things she talks about. The most disturbing aspect of the report was how little American Jews did to save their European counterparts.

I know some of this firsthand. When I was 15 years old, I accompanied my father to the Baltimore Conference in the fall of 1942, when his brother and sister were still trapped in Europe. I recall how painfully disappointed he was when the Zionists, who had the most powerful Jewish organizations at the time, made the creation of a Jewish state, not the rescue of Jews, their first priority.

I understand and share much of Ms. Barshak's frustration. But I also think we Jews ought to depersonalize it just a bit. It was, after all, a war in which as many as 50 million human beings perished.

Dave Goldman, New York, NY

'Never Again.' Not 'Hardly Ever'

To The Washington Post, April 24, 1993

The irony could not have been more glaring: Opposite the April 16 editorial on the Holocaust Museum was a piece on the op-ed page by Charles Krauthammer, "The Foreign Policy President," which praised President Clinton for not intervening in the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims by Serbians. Mr. Krauthammer found the president's "prudent passivity" admirable and asserted that the no-fly zones and air drops of food and medicine "may actually be prolonging the war." He also noted that intervention may not help the president's popularity; moral choices are not always popular ones.

I find such an attitude incomprehensible and inhumane, though it is certainly not original. It was this attitude, on the part of Americans and Europeans, that helped result in the genocide of 6 million Jews and millions of Polish Catholics, dissidents, Gypsies and other minorities. Pre-World War II editorialists also urged nonintervention in Poland and Czechoslovakia when these countries were invaded by Germany.

I have waited in vain for some commentator or reporter to refuse to use the fraudulent term "ethnic cleansing" and to call a spade a spade: Genocide is genocide. The Nazis also had a euphemism to cloak their evil: "racial purity."

The Holocaust Museum's rightful place is in the nation's capital and, most certainly, in the midst of monuments to our Founding Fathers. Now more than ever, we need to relearn the lessons of history, to be confronted with the horrors that may be abetted by political expediency.

In a sense, the Holocaust Museum is a reaffirmation of the ideals that inspired our nation and our Constitution: freedom of worship and basic human rights, as we now espouse them and as we expect of other governments. I fervently hope that all Americans, especially those with personal knowledge of persecution and genocide, will denounce the barbarism in Bosnia and deplore semantics that gloss over reality. Until we extend our horizons to include all the world's citizens, we cannot be sure that "never again" will not become "hardly ever."

Genevieve Ghaed, Bethesda, MD

Next time we drop leaflets on Bosnia, perhaps we ought to assure those being slaughtered and racially "cleansed" that they at least have something to look forward to: A half-century from now, there may be a museum in their memory in Washington. Going down the alphabet (following "H" for Holocaust Museum), this one could be called the Indifference Museum.

Frederick P. Kranz, Brookeville, MD

Charles Krauthammer says that with U. S. intervention "Bosnia has the capacity to swallow [Clinton's] presidency the way Vietnam swallowed the presidency of ... Lyndon Johnson, " but clearly Bosnia is not Vietnam.

First, committing ground troops is not our only option. U.S. air strikes and internationally supplied weapons could tilt the scales to the Muslims. Second, unlike Vietnam, the Serbs are supplied by Serbia, not a military power like the Soviet Union or China. Third, public outcry against the war in Vietnam grew from moral questions about our role. With Bosnia one simply has to read of daily atrocities against Muslim civilians to see that the morality in this case is crystal clear.

Mr. Krauthammer's article implies that President Clinton's place in history might be tarnished if he fails there. So how will Mr. Clinton be remembered with the blood of thousands of abandoned Muslims on his conscience? Either way, the president's image is not a credible basis for foreign policy debate.

Kenneth A. Rosenberg, Washington, DC

Recently Returned

To President Bill Clinton, Feb. 14, 1993

I have just returned from a three-week tour of the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine. During this tour, I lived with various West Bank and Gaza Palestinian families under military occupation. This was my third trip to the area, so I knew what to expect. However, I find that life continues to deteriorate more each time I go there.

As usual, after returning home, I found Washington still shielding Israel, as a so-called democracy, from the consequences of its expulsion of 415 persons (alleged extremists) from their homes and families in occupied Palestine for security reasons. The truth is that most of these men are medical doctors, lawyers, professors, church leaders, and well-educated people, not necessarily involved in any political activities.

I am totally outraged by this type of propaganda that continues to flow from Washington, and the continuation of the billions of American tax dollars flowing to Israel that finance this occupation. Israel has been illegally occupying these territories for over 25 years, causing untold suffering to their nearly two million Palestinian occupants.

Innumerable human rights violations by the Israeli government are documented by Amnesty International and our own State Department. Tens of thousands of men and boys are in prison, many without ever being charged with any crime. You cannot find a family which has not been affected by having had land confiscated, homes destroyed, or family members arrested, tortured, imprisoned, or killed by the Israeli military.

Hope of change for a better life and support for the peace talks dwindles every day as the time passes without any progress or concessions by Israel. Hopelessness only leads to hatred and violence.

