THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Distortion of Zionism Dear Sirs: I thought the article by Sidney Lens, "Israel's Brave New Try," in your June issue, was, on the whole, a very fair-minded attempt at...
...Let us hope he debunks all of them...
...The city was notorious for merciless exploitation, recounted in many folksongs of the period...
...If Viereck's desired social and intellectual destination is a "cooperative commonwealth" of democratic-Socialist values, I can find little evidence of it in his articles, his books, or his speeches...
...Best Dear Sirs: I am happy with The Progressive...
...We fish a lot and garden and walk around the city...
...And they expressed together feelings that were common to all: fear of another war, fear of American soldiers in Europe, fear of a re-armed Germany, fear for a war that meant to them, not protection or liberation, but destruction—of more than even their way of life, but destruction of life itself...
...They will grab the forests and ruin them...
...If it is true that he is so progressive, why does he permit himself to be used as a spokesman for "the new conservatism...
...Does it mean that Israel is set up in such a way that the Jews shall always be assured of being a majority...
...I have the greatest respect for Norman Thomas' judgment, but I fail to see the necessity for his remarks on Viereck after reading Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals...
...It is an obvious case of dog-in-the-manger type of stealing the public's heritage to insist on Hell's Canyon...
...We are against Israel because of the repeated acts of aggression by Israel against the boundaries of the Arab states, with the result that the Joint UN Jordanian-Israeli Truce Committee had to warn the Israeli authorities "to stop their repeated aggressions" upon Jordanian territory...
...Mayer-Rubin Dialogue Dear Sirs: Readers of The Progressive .in the Pacific Southwest region might be interested to know that Milton Mayer and Morris Rubin wfll be speaking from the same platform in Southern California during the week of Mar...
...His leadership is very good...
...Quakers and the AFSC Dear Sirs: I have a concern about Quakers...
...The article says that less than one per cent of Idaho Power stock is held in the Northwest...
...Fear...
...Paul, Minn...
...As for those who do know about Palestine, they, like ex-King Faruk, are only interested in enjoying themselves and forgetting about the rest of the world...
...Meeting for Those Who Desire Peace...
...Reply to Thomas Dear Sirs: I am moved to write this letter because of Norman Thomas' letter in the June issue...
...My property consists of an old car, a radio, some clothes, and some books...
...Then they create more corporation farms for the life insurance companies...
...We are against Israel because of the miserable conditions of the Arabs in the refugee camps, forbidden by Israel to go home, while the home of the same refugees is open to any Jew from any part of the world...
...The last three years are the best...
...We need peace...
...Thomas had already been more than sufficiently indulgent...
...We have enough money for tobacco and plays...
...Because Peter Viereck is anti-Fascist and anti-Communist and because he has undoubtedly some excellent concrete ideas on democracy's current struggle against totalitarianism, we Socialists all find ourselves inclined to "go along" with him today...
...They have grabbed the tidelands oil that the Grange wanted leased to help education in the 48 states...
...They had no conceptions of uniting to control the world...
...It is the best I know of in the country which is in any way proceeding indigenously from the earth and from the people...
...Francis Behn Riggs Whittier, Calif...
...Israel is the only state in the world today, just as Germany of yesterday, based on a strange myth of race...
...Rabbi Jerome Unger American Zionist Council New York, N. Y. Arab Dissent Dear Sirs: I am a student from Iraq...
...These men were not Communists...
...And for that they had to have peace...
...The home for old men was an attractive building in a well-kept garden...
...Government insurance since 1949 has covered maternity, sickness, injury, and old age...
...But what about tomorrow...
...They will grab the power that is being used to liquidate costs in conservation projects and prevent its being sold to cities and co-ops...
...We are against Israel because it is the offspring of a fascist movement: Zionism...
...He was 60, had worked from 15 to 55, with 28 of those 40 years in the mines...
...Lens has, doubtless unwittingly, allowed himself a somewhat irresponsible distortion of Zionist philosophy...
...we want peace so we may know each other...
...They wanted only security for their homes, shoes for their kids, stew bones for their tables...
...We have soup and two dishes every meal, with rice and white flour...
...This sounds like gobbledygook, but what 1 mean is you are the only honest-to-God local people running something of international importance...
...14 through 20, 1954...
