Correspondents' Correspondence

SALPETER, SILVIO F. SENIGALLIA \ ELIAHU

Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Italian Compromise Rome—Italy's colorful political...

...Casualty figures had been disclosed twice before: once after some 10 days of battle, and again after the cease-fire...
...Indeed, over the past few years, partly because of the international detente and partly because of the dismal failure of the Catholic-Socialist Center-Left coalition, the Communists have increasingly stressed their party's maturity, sense of responsibility and indispensability...
...In due time, after a debate by the party's executive body, DC leader Amintore Fan-fani turned it down, but the rejection—which until a few years ago would have been a routine reaction —also had an unprecedentedly official character...
...Heartbreakingly, they cling to the vain hope that as long as the name is not printed on the list, the tragic truth is not final and some miracle may yet transpire.—Eliahu Salpeter...
...In the 1967 Six Day War, the figures were 20 per cent for officers and 37 per cent for privates...
...They view that as a long-range possibility dependent upon continuation of the U.S.Soviet detente, the East-West labor thaw, and the liberalization of the Church's attitude toward the Eastern European Communist regimes...
...Secretary of State Henry Kissinger prevailed upon Damascus to provide Jerusalem with Syria's list of Israeli prisoners, it was impossible to determine which of the men missing on the Golan front were alive and which were dead...
...Yet even among Israelis probably few people realized—or remembered—just how high it was...
...The 1973 list shows that 28 of the fallen were staff officers, including one major general, two full colonels and 25 lieutenant colonels...
...Italian Compromise Rome—Italy's colorful political lexicon has recently been enriched with a new expression...
...Moreover, it was criticized by some Left-wing DC leaders who had called for a counteroffer or at least greater consideration of possible collaboration with the PCI...
...The main reason for secrecy while the fighting continued was the desire to avoid the depressing effect of black frames appearing around death notices in the newspapers every morning...
...The term was coined last September by Communist leader Enrico Berlin-guer and embodied a specific proposal for a yet-to-be-defined modus vivendi between the Communist (PCI) and Christian Democratic (DC) parties, obviously leading to a government role for the extreme-Left opposition...
...At the same time, though, they are extremely concerned about Italy's chronic political instability, of late coupled with galloping inflation and labor unrest.—Silvio F. Senigallia Assessing the Toll Tel Aviv—Ever since the 1948 War of Independence, the basic rule taught at Israeli Army officer training schools has been that one never commands "Advance...
...The sudden crisis precipitated on March 1 by Treasury Minister Ugo La Malfa's resignation, after a quarrel with the Socialists over the terms of an International Monetary Fund loan, made the "historic compromise" issue more topical than ever...
...But in accordance with an agreement among the Ministry of Defense, the Bereaved Parents Committee and the Newspaper Publishers Association, no names of those who lost their lives had previously been released—except for one or two top-ranking officers whose deaths were announced in Arab communiques...
...On the one hand, there is additional evidence of the Center-Left coalition's inability to govern effectively and efficiently...
...on the other, the Communists immediately stiffened their attitude, threatening to revert to total, intransigent opposition...
...2. Unlike previous writings and statements by Communist leaders, Berlinguer's was an official proposal and the Christian Democrats treated it as such...
...Until last September, there were two schools of thought: One insisted an agreement with the entire DC was necessary...
...Over the years newspaper readers have been treated to a steady diet of "monochromatic governments," "parallel convergencies" and "irreversible formulas": Now it is the time of the "historic compromise...
...Indeed, this principle of leadership was always considered the key to the superior quality of both the officer corps and the Israeli Defense Forces as a whole...
...As part of the Suez disengagement agreement, Israel was permitted to send special military parties into the Sinai battle areas to search for bodies...
...The publication of the list came more than six months after the start of the fighting...
...but rather "Follow me...
...There was also the problem of verification and accounting for the missing...
...Now a breakdown of the 2,521 who fell in the Yom Kippur War has brought the fact home in stark clarity, and revealed that the casualty rate for officers has risen significantly...
...In the 1956 Sinai War, 46 per cent of the killed were privates and 54 per cent officers and NCOs (no separate statistics were given for the last two categories then...
...Heretofore opposed to the Center-Left formula, the PCI was instrumental in bringing it back to power by waging a so-called "different opposition" that provided Premier Mariano Rumor with about six months of virtual truce...
...The list of the names, ranks and hometowns of the fallen—released in a special booklet issued by the Ministry of Defense on March 10 —contains 609 officers...
...Even after months of crosschecking, the parents of more than 20 soldiers whose bodies have not been located still refused to permit the names of their sons to be included in the Ministry of Defense booklet...
...3. Barring a revolutionary coup or an electoral landslide, both extremely unlikely possibilities, any PCI government role is contingent upon some kind of agreement with the dominant Christian Democrats...
...The "deadliest" ranks were those of the sergeants: A total of 1,154?or 46 per cent—of the dead and unaccounted-for were sergeants and sergeants first class...
...New or not, three aspects of Berlinguer's move warrant careful scrutiny: 1. The offer was made following the downfall of the 1972-73 middle-of-the-road coalition government that had excluded the Socialists...
...That amounts to 25 per cent of all those killed, as against 5 per cent who were privates, with the rest having been noncommissioned officers...
...But until U.S...
...Since Berlinguer's September overture, the 51 per cent theory has been discarded and so has the premise that the DC must be split before the Communists can participate in the government...
...It was recognized as well that this rule has a very high price, for the casualty ratio of officers to enlisted men in Israel's Armed Forces has been the highest in the world...
...Communist ideologists maintain there is nothing particularly new in Berlinguer's overture, recalling that ever since 1944 the late Palmiro Togliatti and his successors have viewed the PCI as a "party government" and its collaboration with the "other popular forces" as essential to the enactment of long overdue social and economic reforms...
...the other held that the ultimate goal should be an alliance with the Socialists and the Catholic Left, if and when such a bloc could muster a majority of the Parliamentary votes...
...Whether or not the new Christian Democratic-Socialist-Social Democratic coalition government formed in mid-March survives the controversial referendum on the repeal of the divorce law next month, virtually all Italian experts rule out the possibility of a DC-PCI agreement in the near future...

Vol. 57 • April 1974 • No. 7


 
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