Portland Observer
Thursday. April 7. 1977
Page 8
From behind the wall
Capitol building.
Mr. Henry reports that the mass
gathering was for the purpose (SB 850) of
asking the Legislators for the appoint
ment of a Black nine-member commission
to study the past and current legal,
economic, education, social and political
conditions of Oregon Blacks, and the
commission would recommend to the
Governor and legislature concerns that
would improve the opportunities for
Blacks in Oregon.
All this is in Senate Bill 850?
So this Reporter, once again went
strolling throughout behind the walls
asking two important questions to the
first 30 Black inmates he met.
1. Did you hear about the mass
gathering of Black organizations (fore-
mentioned) being in Salem last month?
Not one individual questionned was
aware of that fact.
by Larry Baker
Salem, O.S.P. Cerrespondent
And The Music Gees—
Round & Round
Do you mean to tell us, 300 Blacks
incarcerated at Oregon State Peniten
tary, Oregon Women’s Correctional Cen
ter and the Oregon Correctional Institu
tion, who are housed right here in Salem,
that on Monday, March 21, 1977, such
organizations as the Portland and Corval
lis NAACP, Albina Ministerial Associa
tion, United Minority Workers, Urban
League of Portland, along with the
Oregon Black Justice Committee, were in
this city?????
Thanks to Calvin O.L. Henry, who
writes a column on Black current events
throughout the Willamette Valley for the
Salem Statesman, on March 27th for
bringing this valuable information to our
attention, because it is a fact, not one
Black prisoner this Reporter questioned
had knowledge ot such a large collection
of our Black Oregon leaders assembling
anywhere in Salem, let alone in our State
2. Do you know what S.B. 850 is? Not
one individual knew - In fact the sicken
ing part was some of the replies. One
Black inmate thought it was a new
aircraft, another stated “It sounds like a
new zoning code” and still another,
questioned it being a new drug.
Is communication needed between the
Black people in Oregon's prisons and
Institutions and Oregon’s Bleak commun
ities organizations? — You better bet
your chittlin and turnip greens it is.
Can't it be understood, that if organ
ized properly, each one ofus incarcerated
Black brothers and sisters only needs to
contact five members of his or her family
who could commit themselves to support
any constructive or meaningful thing our
Oregon Black leaders need - that's 1500
not counting what they could get their
white fellow inmates to muster up out of
their families - that’s saying something
heavy. Something that any Governor or
legislator clearly understands.
We, who are caged may have been
weakened by whatever force which
placed our lives in this position - but we
are not helpless.
When you witness week after week,
young Blacks herded through these
barred gates with only peach-fuzz under
their chins -17-18-19-20 years of age,
carrying sentences of 20-30-50-120 years •
Life. You begin to wonder, where does
the sanity lie?
While society blames the courts in
Oregon for the recent crime wave, the
Oregon courts are blaming the prisons
and institutions for non-rehabilitation of
its subjects and the Oregon prisons and
institutions blame society for not slotting
them enough money in which to do
rehabilitation - So the music will continue
to go round and round-An expanding
vicious circle.
This Reporter does not question the
sincerity for the needed study of the
Black 9-member commission, becuase we
Blacks in Oregon who have lived here
through the “W ar on Poverty" age and
the “W ar on Crime” era have grown
immune to being studied.
What does annoy and irritate this
Reporter is. What in the hell is going to
be done about that study and recomenda-
tion when the results scream that same
old song and dance tune - “More jobs,
decent housing, equal education, ade
quate lesral assistance, and more Blacks in
the political arena, etc., etc., etc.,?"
We pray that our Oregon Black lead
ers, our Black communities organization
will never let it be written with such an
extreme important purpose, without our
knowledge -we, who have the to live here
for the time being. I t also is a prayer that
they will take advantage of us Black
brothers and sisters hidden behind these
walls for whatever purpose that would
benefit our families and friends at home,
because only collectively can we govern
and determine our own destiny.
Palestinians in the Arabs world
IFourth of Four Parts)
by T.D . Allman
JE R U S A LE M , (PNS) - Since the
bloody Palestinian defeat by Jordan's
King Hussein in Black September, 1970,
Israel has had one irrefutable response to
criticisms of its treatment of the Palestin
ians.
It is that the Arabs have treated the
Palestinians even worse. There are no
mass graves of slaughtered Palestinians
in the Gaza, as in Beirut's Tel Zaatar
camp, demolished by Syrian and Leban
ese Christian forces last year.
The
Palestinians on the Israeli bank of the
Jordan River are freer than the Palestin
ians on the Jordanian side.
While Palestinians in Israel openly
denounced a government report calling
them inferior to Jews, the jails of Syria
filled up with Palestinians who opposed
President Assad's intervention in Leb
anon.
1
Israeli troops killed 26 Palestinians
during last year's protests. Perhaps 8,000
Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed
during the Lebanese civil war.
As Israel Koenig, governor of Israel's
northern region, conceded in his report
critical of the Palestinians, “the lack of
tolerance shown by the middle-class Jew
toward the Arab citizen...can amount to
real hatred." But that hatred is muted in
contrast to the vicious anti-Palestinian
statements one requently hears in Am
man. Damascus and Christian Lebanon.
