Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 1998, pages 3, 99-102

Letters to the Editor

Putting Back Issues on CD

I am a Lutheran minister in St. Louis. I spoke by phone to you some months ago. I read your article about the ominous role played by some people in the current White House. Very informative. Do you now, or do you have plans in the future, to have all back issues of the WRMEA on CD? That would be very useful.

Is there some way to purchase the picture that is on the front cover of your May/June 1998 issue? I would like to put it on my office wall.

Wallace Schulz, via the Internet

All of the issues since 1994 are on our Web site, and so are many of the earlier issues going back to 1982. When they all are on the Web site in carefully edited form, we’ll decide what to do about a CD-ROM. It’s a tremendous undertaking and stretches our lean financial and personnel resources to the limit, and a little bit more.

As for the May/June cover photo of Israeli soldiers restraining an East Jerusalem woman while an Israeli bulldozer reduces her family home to rubble, you can call Archive Photos at (212) 675-0115 and ask for the Reuters Department. It may cost you as much as $75, even though it’s just for personal use and not for reproduction. Shows you what a bargain is our poster-size photo at $4 from the December 1997 cover showing a Palestinian child crying in the ruins of his demolished house.

A Thoughtful Review

I am deeply grateful for the warm, generous, thoughtful review of my book Habibi by Delinda C. Hanley! Thank you so much. Her words touched me unexpectedly and yesterday I faxed her review to my editor, Virginia Duncan (now at Greenwillow Books/Wm. and Morrow) and she is equally grateful.

It is the most surprising gift, somehow, when a person reads a book in the full spirit in which it was written, and I feel she did.

I also appreciate her choice of quotations from the text. As my father would have said when we were small—I thank her, Liyana thanks her, Sitti thanks her.

I also appreciate being in the Washington Report’s AET Book Club. I am shocked and happy to report, too, that Habibi now has won five Best Book awards—including: Book Publishers of Texas Best Book for Young Readers 1997; American Library Association “Best Book”; New York Public Libraries “Best Book for the Teen Age” and the “Judy Lopez Memorial Award.”

Love and good wishes, Naomi Shihab Nye, San Antonio, TX

Concern for the Palestinians

Thank you and everyone who is involved in producing the Washington Report. You do a wonderful job of keeping us abreast of the current happenings in the Middle East.

I have subscribed to the Washington Report for several individuals and six church libraries. I have also placed books in six church libraries.

Because of my interest in and concern for the Palestinians, I write regular letters to the editor of my newspaper and letters to President Clinton and our congressmen. I am enclosing a letter to Senator Jesse Helms and his response. I thought you might be interested in his position.

May God continue to bless you in your efforts to inform the public and seek justice for the Palestinians.

Joyce Hart, Hudson, NC

A Uniquely Tragic History

As you let me know in your letter dated Dec. 6, 1997, you received a renewal—up to the year 2002—of my subscription from Willie Kanies. On the other hand, I had myself renewed my subscription for some years. Since I haven’t received the journal in double, does this mean that you added on my own subscription to the one received as a gift?

Given the current devaluation of the Canadian dollar and the prospect of further loss of buying power, I am afraid my minimal income may not allow me to scrape together a donation. I find it most distressing because I have the highest regard for the work of the editors of the WRMEA.

I am always anxiously waiting for the next WRMEA—the fate of the Palestinian people is in modern history of “Western Civilization” uniquely tragic and all the nations that recognized the State of Israel while it had not defined the borders of its territory share in the responsibility for the consequences.

It seems to me that the question of what a person thinks in this respect is indicative of his character. Will I get my still very small grandchild to realize this once she has grown up to be a teenager?

Here’s something anecdotal from my studies of Arabic at the former Ecole National des Langues Orientales Vivantes in Paris (1954-1957): In 1956 during “la vile aggression tripartite” on Egypt, our history teacher, a certain Professor Colombe, was on leave to join a team in Israel that was preparing to re-install a monarch in Egypt—so certain were they of their victory and non-interference by the U.S. I wonder what you or the editors of the WRMEA know about this affair.

