Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 4 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE August 29, 1986
Vida Goldgar
The Southern Israelite
The Weekly Newspoper For Southern Je^ry
Since 1925
Vida Goldgar
Editor and Publisher
Leonard Goldstein
Advertising Director
Luna Levy
Associate Editor
Eschol A. Harrell
Production Manager
Lutz Baum
Business Manager
Published every Friday by The Southern Israelite, Inc.
Second Class Postage paid at Atlanta, Ga (ISSN 00388) (UPS 776060)
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Southern Israelite, P 0 Box
77388, Atlanta, GA 30357
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 77388, Atlanta, Georgia 30357
Location: 188 15th St., N.W., Atl., Ga. 30318 Phone (404)876-8248
Advertising rates available upon request.
Subscriptions: $23.00, 1 year; $41.00, 2 years
Member of Jewish Telegraphic Agency; Religious News Service;
American Jewish Press Assn.; Georgia Press Assn.; National Newspaper Assn.
The
Southern Israelite
A Prize-Winning
Newspaper
Change and continuity
On Jan. 19, 1979—seven-and-half years ago—I
wrote my first column to appear in this space. It was
called “Continuity, not change!”, only slightly differ-
ent from the headline on this
column.
By now, you’ve read the big
news on the front page that signi
fies the change. Stan and Steve
Rose, my colleagues from The
Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, are
the new publishers of this news
paper.
The continuity is that my role as
editor stays as it has been all these years. That is how
#
journalism which has always been my first love. The
business end, the myriad details that go into the day-
to-day operation, to me have been a necessary evil that
took time and concentration away from the news,
features and other copy.
In the 1979 column, 1 wrote; “I plan to continue, in
the best way I can, in the spirit and tradition with
which The Southern Israelite has so long been identi
fied.” Those words are as true today as they were then
But there's an even more important aspect of con
tinuity than the editor. A newspaper has a life of its
own, regardless of who’s doing what. A newspaper
exists to serve its readers, its community. Whether it’s
the Wall Street Journal, the Atlanta Journal and Con
stitution, The Southern Israelite, or any other, a pub
lication cannot be successful if it loses sight of its
obligation to its readers, its advertisers and the com
munity’s institutions. The Roses share this philo
sophy. We will continue to be the voice of this com
munity, sensitive to the needs and interests of all its
facets.
And I must say, I’m pretty proud that they have
chosen The Southern Israelite and Atlanta. 1 know
when you see what we can do together, you will be,
too.
I’m looking forward to a long and happy
“marriage.”
The self-determination trap
Israel on the scene
Our hearts go out to the people of Cameroon who have had
such a grievous loss from an accident of nature.
Unlike Chernobyl, there are no safeguards against geological
upheavals.
But tragic as it is, we were pleased to note that once again, tiny
Israel was one of the first to jump in with assistance, along with the
United States, Britain, France and West Germany. A medical
team was quickly rounded-up to accompany Prime Minister
Shimon Peres when word of the disaster reached him as he was
about to leave for Cameroon.
Israel was also on the scene shortly after the Mexico City
earthquake and an Israeli specialist was in the Soviet Union soon
after Chernobyl.
Earlier this week, an ABC television report featured the results
of help an Israeli agronomist gave Navaho Indians in this country.
The healthy green fields etched into the desert provided visual
proof of the benefits of the use of drip irrigation, an innovative
watering technique perfected in the Israel’s arid Negev. Over the
years, there have been many other instances of Israeli experts
lending their expertise to aid others.
It’s a good feeling every time we hear of such instances to know
that despite her own problems, Israel is right on the spot when
others need help.
by Eric Roseman
Near East Report
Early this month the secretary
general of Israel’s Labor Party, Uzi
Baram, and party colleague Yitz
hak Rabin, Israel’s defense minis
ter, quarreled publicly over the
issue of self-determination for Pal
estinian Arabs. Rabin criticized a
dovish group within the party which
had recommended recognition of
Palestinian self-determination. He
charged that their position con
tributed, however unintentionally,
to “the strengthening of the PLO
and terrorism.” Baram said the
intra-party discussion was legiti
mate and that there was no need
for name-calling.
