May 1990, Page 4

Letters To (and From) The Editors

The CNI and AET Link

Enclosed you will find copies of two letters recently written to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Lubbock, Texas 79408. I've had over 20 letters printed in the last two years, plus.

I am a new subscriber to your great Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and thoroughly enjoyed the March 1990 issue. The sample copy was sent to me by my other new affiliate, the Council for the National Interest, thanks to Paul Findley. I hope to be very active with them in the very near future.

I am a close follower and student of the "Intifada" and have many articles and pamphlets on the subject. Thanks to all of the material I have saved, I am rather confident of my views.

I look forward to my April issue.

Walter H. Koehler, Littlefield, TX

You are one of many subscribers brought to the Washington Report through the years by the tireless efforts of former congressmen Paul Findley and Pete McCloskey. Now that they and a number of their colleagues have launched the Council for the National Interest, every paid-up member they enroll automatically receives a subscription to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs at no extra cost. Similarly, as Washington Report subscribers received renewal notices, starting this April, they had the option of checking a box on the renewal from indicating whether, as they renewed, they would like to become CNI members at no extra cost. What it means is that CNI is entering a group subscription at the full subscriber rate for all of its members and therefore all Washington Report subscribers can also become CNI members just by telling us they want to, and without paying extra dues unless they choose to do so.

Postal Vagaries

I am writing in the hope that I will get personal attention on my subscription problem, and begin to receive your magazine on a regular basis. I very much want to renew, but unfortunately I received only one issue on my 1989 subscription.

I think that the problem may be in my APO address, by which I can receive only first class mail. If the magazine is mailed other than in an envelope, First Class, it probably will not reach me. I have had this problem with other magazines.

I am willing to pay for extra postage and the envelope, but I want to be assured that in so doing my subscription will receive the extra attention required on a sustained basis.

I think your magazine is excellent, and I hope that the message of our need for a balanced policy in the Middle East is beginning to take hold in the US.

W.N. Ahrens, Yanbu, Saudi Arabia

Your subscription will be mailed in an envelope for the next 12 months. Please let us know whether it improves service, since, needless to say, it increases the cost. If it doesn't work, we have other ideas but they would involve a change of subscription rates. Meanwhile, if other APO or FPO subscribers are having similar problems, let us know.

Cheers for the Coffee Breakers

Thanks to whoever brought my letter in the Arkansas Gazette to your attention and to your volunteer staff member who sent an introductory copy of the Washington Report. The magazine is exactly what I want and I am enclosing my $15 check for a one year subscription.

I have written letters on aid to Israel for several years to the president and the Arkansas congressmen. Since the Palestinian uprising I have expanded my letters to include congressmen in other states. I like to enclose news clippings in these letters. As you know, anything other than pro-Israel news is difficult to find in most newspapers. Until the last few months it has been very discouraging to see any results from most of these letters. But when Senate Minority Leader Dole questions aid to Israel, saying it has become an "entitlement program," maybe some changes will happen, at least sometime later, if not now.

I have been unable to obtain a list of the 73 senators who signed a letter to President Bush asking him not to cut the $3-plus billion aid to Israel. I know the voting record of many senators, so I sent letters to President Bush and approximately 20 senators, stating my views and support for Dole's plan. I oppose this nation paying 10 percent of Israel's budget, especially when Israel murders Palestinians in the streets of the militarily occupied territories almost daily.

I sent a donation to U.S. Omen for the education of a child. I plan to send another donation later this year to be used for educational purposes.

Thanks again. Please note: I will include payment for your next coffee break.

H. C. Loard, Rogers, AR

Thanks for your subscription (and your donation to the AET volunteers' and interns' coffee break). In answer to your question, they are sending you the April 1990 Washington Report, which contains the names of 27 senators who did not sign the letter asking the president not to cut aid to Israel this year.

"Cry, My Beloved Lebanon"

I am a Lebanese American student studying political science at Rutgers University in New Jersey. I've enjoyed reading your magazine for the past six months. I cannot begin to tell you what a joy it was for me to find out that there really are Americans who are sympathetic with the majority of the population in the Middle East.

My concern, specifically, in the Middle East, is the Lebanese conflict. I was born in Lebanon, and lived there until the age of nine, and have fond memories of it. This past year, after listening to the sounds of the shellings in Beirut on TV, I called my grandmother, Dalai Batour, in Northern Lebanon. As she told me of her experiences, she cried. But still she spoke constantly of forgiveness and hope.

What she told me shaped what I eventually wrote. "Cry, My Beloved Lebanon" is the conciliatory and compassionate story of an old Lebanese mother. More than ever theLebanese are in need of conciliation and unity. I ask you please to print "Cry, My Beloved Lebanon" in the Washington Report. Thank you.

Amira Batour, Somerset, NJ

Each time we receive a lovely tribute from an American to some aspect of the Middle East's rich past, tragic present, or bright future, we think of making an exception to our rule against poetry or literary selections. But soon this magazine, with its very limited space, would be all exceptions and there would be no room for the documentation, interpretation and guides to action that Americans must have if they are to transform US policy from an impediment to a catalyst for that bright future. We thank you, however, for your word picture of Lebanon as: "A proud mother, for my children contributed greatly to the world... Perhaps I should not have been so beautiful. Perhaps I should not have given my children so much freedom. Perhaps I should have taught them unity at the expense of all else that they loved... But... is it not all these which made me what I am?"

