Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 17, 1978)
Semantics White Monathama Altalabah s glowing treatise on Zionistic ter rorism” was eloquent, it was lit tered with far too many words in quotation marks. Although the political question of Palestinian peoples’ rights is a hotly contested issue, terrorism is still terrorism and definitely not "terrorism.” Murder — whether by Zionist bullets or Palestinian bomb attack — reeks of the same horrible stench no matter who is to blame and no matter what word, in quota tion marks or not, is used. Albert Abrahms 465 Lindale Dr. Springfield Judge for yourself One of the purposes of the Emerald article on April 3, 1978 headlined “Bookstore thieves hard to defend” was apparently to caution people about the conse quences of shoplifting at the Uni versity of Oregon Bookstore. The purpose of this tetter is to provide some additional information on how the University Bookstore op erates and some additional con sequences of arrest so that pat rons of the University of Oregon Bookstore are fully aware of the business they are patronizing. The University Bookstore emp loys security guards who make citizen's arrests of individuals whom they believe have commit ted a crime. The current man agement of the University Book store apparently feels that this im portant responsibility can be given to a 17-year-old high school stu dent since such a person worked for the Bookstore in recent years and made arrests. If you are arrested by the Uni versity Bookstore, plead not guilty, and the charges are subse quently dropped by the District At torney, you nevertheless have a permanent arrest record — one which can never be removed, ac cording to the State of Oregon's archive laws. This arrest record is sent automatically to law en forcement agencies throughout the state and can be sent to Fed eral agencies such as the FBI. In addition, since the arrest record includes a complete set of finger prints and mug shorts, you can be called at any time to participate in a police line-up. You can be arrested by the Uni versity Bookstore and receive a permanent arrest record not only for shoplifting but also for “inten tional underpayment.” A recent case dramatizes this fact. In this case, a University graduate stu dent paid what she thought was the correct price for an item ($1.20 for a package of manila file fol ders), only to be informed later that the package cost $1.65. She was not given the opportunity to return the folders, make up the dif ference in price, or, most impor tantly, discuss the matter with the Bookstore Manager. Rather, she , CLONING INC. U . EXPEmENTALUB mx was arrested by the 17-year-old Bookstore security guard (who at no time consulted the cashier to determine why the lower price was paid). The University Bookstore, through its agents, the Manager and his security staff, has demon strated a uniform policy towards people they perceive as shoplif ters and intentional underpayers: the matter is settled in court. Al though the Bookstore Manager, James Williams, says in the Emerald article, “We’re not trying to create a hostile environ ment...,” you can judge 1or your self. As a member of the faculty at the University, I am a member of the University Bookstore, Inc. and thus am allowed to patronize this store. I shall forego this opportun ity for as long as I reside in Eugene. Ira Herskowitz Associate Professor of Biology _opinion Not “natural” h r< E In response to Rita Mae n Browne's statement that people c use their Christianity as a vehicle r to fanatically destroy the lives of others: n To be compassionate and to- t lerant of people with different lifes- c tyles is not to condone that life- } style The Homosexual Movement ( should make a point to define | what it is they are after. Homosex- < uals implicitly state they want < basic human rights; yet in addition | to human rights, they attempt to i persuade others to see their lifes- f tyle as “natural" — or at least not unnatural. i If a ballot were put before i Eugene residents today concern- i ing rights for homosexuals and lesbians I would vote in favor of rights for these people. But my fear is that a vote for homosexual rights would be interpreted as a vote favoring the practice of a homosexual lifestyle. Every human being should ave certain unalienable rights jgardless of sexual preferences ut tolerant or compassionate as I lay be towards these people, I an not perceive their lifestyle as atural. Anita Bryant has done much to lobilize the homosexual popula on in America. She has suffered ireatly for her stand against omosexual's rights. Browne se nsed Chnstians of using their re gion as “a vehicle to fanatically lestroy people’s lives.” Strangely enough, though lomosexuals have used their na ional coalition as a vehicle to anatically destroy Bryant's life If homosexual preferences are ndeed "natural" then I appeal to he homosexual population to pa tently practice tolerance and compassion until we heterosexu als can see the light. Chairman of the heterosexual movement. Dan Jones Junior, Journalism A look at the historical facts of the Middle East Submitted by Simcha Braun of the Jewish Student Union In the present “war of words” over the Middle East there has been a tendency for facts to be usurped by propaganda and history by rhetoric. It is not enough to horrify the reader with catch phrases like racism and imperialism, or to woo him with words like liberation and self-determination when the historical facts say other Although few will argue that the present plight of the Palestinians is not bad, it is vital to determine who is responsible for this situation. This question can only be answered by going back into the historical, documentable record and discovering the truth. In 1867 Mark Twain reported, "...of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the Pnnce. The hills are barren. The valleys are unsightly deserts. It is a hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land...over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies...nothing