The life of the people in Gaza is simply intolerable. It is like living on the edge of hell. During the 25-plus years that Israel has been occupying the Gaza Strip, every type of infrastructure that existed in this area next to the Mediterranean Sea has been destroyed. The water has become too salty to drink, there is no sanitary sewer system, no garbage collection, or street and road improvement. The electricity is poor to almost non-existent; the school and health facilities are in total disarray, the refugee camps are horrible, filthy places to live, and yet the military continues to destroy even these bare, sombre homes with bulldozers and, more recently, hand-carried shoulder rockets. Overwhelming unemployment has reached the point where people are unable to feed their families. There are curfews every night at nine, and sometimes they last all day for lengthy periods in which people are forced to remain inside their houses or risk being shot.

The physical well-being of the people is deteriorating daily. According to psychologists and psychiatrists in a recently established mental health clinic in Gaza City, 30 to 50 percent of the people are suffering severe psychological problems from living under these conditions, especially the children.

I picture this region as a "time-bomb" or perhaps a "pressure cooker, " just waiting to explode. Many children under 15 years of age have been killed here, and hundreds more have been blinded or maimed for life. It is a sin and a disgrace to our country that we continue to allow this occupation.

Despite the fact that nearly one million Palestinians live in this small strip of land, a large percentage of Gaza has been confiscated for Jewish settlements. These activities are made possible by our tax dollars paid to Israel. Even if U.S. funds don't pay directly for the military occupation, they free other money for that purpose. A member of the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks whom I met there had talked with several members of our Congress. These members know what is going on, but they still ask, "What's in it for me if I vote against Israel in favor of Palestine?" They fear losing the funds that pay for their election campaigns.

President Clinton, as you talk to the people here about how everyone in the U.S. is going to have to sacrifice to bring down the deficit, and what kind of tax increases we will have to pay to save just $9 billion, Congress provides ever-increasing billions of dollars to Israel every year. The U.S. has sent approximately $65 billion dollars to Israel over the years. Because this was borrowed money, the interest payable on this debt in the coming year alone will be approximately $8 billion, over and above the nearly $4 billion in visible aid and the additional hidden subsidies we continue to provide Israel each year.

I know from watching you and listening to you on TV that you have great empathy for people who are suffering. I strongly urge you to push for a peaceful solution to these problems by ending the Israeli military occupation of Palestine and giving the people back their freedom and human rights. Let us help them to overcome their feeling that their pleas for help are ignored unless someone there resorts to violence.

LaVonne Portz, Haysville, KS

"Eretz Yisrael"

To the Los Angeles Times, April 19, 1993

In the article by Knesset member Ze'ev Benyamin Begin (Commentary, April 1), the Hebrew phrase "Eretz Yisrael," the meaning of which is "the land of Israel," was followed by the term "Greater Israel, " in parentheses. This term was undoubtedly added by the editor and not written by Begin. By identifying "Eretz Yisrael" with "Greater Israel," you distort the meaning of the article and mislead your readers.

"Eretz Yisrael" is a geographic concept and not a political one. " Eretz Yisrael " is mentioned innumerable times in the Old Testament as the land which the fathers of the nation of Israel, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, lived, and in which the people of Israel lived for approximately 1,500 years until the exile. The geographic boundaries of "Eretz Yisrael" (the land of Israel) remain undisputed. They are specifically defined in the Old Testament as the strip of land that lies between the sea and the River Jordan.

"Greater Israel" or "Lesser Israel" are modern political concepts. They are used to reflect differing attitudes and approaches regarding the ultimate borders of the State of Israel, to be determined and agreed upon in the peace talks now under way.

Political disagreement in Israel centers on the question whether and how much of the territory from the Land of Israel can be relinquished in order to enable Israel to retain the two elements so essential to it: peace and security.

Uri Oren, General Consul of Israel, Los Angeles, CA

Out of Public View

To The Hon. Edward P. Djerejian, Assistant Secretary of State, Washington, DC, April 20, 1993

First, I want to thank you personally for the effort I know you have been putting into keeping the Middle East peace talks going. I'm certain that it has not been easy.

Unfortunately, the United States government seems to have gotten itself to a position where it has come to be perceived by all sides as favoring the viewpoint of one of the belligerents over all the others. This truly unfortunate turn of events has only served to undermine all of the hard work you and others have put into the process so far. Speaking for myself, the pronouncements I have seen publicly from the president and the secretary of state have been most disappointing from the perspective of one who wishes to see a healthy concern for the standing of the United States among the Arab nations.

Equally disturbing are reports which have reached me about events and conduct which have taken place out of public view. If what I have heard is correct, Palestinian concerns are being dismissed, legitimate grievances are being waved away, and at some levels American officials have been less than respectful of members of some of the Arab negotiating parties.

I bring these concerns to you because of our long-standing relationship and my faith in your ability to analyze correctly the circumstances we face. Other members of the administration evidently lack both your insight and your deft touch. Either that, or the president has chosen to surround himself with one point of view and is simply getting bad advice.

Not being privy to events inside the administration, I can only guess at the events which are unraveling both years of hard work and the American reputation for fairness.

I sincerely hope, as I know you do, that the talks can be held in a meaningful way. That will require a good deal more sensitivity to Arab concerns than has evidently been the case up to now.

As always, you have my every good wish for success.

George R. Moses, Arlington, VA