Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November/December 1996, page 138

Publishers’ Page

When You Read This Page You’ll Know…

Who was elected president of the United States on Nov. 5, and by how many electoral votes. But you won’t have heard it from us! The last pages of this issue went to the printer Oct. 28. So it went into the mail Nov. 1, at the earliest. Unless your mailperson is a champion sprinter, and you grabbed the magazine out of his or her hand and sat right down to read it, you’re probably perusing this page after election day. So please understand that...

When We Wrote It We Didn’t Know...

What you know now. It appears that a lot of our readers didn’t realize that the October issue was our last before election day. We got more letters from readers explaining why they were voting for Clinton, Dole, Nader, Perot or no one at all. We read them with interest, because it was still October. But we figured you wouldn’t care after Nov. 5. So we have a short “Letters to the Editor” section in this issue, and nothing in it about the election.

What Does an Editor Do in Such a Fix?

Well, ours went off to one of the most pleasant countries on the face of the earth and wrote up a storm of articles about Tunisia. Come see for yourself, the Tunisians say. So first check out the Washington Report, then check out Tunisia if you have the time (it’s not at all expensive once you get there), and then write us your own impressions. We’ll give preference to frustrated readers who wrote long election letters that didn’t get published.

But If You’re Not an Escapist...

We do have a few 1996 election sidebars in our Election Watch, PAC Watch and Public Opinion columns that start on p. 41 of this issue. And we promise to get serious again with a special supplement on Kashmir in the February/March issue. If you think you know more than we do about it, you can write us an article (not an editorial), send us one already published elsewhere that you think is good for our “Other Voices” section, or drop us a letter of your own on the subject for our “Letters to the Editor,” or one by someone else for our “Other People’s Mail.” And now for the...

Most Asked Question of the Month:

Were we successful with our emergency funding appeal (entitled “Cut the Gobbledygook” in case you missed it) on p. 43 of the October issue? Well, we don’t really know. Initial response was slow, but it’s picking up rapidly even as we write. See for yourself in the listing of the AET Angels’ Choir for 1996 on p. 114 of this issue. And if you don’t see your name there it means one of two things: (1) You used the business reply envelope in the center of the magazine to mail your check, and the post office, which likes to deliver them in batches of a few hundred at a time, is still sitting on it. Or (2) You didn’t mail a check.

So If It’s the Latter...

We have the solution RIGHT NOW. Dial our toll-free number, 1(800) 368-5788, press 2 for circulation, and contribute by credit card. It circumvents the post office, it’s cool, it will get your name into the January compilation of 1996 Angels’ Choir members, and we’ll go bust if you don’t.

Yeah, It’s That Bad.

But we know some people really can’t pop for $100 or more. We’ve been there ourselves as students, young marrieds, parents of kids with a lust for higher education, and then as slowly recuperating old marrieds. So we’ll tell you how you, too, can help right after we deal with a couple of minor distractions here.

First, Hey You!

The one reading this at a library table! You pick us up regularly, except when some bookburner has taken the current issue off the shelf and walked out the door with it before you could read it. So fight back. Subscribe! They haven’t yet devised a way to steal it from your mailbox. And we sure could use the $25.

And Now You...

The one standing there at the newsstand reading this issue and thinking, “Wow, I never realized anyone knew all this stuff, or had the guts to say it.” Well, if we don’t get some more donations and subscriptions very, very soon, there’s going to be no one at all left to say it, except in a dinky newsletter like this magazine was when we started. Keep us from regressing! Don’t just buy the issue and then leave it around the house for a year before you do what you knew you would do eventually the first time you laid eyes on us. Subscribe! Use the postage-paid envelope in the middle of this magazine (hold it, buy the magazine first, don’t just tear the form out and put the magazine back on the shelf unless of course you’re in a library). Or telephone the toll-free number above. You don’t even have to talk to a real human being if you don’t want to. Call after hours, press 2 and ask us to send an invoice with your first issue, or give us the credit card data right on the tape. We’re only a free phone call away. So now...

What Were We Talking About?

Oh, yeah. Other ways to help. If you’re a member of an appropriate group and want to give every other member a sample copy, ask us. We always have overruns of some issues. Don’t take them to distribute at an AIPAC convention or in a West Bank settlement. Getting those overrun issues to you costs us money. But if you think members of your church group’s social action committee, an Elderhostel course in current affairs, or your great books discussion group might be potential subscribers, ask for a bunch of sample copies. Or if you’re a radio talk show junkie and the conversation turns to the Middle East...

Call In and Say Something Profound.

Then slip in our toll-free number with the offer of a free sample copy of the magazine. Who did that on the Bo Gritz show around the middle of October? Whoever you are, you got us about 20 requests for introductory copies and one person subscribed on the spot.

Easiest of All...

Make sure your local library has a subscription. If they don’t, offer them one if they will put it into circulation. (The rummage sale table won’t do.) If they say they will, but you can’t afford the $20 for a gift subscription, tell as and we’ll find someone who can. The magazine now is in about 4,600 public, university and school libraries. By our reckoning that leaves about 12,400 to go.

And If the Library Already Has One...

How about popping $20 each for subscriptions to local talk show hosts, journalists, teachers or clergy. This magazine is full of antibodies that attack and devour the viruses, amoebas and bacteria implanted in people’s minds by mythinformation about the Middle East. And the subscription money will help attack and devour the pile of unpaid bills that’s on our minds. Since last May 31 we’ve had a great...

Circulation Builder Working for Us.

His name is Binyamin Netanyahu and unless he gets back to the land-for-peace settlement that Israel signed up for, he’s going to help us get to the 60,000 break-even circulation point that will end our troubles. So all you have to do is help us get from here to there and...

Make a Difference, This Month!