grows but weeds." in fact the tableau was so extreme that he went on to write, Palestine is desolate and unlovely,...can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?” (Innocents Abroad, 1869). The point is that Palestine was a “ruined” country, unable to sustain a people until the cultivation of the land by the Jews “The Palestinian used to leave his country, wandering...in every direction. His native soil could not retain him.” (At Quibla, Mecca, No. 183, Mar. 23, 1918, and attributed to the first King Hussein before a house committee on foreign affairs 1944). “The Arabs cannot say that the Jews are driving them out of their country. If not a single Jew had come to Palestine after 1918, I believe the Arab population of Palestine would still have been around 600,000, at which it had been stable under Turkish rule. It is because the Jews who have come to Palestine bring modern health services and other advantages that Arab men and women who would have been dead are alive today.” (British Secretary of State MacDonald, Nov. 1938). “ the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was pur chased.” (Royal Commission of Lord Peel, 1937). “All know that at the beginning of the century and during the British Mandate the marshy plains and stony hills were sold to the Zionists for gold,...(those who) inha Page 4 bited the frontier regions know full well what the green plains the afforested hills and the flowering fields of today’s Israel were like before.” (the exiled Algenan wnter Abdel Razak Kader). The Peel Commission report makes it quite dear, that Palestine, a land of traditional emigration, began attracting Arabs only after Jewish settlers improved the land, and increased dramatically only in those areas of Jewish settlement. Since 1844, Jews were the single largest group in Jerusalem and constituted a majority in the areas alloted to them. Since 1875 Jews around the world had collected money to buy land from absentee Arab landlords and Ottoman owners, in 1944 paying $1100 per acre while prime Iowa farm land sold for $110 per acre. (U.S. Dept. Agriculture). Jews settled the land, attracted Arabs with a better life, and urged people to stay and contribute to the coun try. It was during the war of Independence that the sur rounding Arab States used propaganda, intimidation and threats of dire consequence to cause the Arab flight from the land and not the Jews, (culled from information in Ash Sha’ab 1/30/48, London Economist 10/2/48, U.S. Gen eral Consul in Haifa Aubrey Lippincott). The London Times from April 1948 to June 1948 ran 11 major articles on the events of the Mid-East, including many eyewitness accounts, none of which mentioned Jews forcing Arabs from the country. This has been cor roborated by the statements of Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Archbishop of Galilee in the Lebanese paper Sada al-Janub (August 16, 1948) and even by Emile Ghoury, Secretary of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee. In an interview in the Beirut Telegraph (6/6/48); “that there are these refugees is the direct con sequence of the act of the Arab states in opposing parti tion and the Jewish State.” Misguided exponents of the Palestinian cause site Deir Yassin as an example of Jewish terrorism and a reason for the Arab exodus. Yet the record shows that this flight had begun before this incident. Of the incident itself Yunes Ahmad Assad, a prominent Arab survivor of Deir Yassin said, “The Jews never intended to hurl the popula tion of the village, but were forced to do so after they met enemy fire which killed the Irgun commander. (Al Urdan, April 9.1955) Many were helped to flee before the fighting began and the evidence indicates that those civilians ien in the village were hostages of the Arab soldiers. Israel, since its conception, has always wanted good relations with its neighbors. It has always been a tenet of Jewish phillosophy “to do the right thing towards other people.” Zionism is not a racist philosophy. “They (the Jews) have done more than any other people in history to ex pose and condemn racism and refute all claims of racial inferiority and superiority. To condemn the Jewish survi val doctrine of Zionism as racism is a travestry upon the truth.” (Eldridge Cleaver, "statement from pnson Oak land, Ca. 1/76). n_ Zionism is simply the desire of Jews, after 2,0UU years, to return to their homeland. The simple existence of a state to escape to when the world turns its back on the defenseless "The lives of a million Jews in Moslem countries will be jeopardized by the establishment of the Jewish state. (Egyptian delegate before the U.N., 1947). When Israel managed to defeat the Arab armies, there swept through the Arab world a wave of resentment that drove 750,000 Jews from their homes. While Israel absorbed most of these refugees, the Arab states prefer red to maintain their brethren (of an almost equal number) in camps, and to flood them with vociferous anti-Jewisn propaganda (Brothers in Blood, Scribners, 1978) and to turn them into a political football, an excuse for “Jihad, to abrogate and usurp their rights, even the truth of their history and fill them with misdirected hate, and with toot y smile ask Israel to embrace them now. I have purposefully refrained in this essay from using Israeli government or Jewish researchers’ findings les some consider them suspect, and have focused rather on independent British, American, and Arab sources. Because of space limitations I have focused mam y on one part of the controversy, a most important part and tried to present facts rather than spread misinformation The tragedy of the Palestinians is very real. If we believe people like Yasser Arafat, who rewrote history like fiction, assassinate Palestinian moderates and other Arab men of peace, to represent their people and not their own dreams of personal power we do the Palestinians, as well as the Israelis, a grave injustice. To turn one's back on the truth is to refute freedo Monday, April 17, 1978
