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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