...They'd heard representatives from all over the area—village delegates, labor leaders, ministers, civic group representatives, farmers, factory workers, and shopkeepers and businessmen, and everyone had reported, "We need peace...
...It is too much like an apology to this careless "thinker" towards whom Mr...
...Hugh Hard'yman La Crescenta, Calif...
...Did you see Chairman Mao in Peking...
...Palestine is the heart of the Arab world...
...We can write off the Vienna "People's Congress for Peace" as "Communst organized and dominated, building a Communist peace...
...We have news-reading groups and chess and billiards...
...Unless Americans have the truth to act on, the Middle East may turn into another Far East, which would be a high price to pay for the writings of Lens and his Associates...
...He finds that the Yalta and Potsdam pacts failed because Stalin broke every promise to free the captive nations by free elections...
...We oppose Zionism and Israel because it is an invasion of Palestine by foreigners supported by another group of foreigners...
...He had better turn soon, for the guardian he appointed to protect the public domain seems intent on throwing wide open the portals and inviting the pirates to enter...
...The correct figure should be "less than 10 per cent...
...My opposition (as well as the opposition of millions of Arabs) is not, as claimed in the June Progressive by Sidney Lens in "Israel's Brave New Try," due to the "threat (of Israel) to the old order of the Middle East, to the landowners, to feudalism, to statism...
...Men who have worked 25 years can retire on pension at 60 or to an old men's home if they have no family...
...These objects are more valuable than all the "property" my folks own at home...
...Over 90 per cent of the workers have now been rehoused in steam-heated brick dwellings, small but dry, instead of mud huts...
...We are opposed to a NATO dominated by American interests...
...The twelve-hour day has been changed to three eight-hour shifts...
...In fact, these pirates intend to make the co-ops walk the plank...
...R. M. Schaefer Lewiston, Idaho...
...And they'd elected their representatives to send to the meeting in Vienna...
...They picked ten of their number to attend the regional meeting in preparation for the "People's Congress for Peace...
...Will our Captain turn on them in time...
...Tell the U.S...
...women got six ounces, and children nothing...
...I am reluctant to think that the eminence and respectability the AFSC has rightfully earned have been factors militating against the Quakers' more radical opposition to war and all occasions of war...
...Maury Maverick San Antonio, Texas Statistical Errors Dear Sirs: Two statistical errors occur in my article "Betrayal at Hell's Canyon," in the July issue of The Progressive...
...But, as he stands at the controls, "a bunch of pirates is climbing over the bulwarks behind him," bent on seizing the public domain which is the heritage of the people...
...For a week the yellow poster had flattened itself against the stone wall of the old house facing out on the village square...
...I am in accord with Mr...
...It was cold, that night in the town hall, but they came...
...In it the author demonstrated that the leadership and organization of the "People's Congress for Peace" in Vienna last year was based on an "our peace by our means" theory, thus logically implying non-participation by true pacifists...
...If he is such a flaming champion of democracy and high ethical values, he might find a better target for his sarcasm than the very Socialists who have been Communist totalitarianism's most persistent critics since long before Viereck perfected his flamboyant and contradictory literary style...
...They will grab the public lands and arrange for allotting it to speculators for dude ranches and desert holdings awaiting reclamation at the expense of the taxpayers...
...Layered in heavy sweaters and rough jackets, they sat around the wood stove, the women silent and knitting, the men gruff and emphatic...
...Under the Japanese the people worked twelve hours a day in the mines' and lived on soya bean waste and ground acorns...
...The heavily booted men grouped in front of it—a call to people who want peace...
...Anne Gale Macalester College St...
...I only knew how to work," he said...
...But building it of the needs and hopes and drives of a myriad of people of Europe and Asia, twisting and turning and profiting from those needs, because they have been able, as we have failed, to see, to understand, to recognize them...
...Writers like Lens, as active pro-Zionists, mislead the American reader...
...Jews who are contented citizens outside Israel are under no obligation to do anything...
...what is to be expected from them is simply, from the Israel point of view, a sympathetic interest and, if possible, assistance...
...Ike and the Pirates Dear Sirs: It is heartening to note that the new captain of our ship of state is debunking a number of political myths...