"Collaborator" Murders

Your response to Joseph Lerner's letter on the murder of "collaborators" isn't convincing Never mind "understandings" about what the "mainstream (Al Fatah) leadership of the PLO" believes or hints. Neither they nor any other Palestinian personage or organization has come out against the brutal, ugly killings which are commonly followed by mutilations.

Furthermore, if the PLO really runs the intifada, it has sufficient authority to rule out such murders. If the PLO doesn't really run the intifada, how does it qualify to represent it? If it runs the intifada and accedes to or fosters the brutality, it isn't an appropriate bargainer. The Palestinian picture in the West Bank and Gaza increasingly takes on the color of Beirut.

Who shall speak out? Jewish concern is labeled "crocodile tears." Palestinians, whether in Israel or elsewhere, including faculty members of leading American universities, are silent either out of fear or through actual support for the brutality. Clearly the burden of responsibility rests with persons or organizations supporting the Palestinian cause, such as you, to come out loud and clear against this growing aspect of the intifada.

Sue Golden, Rechavia, Jerusalem

We respect your obviously sincere concern. But the Palestinians are under the guns of a military occupier using death squads to eliminate the intifada leaders being "fingered" by these informers, recruited through intimidation, blackmail and drugs. As an Israeli it appears to us that your efforts could best be devoted to insisting that your government cease the brutal occupation that makes Palestinian brutality against collaborators inevitable.

Clarification on the Veil

In the Feb. 1990 issue in "Other People's Mail" Khalid L. Rehman, under the title "Clarification on Islam and the Veil," incorrectly states that, "the veil to cover the face is a regional and cultural tradition in some Muslim countries, and it has nothing to do with Islam as a religion." This statement cannot be further from the truth. Since Ms. Fatihia El Bakry in the Jan. 1989 issue under the title "Women in Islam" has advanced the same idea, I wish to offer a clarification on this subject.

Many sayings and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H.) clearly indicate that the veil or the act of covering the woman's face was widely practiced by Muslim women at that time. The opinion of our well known scholars fall into two views regarding the veil:

The first is that the veil is obligatory to all women, which means that uncovering the woman's face is prohibited.

The second is that the basic Islamic dress for women covers the whole body except the face and hands, but covering them (i.e. face and hands) is strongly recommended.

So, if Mr. Rehman and Ms. El Bakry are trying to make us understand that the Islamic veil is a foreign practice to Islam, a belief contradicted by many sayings and practices of our Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H.), I invite both writers, and anyone interested in this subject or in Islam in general, to write to me for more information.

Yazeed Al-Dukhayyil, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

We appreciate the continuing interest in this subject, which still brings in letters a year and a half after we published Fatihia El Bakry's original article on "Women and Islam, "in conjunction with Benazir Bhutto's assumption of the office of prime minister of Pakistan.

A Spade is a Spade is a Spade

Thank you for your letter and the magazines you sent. I shall not subscribe to, or help support, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. That magazine is too conservative, too politely deferential to US government spokesmen.

The USA is the Number 1 world terrorist state: in Latin America and throughout the Third World.

Cheney and James Baker and Bush and Reagan and Quayle and 90 percent of the Congress are criminals. Your magazine tells much of the truth about Israel but avoids calling a spade a spade: the USA is the principal, and Israel is only a major appendage.

I contribute to the Nation, Zeta, to the Guardian and to selected victims I know in Central America.

Denis Brasket, Golden Valley, MN

Well, you certainly called a spade a spade when you described the Washington Report. But our letter which you returned indicates it was Israel Shahak's From the Hebrew Press that we sent you. We think it tells the rest of the truth about Israel and wonder why you didn't tell us whether you think Shahak's monthly is a spade, a blunt instrument, or, as we believe, a scalpel for exposing cancerous growths in Israel's body politic.

War Victims on Both Sides

I applaud you for paying attention to the plight of Middle Eastern hostages and victims of aggression. However, I find your partisan support for Iraqi victims (Vol. 8, No. 9), while ignoring Iranian victims, untenable. Victims of the Iran-Iraq war, on both sides of the borders, are all victims of two aggressive regimes. The reason for which this war started and continued for so long had less to do with the people of these countries and more with unjustified ambitions of their political leaders.

If the position of Iran on the release of POWs is incompatible with the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, so is the position of Iraq in regard to both UN Resolution 598 and the 1975 Iran-Iraq border treaty. The people of Iran and Iraq (including the Kurdish ones) have been the real losers in this long and deadly war. It is time to ask both sides to come to their senses and relieve their countries from the burden of the untenable status of no-peace-no-war which only benefits the real aggressor in the Middle East. POWs from both countries should be released immediately, both countries should go back to the recognized international borders agreed on in 1975, and the disputes on the Shatt al-Arab should be resolved through the mechanisms provided in the 1975 agreement.

Akbar Mahdi, Professor of Sociology, Adrian, MI

Since your letter was written, the Iraqi Government has proposed the unconditional release by both sides of all the prisoners without reference to the other disputes to which you allude. Surely you will agree that this proposal to free more than 100,000 persons who have become innocent hostages, pending a political settlement that may not occur for centuries, merits the support of all nations.

Palestinian Holocaust

Enclosed is a news report published in the Feb. 9 Chicago Sun-Times of official East German acceptance of the responsibility of the "entire German people" for terrible crimes against the Jewish people before and during World War II. I wonder how long it will be before Israel is ready to accept its responsibility for the Palestinian holocaust now in progress.

James R. Beardsley, Crystal Lake, IL