Editorials
COMMONWEAL Uncivil targets An accounting is needed." This was not the president demanding that Poindexter or North step forth. It was not the secretary of state ferreting out the Sultan of...
...Bruno Hussar, a Jewish convert to Catholicism, is situated on land least d from the Trappisl monastery at l.atrun...
...It was not the secretary of defense seeking an explanation from Israel of the Pollard spy case...
...some 8,(K<) young people and 1 ,(XX) adults in mixed Arab-Jewish groups have participated in an assortment of intensive, live-in workshops at the School for Peace: • A three- to four-diy encounter for Arab and Jewish, youth is designed to explicate the complexity of the ArabJewish issue, challenge stereotypes, and teach skills for living with conflict such as non discriminatory behavior and a more democratic world-view...
...That is the sad song from Nicaragua libre: the suppression 196: Commonweal last year of La Prensa, La Iglesia, and Radio Catolica...
...Fortunately, the clamor fir the expertise of this small, unique community shows that the (hirst to transcend ancient prejudices may yet be quenched, drop by drop...
...Understanding this, the Congress must make some highly creative proposals in its discussions in the months ahead...
...Six weekend meetings survey the historical-political situation today, and create a joint Jewish-Arab group that can work cooperatively toward political goals...
...Beside a well in a desert oasis, the two naturally focused their conversation on water and thirst, concerns they held in common at that moment...
...These women, who struggle within often hostile patriarchal family systems, need extra encouragement...
...The village is called Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam, which means (in Hebrew/Arabic) Oasis of Peace...
...More advanced courses are given to graduates of introductory workshops, youth leaders, and educators...
...opinion (as Joseph Davis points out in the January-February issue of Nicaragua in Focus...
...It showed that even the most ancient hatreds and embedded prejudices among peoples — over gender, race, tribe, or religion — can...
...it practices respect and reconciliation...
...even in this democratic, egalitarian community...
...Neve Shalom/W'ahat Al-Salam faces head-on the most sensitive Arab-Jewish issues, yet it does so by first creating a climate of trust essential to open discussion of high quality...
...the harassment of non-Sandinista labor unions...
...Since 1980...
...On a deeper level, however, the encounter was a signal event, pointing to the power of reconciliation...
...Inducing change in Nicaragua and bringing peace a step forward in Central America can best be achieved by a united front of Nicaragua's neighbors, the U.S., and its allies This change will not be advanced through terrorism or military offensives, but through the leveraging of political, economic, and moral constraint...
...That six-year-old war (the "American war" as Pakistani observer Salman Rushdie refers to it almost casually in his report from Nicaragua, The Jaguar Smile, Viking, 1987) is at a critical juncture...
...198: Commonweal...
...There is a stench in this terrorist plan, as there is in the entire conduct of the Reagan-confra war...
...Their example will encourage Managua m saner policies at home which will allow Nicaraguans much needed self-reflection...
...But members know how minute and brief arc their efforts to change the attitudes of young people who follow upon generations of animosity...
...A one-year joint leadership project trains volunteers as counselors in Jewish-Ar^b encounters...
...Meanwhile, in deadly earnest, the CIA is giving thecontras detailed diagrams for destroying American-built dams, bridges, and communications systems throughout Nicaragua this spring...
...It runs to even more sulfurous levels in the unaccounted-for $27 million of nonlethal aid approved in 10 April 1987: 195 1985, the millions solicited from the Saudis, and the contraCasey-North connection which will come to fuller light next month in congressional hearings...
...This consensus must be fortified and enhanced in the immediate future...
...These are civil targets, constructed with" American help during the Somoza dictatorship (what we have given, we will take away...
...It should take advantage of the curious but useful sensitivity of the Sandinistas, even at this date, toward outside public opinion, including U.S...
...the recent arrest of protesters on International Women's Day...
...they are to be destroyed in a last-ditch effort to debilitate the ruling Sandinista regime...
...However, not every topic can be dealt with as yet...
...Today, on a hundred-acre parcel of land, half way between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, a small but growing community of Jews, Muslims, and Christians practice living together as equals, a testament to the possibility of cooperation and full partnership in a region wrenched by war...
...citizens, a form of vigilanteism encouraged by the Reagan government...
...The community, founded in 1972 by Fr...
...policy and practice have been answered satisfactorily...
...a system of political courts which return verdicts of guilty-as-charged 99 percent of the time...
...Neve Shalom fosters dialogue across cultural chasms...
...indeed, be transformed...
...and the postponement of promised local elections this year until, perhaps, 1988...
...It will face a determined president in the fall...
...That sordid record includes not only the mining of harbors, but an apparent breach of the Neutrality Act and the Arms Export Control Act by private U.S...
...and those who share its interests will save themselves the brutal wounds of Afghanistan and Vietnam...