Thanks for your work and keep in perfect health for many years to come!

Lore Morcos, Sidney, British Columbia, Canada

In answer to your first question, your own and your gift subscription have been combined, giving you 32 more issues (at 8 issues per year). We shortened your letter somewhat but found your anecdote about Israeli plans in 1956 to reinstate a monarch in Egypt to replace President Gamal Abdel Nasser is fascinating. It seems that Dwight D. Eisenhower, our one president with guts or, as Madeleine Albright would say—well, never mind what she would say since we don’t want to offend our Spanish-speaking subscribers—interrupted even more than he realized when he broke up the Israeli/ French/British Suez conspiracy. Can any reader shed some light on this?

Seeking WRMEA’s Survival

Please find enclosed a certified check covering my coming subscription. Due to present circumstances I am sorry to send you a personal check for only 20 Canadian dollars as an additional donation. I am hoping to be able soon to do more. My family and I are very interested in the survival of the Washington Report. God bless you for your work in general, and especially for your work on behalf of the Palestinians.

Dr. Michel Tadros, Quebec, Canada

Thanks for Your Fairness

On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign, I am enclosing $100 as a donation.

We wish to thank you for your many years of dedication to fairness in reporting, particularly about the Palestine situation. For a long time the Washington Report was the only resource we had unless we went to the occupied territories ourselves, which many of us did; but the continued coverage the WRMEA has given us is very much appreciated.

Jean Rogers, Secretary, Palestine Human Rights Campaign, Inc., Stone Mountain, GA

Clear Voice Amid Distortions

Yours is a clear and strong voice in an area filled with the distortion of facts. I wish all Americans could be exposed to it. It would change the way people think and might eventually force our administration to deal with the Palestinian situation in a just and equitable manner. I keep trying to get you new subscribers.

Yousuf A. Siddiqui, Bloomfield Hills, NJ

P.S. I wish the video “The People and the Land” could be shown to all our representatives in Congress. I don’t see how they could continue to believe the half-truths coming out of the vested lobbies if they could “see” the truth within the video!

A Case of Classic Labeling

I am inspired to become a journalist because your magazine has proven to me that there still are publications that have refused to surrender to AIPAC or their affiliates. I hope that when I graduate, I can dedicate my time and effort to help your magazine in any way possible. Your staff’s dedication to maintaining one of the few forums for the exposing of Israeli tyranny uplifts me in times of dejection. Fellow Jews to whom I have shown your articles have quickly declared me a “self-hating” Jew. Such labels are classical tools for “thought police.” It is in the spirit of free, unharassed critical thought that I enclose $100.

Please withhold my name, Toronto, Ont.

Why the Change of Numbers?

This may be of interest to you. I’m enclosing a copy of my original letter and the version printed (and altered) by Journal-Sentinel editors. As you can see, my reference to “some $15 million per day in aid to Israel” was changed to “millions per day.” And “over $5 billion per year” became “more than $3 billion per year.” Why?

I have sent the editors there a copy of your in-depth explanation about foreign aid to Israel from last December’s issue. I do hope they, the editors, read it. Perhaps they will learn something. They never called to question my figures, they just changed them to fit in with the mainstream media and its party line.

Originally, I had sent them a copy of Brig. Gen. James David’s excellent article from your March 1998 “Other Voices,” so the editors would have some basis and background for my remarks. I guess it didn’t help.

Dare we hope that the Big Lie about Israel is finally being exposed for what it is? I know I will be blasted for my remarks in today’s paper. They—Israel’s American defenders—are for the most part a vicious, determined cabal intent on keeping the truth from the American people. Thank God for your publication!

James A. Henderson, Milwaukee, WI

P.S. I’d love to do an article about show business in general, TV and movies, Broadway, book publishing, etc. I’ve written to you before about this. The Zionist influence on the U.S. public is much larger than just political. It is cultural as well as religious.