“It is a simple truth,” observed Mo
hammad Hasan Mulhim, the Palestinian
n ^ K B ir n tm
mayor of the West Bank town of Halhul,
“that our only free elections have been
held under the Israelis. Our ambition is
not to have one occupation force replaced
by another.”
His Jericho colleague. Mayor Abed El
Aziz El-Sweity, expressed a similar view.
“We Palestinians know we have no real
friends on either side, " he said. “That is
why we want a state of our own."
In
Damascus,
PLO
Ex
ecutive Committee Secretary-General
Mohanned Nashashibi said, “There are
two kinds of Palestinians, those ruled by
Israel and those ruled by Arabs. Why do
you think we (The PLO) get such support
from both? Our people want something
better than either alternative."
Last year, when President Hafiz al-
Assad sent troops of Saiqa (the Syrian-
controlled Palestinian group) into Leb
anon as a counterforce to the PLO, Saiqa
soldiers deserted their Syrian officers en
masse to join troops loyal to Yasser
Arafat, and Saiqa commander Musbah
Budayri was captured by PLO units.
Everywhere one hears Palestinians say
they want no part of a Saiqalike Palestin
ian state, even if the Israelis should
permit it the trappings of sovereignty.
“Our struggle always has been a dual
struggle," says Khalil Al-Wazi, a major
PLO strategist and one of the founders of
Fateh, the Palestine National Liberation
Movement. “The struggle against the
Israelis gets the most attention. But the
struggle for Arab recognition of our
rights has been much more costly."
PLO officials in Beirut say twice as
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Arab opposition to independent Pales
tinian action has had another important
effect. "Israel destroyed our national
rights,” one PLO official said. “But what
we want from the Israelis is justice, not
revenge. It is the savagery of Black
September and Tel Zaatar that never will
be forgotten. As for the Syrians, we feel
deep regret at having to fight them, a
deep sadness that things in Lebanon had
to come to that.”
Whether the Palestinians wanted to
fight President Assad's troops or not, the
Syrian intervention closed the circle of
Palestinian disenchantment with the
Arab states.
Y et Lebanon does not
appear to have been as devastating as
Black September.
“The Palestinians still have a force in
being,” one high-ranking U.S. diplomat
recently observed. 'Tody the PLO has
more weapons and more troops than it
did a year ago. President Assad probably
could not get rid of A rafat if he tried.”
The American official concluded: “The
PLO remains the most powerful force in
Lebanon, except for the Syrian army.”
ACCORD T H R O U G H DISCORD
Even though they would be unlikely to
admit it, Israel's Gen. Maimon in Gaza,
Syria's President Assad. Gov. Koenig in
Galilee and King Hussein in Jordan today
all are much more united by the Palestin
ian problem they all face than they are
divided by their differences.
Without admitting it, perhaps without
knowing it, certainly without liking it
very much, both Israel and the Arabs
long have found themselves drifting
toward accord on the Palestinian problem
and toward similar policies of repression
against the Palestinians as well.
. . x /a w w /
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• Additions
many Palestinians have been killed by
Arabs as by Israelis since their struggle
began. And Al-Wazi points out that the
first casualty of the Palestinian national
ist movement was a commando named
Ahmed Mousa, who was killed on Jan
uary 7, 1965, by the Jordanian army.
That date ever since has been com
memorated as M artyr's Day, and regard
ed by Palestinians as the beginning of the
struggle for their emancipation.
J
This was evident as early as 1968,
when, during the Jordan valley battle of
Karameh, it wai difficult to tell whether
Gen. Dayan or King Hussein was more
discomfited by the stiff Palestinian resist
ance an Israeli punitive raid met.
But it became most obvious in Lebanon
last year, when the Syrians and the
Israelis who still present themselves to
the world as implacable enemies-found
themselves clandestine allies in a joint
pincer movement against the PLO.
The real measure of the bankruptcy on
both sides is that Israel and Syria now
are trapped in the same policy: one of
permanent military occupation of other
people's lands.
Israel today is surrounded by states
each palpably obsessed with one object
ive: to reach a settlement, to avoid
another war on behalf of a Palestinian
cause for which they have little remain
ing sympathy and even less national
interest.
Yet Israel continues to predicate its
security requirements on the assumption
that it faces a unitary Arab menace, not
separate Jordanian, Egyptian, Syrian
efforts to escape the failed doctrines of
the past. Unwilling to see that its best
prospects for security lie in stable neigh
bors -not perpetual Arab destablization -
(Please turn to p.5 col.4)
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PEOPLE
WHO SAY
THE DROUGHT
IS OVER
ARE ALL WET.
The power situation in
the Northwest remains
serious.
The rains that started the
first of March should have
started last September. As
a result, power reservoirs
are still way below normal.
Snowpack Is less than half
what It should be.
Right now there la a 50-
50 chance mandatory cur
tailment w ill be necessary
this summer or fall. That
projection is based on
“normal” precipitation
from here on out.
Think about it this way.
Loss of power w ill mean
loss of jobs...and family
hardship. It w ill mean
mandatory steps to cut
use. No ifs, ands or buts.
The only way we have of
avoiding this situation is to
curtail use now.
It may be difficult to
understand why turning off
lights, reducing thermo
stats and hot water use Is
2 ? "
T
so important'now. But it’s
going to be a lot tougher
next fall if we push our luck
...and lose.
Power curtailment check
lists for home and business
are available at any local
Pacific Power office.
The People at
Pacific Power