At about the same time, Vice
President George Bush was an
nouncing six points on which the
United States believe Israel, Egypt
and Jordan are in agreement as a
basis for a renewed Arab-Israeli
peace process. One point states
that “negotiations must take into
account the security needs of all
other states in the region and the
aspirations of the Palestinian
people” (emphasis added).
And a few days later the PLO
executive committee reiterated its
view with another invocation of
“the Palestinian people’s right
to...self-determination, the estab
lishment of their independent state
and legitimate national struggle.”
In the PLO lexicon legitimate na
tional struggle means terrorism;
self-determination equals state
hood.
This circle of security needs and
national aspirations cannot be
squared. Washington and Jerusa
lem oppose a PLO state and there
fore reject Palestinian Arab self-
determination. Given the extremist
history of Palestinian nationalism,
its site on the West Bank and Gaza
Strip likely would be unstable in
itself and would help destabilize
first Jordan, then Israel.
Yet the position of those Labor
Party colleagues Rabin upbraided
is understandable. They believe that
decades of armed Israeli rule over
large numbers of Palestinian Arabs
conflict with and may undermine
Israel’s moral values. They fear
that Israel cannot afford, finan
cially or socially, to maintain such
control forever. And after King
Hassan II invited Prime Minister
Shimon Peres to Morocco, they
may have wanted to make a recip
rocal move, rolling the dice on
self-determination.
Besides, some ask, how can the
Jews, the initiators of self-deter
mination—from the Exodus through
the 1948 War of Independence—
deny it to others? The answer stems
from a combination of Israeli se
curity needs and Jewish national
aspirations.
That two peoples do live in the
western quarter of the original Pa
lestine Mandate is plain. In an
L-shaped corridor less than 10 miles
wide, stretching from Haifa to Tel
Aviv and inland to Jerusalem, are
roughly two-thirds of the country’s
Jewish population and most of its
infrastructure. Only a few' miles
further inland, along the winding
hill road from Nablus through Ra-
mallah to Jerusalem, then through
Bethlehem to Hebron, live the vast
majority of the West Bank’s 800,000
Arabs.
But the land—coastal plain and
hill country together—averages only
about 40 miles in width. The Jor
dan rift valley is the one real defen
sible border for Israel on the east.
Although there are two peoples liv
ing here, there is room for just one
state.
Yet some of “the aspirations of
the Palestinian people” could be
satisfied. This could happen through
Camp David-style autonomy, under
some as yet unclear condominium
between Israel and Jordan—a Pa
lestinian and Arab state by geo
graphy and demography—or a ter
ritorial compromise federating
areas of heavy Palestinian Arab
population with Jordan.
The other Palestinian people,
the Jews of Israel, have no alterna
tive to self-determination. Jews
have a long, desolate record ol
what it means for them to have no
state at all.
The half-a-loaf solution would
leave Palestinian Arabs on the West
Bank and Gaza Strip immeasura
bly better off than many of the
world’s peoples who live without
meaningful autonomy. To insist
on general self-determination is to
demand not only the dissolution of
the Soviet Union, with its hundreds
of national, ethnic, linguistic and
religious groups, but also of India,
Zaire, Uganda, Iraq, Iran, Turkey,
the Sudan, Indonesia, Spain and
dozens of other contemporary na
tion states. To insist on it for Pales
tinian Arabs as the prerequisite to
Middle East peace sounds suspect
indeed.
^Egypt's tourism chief in Israeli
JERUSALEM (JTA)—The Egyptian minister of tourism. Dr.
Fouad Sultan, began an official visit to Israel Sunday with a brief
visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.
1 he Minister is leadinga 19-member delegation, which includes
^J^travel agents and two journalists. ’i