We think the handling of your letter illustrates that 90 percent of the people in the media don’t know the whole, awful truth about what befriending Israel has cost the U.S. morally, strategically and financially. However, if the editor had not wanted the readers to be exposed to your strongly expressed views, your letter wouldn’t have appeared at all. Presumably the editor didn’t want to give the readers what he or she thought were exaggerated figures, so they were reduced. As many of our readers know, we, too, generally try not to print what we think are overstatements in letters, so we pare them back. (On the other hand, we generally leave underestimates of aid figures, casualties, etc., untouched since we do try hard to preserve the spirit if not always the letter of the letters we reprint. As for the article you suggest, it would be easy to step way across the line into the kind of racist stereotyping we deplore in others in trying to deal with the subjects you suggest. We know of no publication that would be ready to print it, no matter how skillfully you write it.

Harsh Sentences

I am writing this letter on behalf of the two Iraqi refugees in Lincoln, NE, who were in the news last year after their marriages to two teenaged Iraqi sisters. Right now these two young men are in jail for four to six years, after which they will be deported, for something that they did not know was wrong. The girls entered into the marriages willingly because, according to Islam, the woman must give her consent before a marriage can occur. It wasn’t until after the marriages had lasted for a brief period of time that the two girls decided they no longer wanted to be married and ran away. Their husbands were subsequently arrested.

The sentences seem to be rather harsh, considering that the two men had no idea that they were committing a crime. In Iraq, just like in many countries around the world, it is traditional for women to marry at a young age. That doesn’t make it right or wrong—it’s just how these men and women were raised.

Now, several of us are working together to encourage people to write letters to the governor of Nebraska, asking that these men be pardoned and released immediately and that they be allowed to stay in this country. They are both extremely hard-working individuals who arrived here after years in a refugee camp in the desert of Saudi Arabia, to which they had fled from Iraq out of fear for their lives. Their intent upon coming to the U.S. was to start new lives. They are not criminals and should not be in jail.

Please contact Governor Benjamin Nelson or Lt. Governor Kim Robak, State Capitol, Lincoln, NE 68508 and ask that Latif Al-Hussaini and Majed Al-Tamimy be released and allowed to remain in the U.S. They have learned their lesson and deserve to be free.

Maryam Mahmoodian, Vermillion, SD

A Tragic Loss

The death of 87-year-old Munir Bayoud is a tragic loss to Americans, too few of whom knew him and his heroic efforts to enlighten the people about the plight of the Palestinians.

He was one of those people who came to the U.S. from Palestine after so many were displaced and their homes, businesses and properties were taken over by the Israeli Jews.

He spent his life working for justice for his people. In the U.S. he contributed to a better society. He was a teacher, a college professor and a true intellectual. We had hoped that he would live to see the fruits of all his efforts. It was not to be. He will be greatly missed by those who knew him.

Virginia and Gip Oldham, Dallas, TX

Thanks for your perceptive letter and for sending us the obituary from the Dallas Morning News of Arab-American activist Munir Bayoud, whose passing is recorded in our Bulletin Board on p. 137.

Helping to Spread the Word

I wouldn’t be without the Washington Report. Sorry I’m so late renewing. Please use the enclosed $200 to include my one year subscription and to send the Washington Report to as many libraries of your choice as possible. It is invaluable.

Salaam, Shalom. Margaret Holt, Amherst, MA

A Fellow Southerner Writes

I wanted to applaud the comments of Ambassador Killgore in “Celebrating 50 Years of Israeli Make-Believe” in the May/June 1998 issue of the WRMEA. Like Mr. Killgore, I, too, am a native Southerner, from Mississippi to be exact. His comments regarding that region’s coming to terms with its racist past, and working to ensure that it never happens again are right on target.

I am as troubled as he at the justification by so-called Christian fundamentalists of support for Israel, the excuse being that whatever they do is divinely-inspired and, thus, unquestionable. The fact that I have Palestinian Christian roots makes their playing fast and loose with the term “Christian” that much more uncomfortable.

