Editorials

...is now doing with its binary production-the rest of the world will hardly be convinced that they should give up their quest for such weapons...

...Budget considerations are significant but secondary...

...And to make sure the shoe fit, they added: "That means for us a simple life-style, radically transformed...

...Once upon a time, nevertheless, the Israeli proposal would have been seen in this country, and by this journal, as not only appropriate but welcome...

...But to come close to inspiring confidence, they must be grounded in a strong, coherent, and unified international moral consensus that proscribes any recourse to the development and possession of such weapons...

...It becomes shamelessly so in view of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's failure thus far to follow up on his own announcement of last April, declaring his government's readiness for negotiations with elected Palestinian representatives...

...administration about the impact of any Middle East policy...

...Given Israel's ethos and record, discounting any near-term possibility of its economic collapse, loan guarantees are a low-cost way of giving help...

...Very few people anywhere will consent to the notion that Judea and Samaria belong to Israel by divine appointment...

...As for banning and controlling components, since 1985 nineteen chemical-producing countries (called the "Australia group") have agreed to monitor and strictly control nine chemicals that can be used for weaponry application...

...What's next...

...ET CETERA ODOR OF SANCTITY A sister publication which will here be nameless offers reassurance about the shortage of priests: "Catholic parishioners continue to esteem and to require the priest's presence as a radical expression of their own rottedness in God...

...Weisberg found that Curran's academic freedom had not been violated by the university's withdrawal of Curran's canonical mission...

...would immediately work to eliminate 80 percent of its present stockpile if the Soviet Union would agree to parity...

...But this is a tricky business, as West Germany's reluctant admission earlier this year shows...

...The executive branch favors the deal, but, under the law, must formally notify Congress, which can then choose to vote it down-and is very likely to do so if the government of Israel voices disapproval...

...Depending upon what happens between now and then regarding the Curran case, they may recommend further monitoring of CU, possibly even censure...

...Thus, despite his words to the UN, this is a Bush who is inclined to hedge...

...and they must embody stringent international sanctions against any and all who do...

...Here too the context has changed...

...It should and can, however, do more than it has to support the pragmatists on all sides and to confront the ideologues with reality...

...it asks our government to provide some $400 million in loan guarantees in order to lessen financing costs-even though present law puts a $ 125 million annual cap on all loan guarantees abroad, and an annual limit of $25 million in allotments to any one country...

...Arguably, however, the secretaries may have chosen the politically prudent course...

...The only reasonable insurance against the use of chemical weapons is twofold: a universal treaty banning their development, production, acquisition, possession, transfer, and use...

...Both the U.S...

...policies and procedures that would confer significant financial and military benefits on Israel...

...They drew up a lengthy statement on the churches' response to war, poverty, and the environment...

...Because of lax export laws, Libya had obtained materials from a West German company for a chemical plant at Rabta...

...Prime Minister Shamir needs to acquire a sense of limits...

...In particular, they called for an end to the illusion that nature can be exploited endlessly and noted that peaceful relations with creation presuppose renouncing those structures in the economy and society which threaten life...

...and strict verification measures, including "intrusive, on-site inspection" within twenty-four hours of notification...

...By not permitting Professor Curran to teach Catholic theology in a nonecclesiastical department of the university [aproposal made by a committee of CU's own Academic Senate], the administration and the board of trustees for all practical purposes deprived him of his tenure without due process and without adequate cause...

...grants and credits distorts its economy, so also our own leaders' all-too-eager responsiveness to Israeli pressures distorts our politics...

...CURR AN'S CASE CONTINUED Our last articles about the Rev...

...While censure carries no official penalty, the list of censured institutions is widely published and can hinder a university's ability to hire promising faculty...

...It is not in the interests of the Israeli people that their leaders continue to draw upon what is not and ought not be a bottomless fund of American patience...

...Israeli officials candidly acknowledge what current Israeli policy makes obvious: Some or most of the new housing units would be built in the occupied territories...

...No wonder the Pentagon heard his call at the UN with equanimity: "We do not need to cut any of our plans to field binary chemical weapons as a result of this initiative," a spokesman said...

...In these circumstances, Israel's request is best described as brazen...

...Bush's hedging is not an entirely misguided policy...

...But help toward what...

...Still, Mr...

...Forget Lebanon...

...is the only country to have them...

...Last month at the UN, George Bush made an appeal for the world community to complete the work it had begun in 1969 at the ongoing Conference on Disarmament in Geneva by agreeing to a global, comprehensive, and verifiable ban on chemical weapons...

...The technology is readily available from the civilian chemical industry, and the ability to project such weapons by the use of ICBMs is fast becoming available to a variety of countries...

...One problem is that there isn't enough housing, and Israel lacks resources to meet the need...

...This is emphatically not to say that the proposed sale of weapons is obviously a good idea, or that the Congress should ignore its possible effects on Israel's security...

...But something more is needed if Israel is to be drawn from its self-destructive course...

...As president, Mr...

...In the absence of an international ban, the stockpiling of some chemical weapons may serve as a deterrent...

...The committee will submit a report to the general AAUP meeting in June...

...By congressional mandate, the U.S...

...A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT More than six hundred delegates from Europe's Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox, and Catholic churches gathered for a week in Basel, Switzerland last May-a historic meeting of Christians without precedence since the Reformation...

...An investigative committee of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has determined the opposite: that the CU administration and board of trustees "failed to protect academic freedom and the university's autonomy...

...Even so, we have some 30,000 tons stockpiled...

...no one today would call the territories "a land without people for a people without land...

...The committee's lengthy report and the university's objections to it are published in the September-October Academe, the journal of the AAUP...

