February/March 1996, Page 138

Publishers' Page

Snap, Crackle, Pop!

Maybe it's just the sound of Rice Krispies, but to us the events of January call for champagne. Despite Shin Bet's efforts to blow them out of the water with the assassination of a Hamas operative of mythic proportions (see Alon Ben Meir's comments on page 21), the Palestinian elections were a roaring success. Maybe not as tidy as a New England town meeting, certainly not as crooked as a caucus in Chicago: just democracy in action.

And on the Very First Try!

Moshe Dayan once contemptuously said he would take the Palestinians seriously when they started to queue for buses. On Jan. 20 they stood patiently in line for hours at hundreds of polling places to cast their votes. In Jerusalem, where Mickey Mouse Israeli regulations were supposed to befuddle them (the ballot boxes couldn't have slots at the top, they had to be at the side to make them look like letter boxes), lengthy security checks were supposed to delay them, and massed Israeli soldiers (ostensibly there to protect the Palestinian voters from being beaten up by Jewish settlers and religious fanatics) were supposed to intimidate them, they voted anyway, thanks to Jimmy Carter, who protested the obstructions, and poll workers who kept the voting places open three hours past the originally scheduled closing time (see the article on elections on page 8 of this issue). And now Palestine has a popularly elected president!

And President Arafat Has a Problem!

That's the very popularly elected parliament. Whether any non-Palestinian thinks Yasser Arafat is a good or a bad negotiator doesn't matter any longer. What matters is whether the elected Palestinian Council members think he's getting a deal they can live with. If he does, they'll ratify it. If he doesn't, they won't. Palestinians who really want peace...

Can Unite Behind That!

And Israelis who really want peace are going to have to live with that! So the next time Shimon Peres boasts after a negotiation that "we screwed the Palestinians" (see "Trying to Understand Peres" from Ma'ariv newspaper, pages 117-118 of this issue), someone better tell him that the only thing he's screwing up is his own dream of an Israel at peace and finally integrated economically into the Middle East!

And Now, Pop!

That's definitely a bottle of fizzy being broken over this issue—our first of 140 pages. It's possible because of all the wonderful writers who have turned up over the years. Putting this issue together we were particularly touched by Patricia Roland's memories of growing up in Dhahran on page 60 and Ron Stockton's anecdote about the jailing of Hanan Ashrawi's father on page 24. The first made us homesick even though we've never lived in Saudi Arabia, and the second reminded us of a famous dialogue between Henry David Thoreau, jailed for objecting to the Mexican War, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, but there isn't space for it here.

Instead, You Could Look It Up!

And now for the bad news. February and March are the last two months in which subscriptions will be available at $19. Starting with the April issue the domestic price will be $25 for a regular subscription, and $20 for additional gift subscriptions submitted by our regular subscribers. All the accompanying new options will be printed on a new order form at the center of that issue. We tentatively plan that Canadian and Mexican rates will remain unchanged and the overseas rate will bump up from $55 to $60.

And Now for the Beefs!

A couple of people telephoned the Lebanese and UAE ambassadors before either had received their own copies of the January Washington Report issue to say there were pictures of them on page 68 under a headline saying "Arab Diplomats Participate in Israeli Embassy Program for Zionist Groups." In fact the headline pertained to diplomats from Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Qatar, as the article under the headline explained. The photos were from...

Lebanese and UAE National Days!

They had nothing to do with any other program, as the one- and two-sentence captions made clear. To the two ambassadors involved, we're sorry you have callers who like to ruin your day! To our readers, please no longer give gift subscriptions to people who only peruse the pictures without reading the captions.

While We're Feeling Irascible...

One of our annual fund-raising appeals with the Palestinian stamp on it came back with an angry hand-written note saying: "How dare you ask me to renew my subscription when you've only sent me four issues? You don't get a renewal until you've sent me 12 full issues."

That Was Kind of Ridiculous.

It was the only fund-raising appeal we sent all year, and it had nothing to do with renewing subscriptions. We send readers a renewal notice only when their subscriptions are about to expire. There are other "good causes" that, instead of thanking donors, hit them up for a new contribution each time they get the previous check. Frankly, when someone does that to us at home, we cut them off our personal giving list. It means the group has hired a professional fund-raiser who is dedicated to bleeding contributors white. The fund-raiser takes most of the money you send, and the rest goes into the renewed appeals for more money. So save yours and, if any group that advertises in the Washington Report does that to you, inform us. We'll make them stop or refuse them further ad space. This also is a good place to say that we never exchange lists or let our subscription list fall into anyone else's hands. And, by the way, a subscription to the Washington Report provides 8 issues a year, not 12. At least the complaining subscriber

Returned the Stamp!

That said, we have to admit that even we are not perfect. We had not one, not two, but daily computer crashes for a brief period in early December. We got new software, new hardware, and now things are okay. But we may have lost records of some orders or donations, since that was exactly the period they were pouring in from our annual funding letter.

We Got Your Money!

That was peeled off when we opened the envelope. But what you sent it for is what may or may not have been lost in the computer. Look at the final 1995 angels' list on page 124. If you sent a donation in late November or early December but it doesn't seem to be recorded, that's why. Tell us and we'll amend the records. Likewise, if you paid for a book or subscription you didn't get, tell us. We'll have the record of your payment—just not your instructions. Finally, if you have...

Access to a Photocopier...

Look at our article on "The Cost of Israel to U.S. Taxpayers" on page 46. Following one subscriber's advice, we now hold our articles on the subject to exactly one page for easy photocopying. We hope you've already provided your most intelligent friends with gift subscriptions to the Washington Report. If they turned out not to be so bright after all and didn't renew on their own, or if you're still trying to figure out their IQs before investing the price of a subscription in them, you might send them photocopies of the article. And since you're going to the photocopier anyway, how about adding a copy for each of your two senators, your representative in the House, and others as suggested in the article. The Capitol Hill addresses are on page 21 of this issue. Use them and...

Make a Difference, This Month!