But what also troubles me is the support Israel receives from those elected officials who ought to know better. Specifically representatives from minority backgrounds such as John Lewis and J.C. Watts. The latter appears to still be basking in the glow of being the “Black Republican du jour ” and is as full of the same jockstrap humor as Jack Kemp at party functions. For these two, and others like them, to speak eloquently (as they do) on matters of bridging the racial gap in the U.S., but then to turn around and give blind support to a country that seeks to wipe out its native population is thoroughly hypocritical.

For example, what would Mssrs. Watts and Lewis say if the mayors of Atlanta and Oklahoma City, respectively, sought to pass legislation that would ensure that the populations of their cities remain 70 percent white? This just happened in Jerusalem (gerrymandered to make it 70 percent Jewish and 30 percent Arab), and is only one of many such examples of the egregious forms of brazen racism practiced by the current Israeli regime.

Thanks again, Ambassador Killgore, for your comments and the fine work you do as the publisher of the only credible U.S. source of information on the Middle East.

Ray Rafidi, Richardson, TX

Setting the Stage for War

If Bibi doesn’t want to accept “American dictates,” then let’s be sure a lot of people, not just the various unprincipled people and bodies bought off by the Lobby here in DC, realize what Israel is really doing with U.S. tax monies: setting the stage for a major war in the region. If Bibi doesn’t want U.S. dictates, maybe U.S. monies should also be withheld, not just economic aid, but even more so, military aid. And another question: I know that a lot of American Jews on the left are as disgusted and depressed by the current trend toward insanity in Israel as are most of the rest of us. Where the hell are their voices? It is time for them to break ranks and speak out for justice, human rights and common sense in the region before we are all once again swimming in blood. If you know any progressive, leftist Israeli or American Jews, pinch their rear ends, wake them up, and get them to speak out. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.

That is my rant du jour.

Lauri King-Irani, Arlington, VA

Better yet, buy them a subscription to the Washington Report.

The Israeli “Moderate”

Shimon Peres reveals the true nature of an Israeli “moderate,” displaying racist and mendacious responses posed in a debate on “Israel-Palestine as Two States” ....July/ Aug. WRMEA.

He states that “Our main objective was to save Jews from the Nazi camps.” Yet, a limited number of Jews came to Israel during the war years, and fewer than 200,000 arrived from Europe in the immediate post-war era. The Zionists did not save many Jews from the Nazi camps, and proceeded to endanger the lives of those who had survived the war. After all, wasn’t it dangerous to send those already debilitated by the camps to live in a hostile area with an uncertain future and their lives threatened by warring factions? Certainly, the refugee camps gave them better protection. And how much funding and how many appeals did Shimon Peres and his allies use to convince the non-Jewish states (a new racist phrase he used) to accept the refugees? Practically all of the Latin American countries, South Africa, Canada and others would have taken the refugees within a short period of time. My cousin came to the U.S. in 1948 from a camp in Germany.

Peres knows, despite claiming that he favors a Palestinian state, that he was instrumental in making the Palestinian state a difficult task. Peres and the Labor government permitted many new Jewish settlements, did little to limit previous settlements and did not curtail irresponsible settler activity.

He actually rationalizes the displacement of the native Palestinian population with the statement that there was no other way to found and create the state of Israel. In effect, he excuses Ethnic Cleansing, and his Ethnic Cleansing is probably the most brutal example in post-World War II history.

Shimon Peres has indicted himself and Israel as purveyors of untruths, racism, injustices and deceptions. It’s difficult to believe that any responsible person could support Israel after reading Shimon Peres’ statements.

Dan Lieberman, Bethesda, MD

A Rush of Testosterone

When supporting peace, justice and human rights, freedom and sovereignty for victims of our country’s aggressions and inhumanity causes citizens to be marginalized, negatively labeled as enemies of “our democratic principles” and “way of life,” spied upon and publicly vilified, threatened with federal prosecution, fines and imprisonment, where does hope come from?

I marvel at your dedication, persistence and the rush of testosterone that drives you on. Without the information you provide, and the hope and sense of camaraderie you inspire through the Washington Report during this time of suffering and great struggle for the Palestinian people, surely despair and demoralization would consume us all. Thank you.