...Even though President Reagan may be slumping in his driver's seat, he enters the final lap of his presidency at the wheel of a vintage, lumbering Imperial: he can maintain a heavy foot while intently steering a terrifying and nearly impervious course...
...And its most reprehensible manifestations continue daily in the indiscriminate killing of civilians by the contras, the kidnappings, forced recruitments, attacks on cooperatives, slitting of babies' throats, mining of roads, and murder of more than 100 health workers since 1983 (see the Americas Watch reportHuman Rights in Nicaragua, February 1987...
...After six years of war, it is worth the effort...
...Intensive courses ir Arabic language include rudiments of Palestinian folklore and culture...
...the expulsion at the same time of two Catholic churchmen without due process...
...invasion [of Nicaragua] . . . should require less than a week and fewer casualties than would result from a continuation of the civil war'' {National Review, February 13), and Pat Buchanan: "The Ortega regime ought not to survive the Reagan presidency" {Newsweek, March 30...
...This is not to say the Sandinistas are without sin...
...It was not the secretary of state ferreting out the Sultan of Brunei's lost $10 million...
...Perhaps such questions don't occur spontaneously in the executive branch these days...
...As the poet Cuadra told the New York Times Magazine (March 29): "I have always felt that the Nicaraguan has a great capacity to see his own reflection, to see the reality and save himself.'' Our Congress should encourage that process...
...There are those ideologues shouting encouragement in his ear all the while — Max Singer: "A U.S...
...While Senator Byrd's summons failed to derail the final $40 million installment previously approved by Congress for the contras this fiscal year, his demand for an accounting will define the tone of discussions in the future, especially this fall when the administration requests renewed funds for its Nicaragua war...
...While Americas Watch states that the Sandinistas do not systematically violate citizens' rights, the Sandinistas nevertheless substantiate Orwell's dictum that "All revolutions are failures, but they are not the same failure...
...In so doing, it will help us save ourselves...
...Last year, when Israeli independence day was imminent, the children decided that since waving the Palestinian flag is unlawful in Israel, and since the Arabs in the community arc Israeli citizens, they would hang the Israeli flag off-center, leaving a space where the flag of Palestine should go...
...It is reflected in the moral lassitude of the contra group itself, facing seven independent investigations in the U.S., including drug smuggling, and in the disparaging withdrawal of Arturo Cruz from the contra leadership...
...While Senator Byrd was calling for accountability, the Senate was 10 April 1987: 197 voting 97-1 in support of Costa Rican President Arias Sanchez's plan for a Central American peace accord That plan bears resemblances to the efforts of the Coniadora group...
...A project is being proposed to assist Arab students preparing for university life in Israel...
...A three-stage program for rural Arab women is designed to build a support network and to train local leaders as effective change agents...
...Twenty-three adult residents and as many chi drcn struggle together to understand one another's languages, cultural histories and identities, and to respect each other's differing political aspirations and perspectives on the conflicts that daily impinge upon them...
...WATER FROM THE ROCK This is the season when we retell the biblical story of a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman who broke with convention merely by speaking and listening to one another...
...That the Senate voted its support for the Arias plan, if only in principle, indicates a significant bipartisan leaning in Congress toward a negotiated regional settlement, even by those who so recently voted appropriations for the amtrus...
...It was rather the Senate majority leader, Robert Byrd (D-W...
...Nevertheless, the methods employed by Neve Shalom's outreach program, the School for Peace, have attracted international interest and even acclaim...
...By resisting the military option, the U.S...
...Last month, the prestigious Buber-Rosenswcig medal was awarded to the communiiy "in appreciation of the endeavors and merits of Jewish-Arab cooperation and the aim of peaceful coexistence...
...speaking in the interest of the nation last month, He called for a moratorium on future funding for the contra war in Nicaragua until fundamental questions concerning U.S...
...The goals of the community may appear modest at first — the promotion of equality and intercultural coexistence — yet in the experience of Israeli citizens, some 6(X).OOO of whom are Arabs, these goals have been seen as either miraculously conceived or highly suspect...
...Ironically, this oasis of peace borders the Israeli-occupied West Bank and overlooks the Valley of Ayalon, a bloody battlefield where Jordan and Israel clashed notoriously in 1948...
...If the reports are true {New York Times, March 19), they are reminiscent of the 1984 CIA mining of Nicaraguan harbors, condemned last year by the World Court...
...People must be receptive first, and sometimes the children of the resident families are ready before the adults...
...the 200,000 Nicaraguan citizens who have fled to Honduras and Costa Rica, a chorus in exile...
...As the famous Nicaraguan poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra, now persona non grata with the Sandinistas, wrote many years before the fall of Somoza: Whichever way we turn, we meet Beasts lying in wait...
...An accounting must be rendered...
...It includes the state department's payments to an advertising firm to lobby Congress on the contras' behalf, a possible violation of U.S...
Vol. 114 • April 1987 • No. 7