...If we Quakers had been as subdued in the work of the American Friends Service Committee as most of us are now subdued in our action against war, or as pliable as many of us are by enlisting in the Armed Forces, "things being as they are," I wonder whether the AFSC would have accomplished the great deeds it has in mopping up after wars...
...However, I thought Lens' observation in the last section of his article, to the effect that Zionist philosophy looks upon Israel as a place to gather in the "13 million" Jews of the world, was singularly wide of the mark...
...When the Kuomintang took over in 1945, they paid a miner one and one-half pounds of kaoliang, a coarse grain, a day...
...That next Sunday the delegates piled into an ancient roofless automobile, for the 50-mile trek to this meeting of people desiring peace...
...If Quakers do not counsel young people against joining the Armed Forces, if they do not themselves refuse every form of direct or indirect military service, whither has the spirit which "does away with the occasion for all war" led us...
...In the case of Idaho Power Co., many sites are near their load centers and not off over 100 to 200 miles to the north...
...I am much concerned with the health of Chairman Mao...
...It is here that we must begin...
...I have confidence in our captain if only he can get all the facts...
...The action of the West in authorizing the Zionists to go to Palestine regardless of the will of the inhabitants of Palestine was a frightful blow against a people who had a great civilization in the past and a promising hope for the future...
...Yet, I objected to Zionism and will continue to oppose it with all my strength...
...Fifty miles through the icy November winds, but they returned exuberant...
...There were 73 men there, of whom Chen Quan was a random example...
...The correct figure should be 42 per cent...
...We are opposed to war, any war, all war...
...Gedye's thesis, but I would like to present another angle of this "Congress," one which I observed while living and working last fall in a small mountain village in Southern France...
...Utility Tactics Dear Sirs: Richard L. Neuberger's "Betrayal at Hell's Canyon" in the July Progressive, is a fine job, to which I should like to add this point: It was brought out at the Federal Power Commission hearings at Boise a year ago that some 80 sites are available and have been available to the private power companies in Idaho...
...One is the result of careless proof-reading on the part of The Progressive...
...The Beginning Dear Sirs: May I make a belated comment on G.E.R...
...J. D. Silvia Redlands, Calif...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Distortion of Zionism Dear Sirs: I thought the article by Sidney Lens, "Israel's Brave New Try," in your June issue, was, on the whole, a very fair-minded attempt at evaluating a complex situation...
...Ann Hubbell Ypsilanti, Mich...
...We are opposed to German re-armament...
...The article says that the Northwest contains two per cent of all the country's untapped water power...
...Tell the U.S...
...Robert S. Vogel American Friends Service Committee P. O. Box 966-M Pasadena, Calif...
...I hope this introduction will make it clear that my parents are not defenders of feudalism, and I am not a landlord...
...What does this "Jewish State" mean...
...If a man has worked underground for 20 years, he can retire at 55...
...He was not a member of the Communist Party, nor did he know of any there...
...The so-called "in-gathering" of the exiles, on the basis of which Israel has constituted itself a haven of refuge for all those Jews in the world who need it, by no means implies that if they don't need it they would be obliged to go there...
...We would welcome suggestions as to possible places where they might be invited to speak...
...Wages have risen to 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of grain a month, instead of 45...
...Israel is a Jewish State...
...Gedye's article, "Red Pacifism," which you carried some months ago...
...Richard L. Neuberger Portland, Ore...
...There is no question of "in-gathering" the 13 million Jews throughout the world...
...The feudalists who cannot read or write are quite unaware of the existence of Palestine...
...This group of 20 peasants—men who'd been up since sun-up carting in the last load of turnips or cleaning out the stables for the coming mountain winter—these men discussed for three hours their needs and hopes...
...The local school teacher took charge, and they talked...
...They had no desires to convert or lead or dictate...
...Mohammad T. Mehdi Berkeley, Calif...
...Dear Sirs: Your readers may be interested in what I saw recently at Fu Shun, the coal center of Northeast China (formerly Manchuria...
...We are opposed to war in Indo-China...
...It is the peasants, students, and other poor people who have no property (and as such are not afraid of the change of the old order in the Middle East) who found the Western world treating them as if they Avere not even human beings...
...He advises Congress to determine budgetary needs before cutting taxes...
Vol. 17 • August 1953 • No. 8