Joyce Bacon, Corona, CA

Letters to Other Editors

Enclosed, please find two more of my letters published in the New England dailies, The Boston Herald and the Brattleboro Reformer (Vermont). They both appeared today, May 26. That is the second letter to The Boston Herald (second largest daily in New England) I’ve had published in the last five days!

Also, I was pleasantly surprised that the managing editor of the Brattleboro Reformer had the courage to run my letter, “Gingrich Owes Albright Apology.”

The upcoming Arab summit hopefully will demonstrate Arab resolve and unity in the face of Israeli intransigence and American impotence.

Steven J. Duplisca, Lake Pleasant, MA

Hiding the Truth

Even though I “devour” the Washington Report, sometimes I have to stop reading because I get angry and disgusted about the lies being exposed or because of the mistreatment (what a euphemism) of the Palestinians I am reading about. I am asking myself often why money and power make people (governments) disregard the truth, even hiding it from “the American people.” (What a convenient usage they make of that term). I know of no other publication on the Middle East that could touch the Washington Report with a ten-foot pole.

Irene Ammann, Arlington, VA

From some of the harassment we’ve experienced it seems there are some people who would like to hit us with one.

Do More Countries In Depth

I miss the old issues where you focused on a particular country for that issue, especially the ones written by Curtiss. I liked the fact that the articles covered the country by culture, history, politics, leaders, religion, geography, etc. Also I would like to see more issues debated from opposing positions. I would also like to see some articles by Noam Chomsky.

Charles Patroske, Solana Beach, CA

Unfortunately those one-country specials were written largely by Richard Curtiss during visits overseas. He now must spend much more time speaking (circulation building) and fund-raising in the United States than he used to. Nevertheless, we do have our eyes on some additional countries, with Kashmir and Cyprus possibly the next ones up.

As for the two views, when we had regular rebuttals by our in-house hard-line Zionist, also a retired foreign service officer, a lot of people wrote in and said they could read that in any mainstream daily newspaper, so why did we use precious space on it? In any case, he stopped writing for us, possibly because he was offended by the letters, pressured by like-minded Zionists, or more likely both. As for Noam Chomsky, who was recently described in another publication as America’s most important living intellectual, he’s never offered us an article. Maybe when he reads your letter, he will.

Kudos to “Other Voices”

I have just received and read the March and April issues of “Other Voices.” This is a terrific publication. “Supplement” it may be, but it fills a need that the larger report does not reach. What “Other Voices” demonstrates to a newspaper editor or publisher is that other newspapers do carry this factual, hard-hitting stuff.

The reason it’s a “converter” is that it consists of only 16 pages, contains articles that do not require a long attention span (or a continuation to a back page), and it induces the reader to go on. The selection of articles is excellent. My problem is that about half the articles are such that I have the impulse to tack them up on the bulletin board next to me for special reference.

The Report has grown so large that I must lay it aside the first day, and I may or may not get through it, but I save it as a reference work. I have the December 1997 issue next to my desk, for example, indexed for reference. That issue alone is all that a person would need to understand the Israel problem. Now I have that feeling about each issue of “Other Voices.” Don’t be tempted to enlarge it. It’s a real punch just as it is. Good typeface and layout. Good size. Great publication!