...or, at least, not to lobby too hard...

...So the secretaries of state and defense, before consulting Congress, have asked their opposite numbers in the Israeli cabinet not to lobby against the sale...

...Most to the point, however, is that declared U.S...

...As many as twenty countries may possess the capacity to produce and use them...

...We reported Judge Frederick Weisberg's Superior Court decision in favor of the university...

...TURNING OFF THE GAS Last January, reacting to the use of chemical warfare agents in the Iran-Iraq war, 149 nations met in Paris to call for a ban on the production and use of chemical weapons...

...At the time that statement gave hope...

...Such verification and control procedures will never be foolproof in themselves...

...was already scheduled to destroy 90 percent of its old, deteriorating unitary chemical weapons by 1997.Butin 1987,thankstoatie-breaking vote cast in the Senate by then Vice-President Bush, the U.S...

...should say or do nothing that might strengthen the hand of the rejectionist Arab states and Palestinian factions...

...Granted, the U.S...

...Most of the world recognizes that emigrating Soviet Jews deserve homes and security-but that the Palestinians deserve nothing less...

...For reasons both noble and pragmatic, Israel wants to bring to its shores as many thousands of the new Soviet Jewish emigrants as possible...

...When Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak put forward for discussion a carefully neutral set of proposals on how to flesh out the Israeli proposal, Shamir dismissed it scornfully as a formula for "surrender"-and a seriously divided cabinet now has voted it down...

...As long as the superpowers insist on enhancing their stockpiles-as the U.S...

...policy has always been that continuing the occupation makes Israel not more secure but less so, and that the settlements constitute an obstacle to peace...

...to give the necessary approval...

...It is somewhat reassuring that the Bush administration has responded coolly to the Israeli request for loan guarantees, and has uttered mildly encouraging words about the Mubarak initiative...

...That is enough to kill everyone in the world 5,000 times over, according to the American Chemical Society...

...to eliminate 98 percent within eight years if appropriate verification procedures could be developed and equal reductions could be achieved...

...One is reminded of recent happenings in the Department of Housing and Urban Development...

...To assure the world community of his seriousness, President Bush should not only call for the abolition of all chemical weapons...

...Predictably, Israel has turned to the U.S...

...What's at issue is the likelihood, underlined by the actions of Messrs...

...Charles Curran-the moral theologian tenured at The Catholic University (CU), Washington, D.C., who was prohibited from teaching theology as "a Catholic theologian"- appeared in the March 24 issue...

...consider only these two very recent developments: • Saudi Arabia wants to buy a billion dollars' worth of battlefield tanks from General Dynamics and has asked the U.S...

...Bush has already budgeted $276.5 million for more such weapons...

...Baker and Cheney, that the plan will never be discussed on its merits as they relate to American values, U.S...

...The distortion becomes even clearer in relation to another current issue...

...Yet money is nowhere near the heart of the issue...

...It's not likely that quiet, tactful diplomacy will get the job done...

...and to eliminate all American chemical "reserves" within a decade if a treaty banning such weapons all over the world is signed...

...A reformation, indeed...

...We do have our own problems of homelessness, not to speak of drug addiction, decaying infrastructure, unemployment, poor education, the historic-and expensive-opportunities opening in Eastern Europe, the disaster waiting to develop out of third-world debt, the enormous "off-budget" commitments made to rescue the savings and loan industry, and so on down a long list...

...Also, CU will soon be reviewed by the Middle States Accrediting Association, and the Curran decision, plus any further statement CU's board of trustees makes on academic freedom, may burden the accreditation process.en the accreditation process...

...The U.S...

...At the time, various delegates remarked that George Bush's commitment would be decisive in eventually producing a strong treaty...

...now it is a mere puzzlement...

...As European Christians," they wrote, "we have a substantial responsibility for the present crisis...

...Now, however, as the Israelis know or ought to know, the context has changed...

...and the risks of chemical terrorism will thereby increase...

...We should follow the recommendations of the Buntland report-which holds that it is possible to reduce the consumption of energy by the industrial nations by as much as 50 percent...

...began producing a new line of leaner, meaner, but safer-to-maintain binary chemical weapons...

...interests, and the balance of forces in the Middle East (including not just the Israelis vis-a-vis the Arabs but also the Saudis vis-a-vis Iran and Iraq...

...For good reasons, chemical weapons have been called the "poor man's nuclear bomb...

...International law no longer recognizes any right of conquest followed by colonization...

...It's not irrelevant that its policies are also ruinously expensive, or that we pay much of the bill...

...What to do...

...In recent years, however, it has become not just special but peculiar-and, in our opinion, unhealthy...

...Just as Israel's enormous dependence on U.S...

...he should immediately cease the production of further binary weapons...

...and the USSR have called for such verification procedures and have opened some of their facilities to mutual inspection, although such verification becomes more difficult with binary weapons...

...For too many members of both Houses, these things matter less than their perceived need to qualify, come election time, for endorsement as unfailing friends of Israel...

...The Soviet Union may have ten times that amount...

...ignore the handling of the intifada...

...Israel has not formally annexed the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, but its leaders affirm a right to do so, on grounds of security or religion or both, and its day-to-day actions from 1967 onward have constituted a de facto, step-by-step absorption of the land, accompanied by subjection of its inhabitants and by a refusal to make any accommodation with them except on Israel's own terms...

...From 1969-87, the U.S...

...By way of incentives they have offered changes in U.S...

...With such a ban the U.S...

...unilaterally observed a moratorium on chemical weapons production...

...Judging by the record, Congress may very well give greater weight to any Israeli government's preferences than to the judgment of any U.S...