James R. Hanson, Columbus, OH

Stepping Over the Line

The May/June Washington Report is one issue I won’t lend to friends, because of the article on Pope Pius by William Hughes. I have nothing against the Pope and surely can’t refute Hughes’s defense of him. I don’t recall that at the time he was regarded as a heroic defender of the Jews, as the King of Denmark was, but then neither were our own leaders. In fact, Breckenridge Long and his colleagues in the State Department were notorious anti-Semites. But Hughes goes far beyond defending the Pope and I found his references to the Jewish supporters of Stalin objectionable. Sure, there were Communist Jews. And there were just as many anti-Communist Jews. Kerensky the Menshevik leader was also Jewish, but so what? And what do the atrocities committed by the Soviets have to do with the Pope or Jews? The only explanation I can think of for Hughes’s rambles is that he’s repeating the familiar cliches about Jews and Communists. Also, his statement that Zionists claimed that four million Jews died at Auschwitz is news to me. I don’t remember such a claim, which is absurd on its face since Jews also died in great numbers at Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, and Theresienstadt. What matters is that between 1933 and 1945 millions of Jews were tortured, enslaved, and murdered by the Nazis. Even more millions of people were tortured, enslaved and murdered under Stalin, and this must be equally condemned. But Hughes’s purpose wasn’t simply to deplore what Stalin did but to minimize the Holocaust. At the end of his article he writes that since four million Jews didn’t die at Auschwitz, “This new evidence, if true, would cut in half the Zionists’ claim that six million Jews had died at camps other than Auschwitz.” In any case, none of this is relevant to the issue of what Pope Pius did or failed to do.

I’ve always enjoyed refuting charges raised by some Zionist organizations and individuals against the Washington Report, and I’ll go on doing so because I’m as certain as I am of anything that they are untrue. But Hughes’s article is troubling because even a tinge of anti-Semitism would make it harder for the magazine to reach beyond the converted, and this is what I’m sure you want it to do. I could be wrong, but I think a lot of right-thinking people, Jews and non-Jews alike, would find the Hughes article offensive.

Rachelle Marshall, Stanford, CA

It appears that we got well beyond our depth here, with readers offering objections to implications that were unintended, overlooked or both. Read on.

Maligning Poland

I should like to bring to your attention a serious error that appeared in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs of May/ June 1998 in the “Two Views” article headlined “An American Catholic Journalist: Pope Pius XII: Victim of the Christian-Bashers” by William Hughes. The article includes the statement that “one million Jews died at Auschwitz, a Polish death camp.”

The true historical facts are: The Auschwitz concentration death camp was established on Polish soil by the German occupation forces in 1939 following the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland in September of 1939. The Auschwitz death camp was one of the many such death camps set up by the Germans to carry out the extermination of Poles, primarily the Polish leaders. As noted in the article, it was only after the Wannsee Conference, held by the German Nazi leadership on Jan. 20, 1942, that Jews started appearing at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Calling that camp “a Polish death camp” is a typical Zionist anti-Polish and anti-Christian vicious, well organized, campaign that is inspired by the Judeo-Zionist antipolonism and hatred of everything Christian.

It is indeed astounding that an American Catholic journalist, William Hughes, would repeat such an outrageous lie. I do not believe that Hughes deliberately intended to slander Poland or Poles. His use of such blatant historical falsehood shows only how effective the Judeo-Zionist, anti-Polish propaganda can be. The Zionist propaganda follows the example of the Nazi chief propagandist Goebbels: “If a lie is repeated often enough, and loud enough, some will eventually accept the lie as truth.” I believe that his error is an example of such distortions unwittingly repeated when spread by the Zionist propaganda of lies and twisting of historical facts designed to injure Christians, and in particular, Christian Poles.

W. Milan-Kamski, Director, Polish American Congress, Ex.Off., Glen Burnie, MD

Clearly the author (and the editors must share the blame) did not mean to imply that the camp established in Nazi-occupied Poland was operated by Poles. We should have described Auschwitz as “a Nazi death camp situated in Poland.”

Each Month You Get Better

Congratulations! Your magazine gets better each issue. I want to express my appreciation for the article “Pope Pius XII: Victim of the Christian-Bashers.”

It is very valuable to have this truth summarized and presented in this fashion in a respectable publication.

Duncan McKeever, via e-mail

Different Versions of History

The World War II Vatican’s alleged indifference to the Holocaust is not by any means the only historical topic on which the systematically disseminated “media version” is at variance with more objective, balanced interpretations.

An incessant propaganda campaign, including Spielberg pseudo-history, so-called TV documentaries and books, seeks to plant in the popular conception that the Polish people were in complicity with Germans in the gruesome undertaking of the Final Solution. Even a visit to Washington’s Holocaust Museum will quickly reinforce the absurd notion that the Polish nation willingly assisted in carrying out the extermination process.

This outrageous attempt at historical revisionism flies in the face of Poland’s splendid record as a valuable member of the Grand Alliance; that Poland was the first to fight Hitler; that Poland, relative to size, suffered more in lives and property than any other European country; and that in occupied Poland alone those aiding Jews were shot, as were their families.

The fact that great numbers of Jews lived with Poles in the Polish lands for centuries in decent, if not perfect, harmony is conveniently overlooked by some Jewish polemicists.

How successful has the anti-Polonian drumbeat in the media been? In an otherwise accurate and sensitive defense of Pope Pius XII’s wartime Jewish policies, William Hughes refers to “...Auschwitz, a Polish death camp.” (WRMEA, May/June, p. 31). German death camps in Poland, yes. Polish death camps—never!

Wallace J. Kosinski, Painesville, OH

We included the first such correction received in the previous issue, but are happy to do it again and also to acknowledge with respect the terrible toll of Polish lives exacted in World War II, first by coordinated invasions and then by occupation forces of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, both of which the Poles resisted heroically and at a terrible price in human lives.

Expanding Jerusalem Borders

“Israeli Cabinet Approves Plan to Expand Jerusalem’s Borders” says The Wall Street Journal headline of June 22. So what else is new? Palestinian legislator Ziad Abu Ziad is on target when he calls this pre-emptive measure a “de facto annexation,” notwithstanding Bibi Netanyahu’s spin doctors. Although there have been some improvements, telling the real story in the American media, I have yet to see any mention that even before this latest Israeli move Jerusalem was considerably expanded into the West Bank following the 1967 war. Any facts and figures?

John G. Merriam, Ph.D, via the Internet

Edited Out

The enclosed letter was published in The Washington Times’s “Forum” section on May 31, 1998. Unfortunately, the parts in parentheses directed particularly at Zionist Israel were edited out. Gee, I wonder why?

Bill Hughes, Baltimore, MD

We get many “before and after” versions of letters to editors and generally print the “as published” version because (1) it can be used as a certification or source for their own letters by other readers and (2) sometimes professional editing hones the same message down until it occupies about half the space occupied by the original. This is far more important to journalists, whose space is extremely limited, than many of their readers realize. (It’s also one reason so much of the non-edited material on the Internet can be so repetitive and tedious to read.) In the case of your letter, however, the editing clearly was to remove some of the most revealing content. So we’re printing in “Other People’s Mail” on p. 90 your original letter to The Washington Times with the materials cut out by the Times’s “Forum” editor indicated by parentheses. It’s also inspired us to write a little piece on submitting “letters to the editor” that may help their chances of getting published. Thanks.

“Facilitated” by the ADL

Attached is an article that appeared in my local paper, the Carlisle, PA Sentinel. It discusses an upcoming workshop on diversity training using a program developed and “facilitated” by the ADL.

Are you folks aware of this ADL program, and the materials, etc., used by the ADL? Do you folks have any information on the background and programs of the ADL? It would be interesting to know exactly what these people are teaching.

William J. Biega, Carlisle, PA

What they are teaching in their overt programs probably is okay. It’s what they apparently have done and may still be doing in their covert programs that smacks of the racial and religious bigotry that they profess to deplore. And, of course, if we are wrong about the overt programs we’d welcome comments from those who have participated.

Rep. McCollum Replied

Whaddaya know? I got an answer from Congressman McCollum to a letter that I sent him back in January. Perhaps the fact that WRMEA published my letter might have had something to do with the fact that he answered it. Herewith the letter and Representative McCollum’s response.

John Gidusko, Fern Park, FL

We’re repeating your original letter in this issue’s “Other People’s Mail” and printing with it on p. 90 Representative Bill McCollum’s response for the information of other readers in his district. Most members of Congress don’t give a hoot about letters from outside the state or district they represent, but are conscientious about responding to constituents who are, after all, their employers.