LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
LETTERS to the Editor Readers Respond to 'Eyeless in Gaza' Your editorial, "Eyeless in Gaza" (Comment, February issue), adheres to standards of journalism of the Joseph Goebbels stripe. You...
...participation...
...Arab states, on the other hand, don't allow Jews to enter, let alone be citizens, and Jordan decrees the death penalty to any Arab selling land to a Jew...
...Dorothy R. Brown Kempton, Pennsylvania Before I had close association with the babies at the Sung Ro Won Babies' Home in Seoul (which was mentioned in Matthew Rothschild's article) and with adopted Korean children in Boston, I, too, opposed foreign adoption...
...In fact, Israel is the least repressive regime to have ruled in the West Bank and Gaza, and the only nation that may yet elect a leadership sensitive to Palestinian political needs, just as Israel has been the only nation in the region sensitive to their economic needs...
...I suspect it will cost you quite a few subscriptions...
...Same-race placements are the ideal, but a number of black social workers and sociologists have concluded that loving, realistic white parents are better than no permanent family at all...
...Saltsburg, PA 15681...
...Made in USA 123456789 1988 Mark 4 560 CS...
...Bernard Brodsky Brooklyn, New York Iviewed with fascination the amount of space devoted to Israel in the Comment section of The Progressive's February issue...
...The Palestinians have far too long been denied their political due...
...Virtually simultaneously, hundreds of thousands of Arabs, including Palestinians, departed Jewish territory in fear of their lives...
...Marianne Torres Oakland, California Babies for Sale Iam completely outraged by Matthew Rothschild's "Babies for Sale" (January issue...
...In Gaza, we were shown some spent gas canisters that had been used against Palestinian demonstrators...
...Anger, hate, and distortion only fan the flames of war...
...Unfortunately and ironically, while everyone claims self-righteously to be "only thinking of the children," it is the children who are the innocent victims of this glorified market we proudly call "adoption...
...WACAP also actively recruits families for older children, handicapped children, and sibling groups, and raises funds to subsidize these adoptions...
...I cite two examples where The Progressive has blundered into distortion...
...When the state of Israel came into being in 1948, Arab armies invaded...
...It is yellow journalism of the worst kind...
...I am most grateful to the black community, both friends and strangers, for advice and encouragement in raising my own black daughter...
...Second, to suggest that the PLO leadership is ready to talk peace ignores the PLO's key objective in the Palestinian National Covenant, which is the total dismemberment of the state of Israel and a total denial of a Jewish right of self-determination...
...What these people fail to realize is what I experience daily—the repercussions of being a Korean adoptee...
...I'm sure that for the governments involved, international adoption is big business...
...Robert Deitchman Akron, Ohio Ireturned recently from six days in Gaza, Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Nablus, and found "Eyeless in Gaza" to be right on the mark...
...I met some of the individuals he quoted, as I am directly and indirectly associated with Holt International Services, Inc...
...I was able to perceive that the children's opportunities and social mobility had improved...
...We seem to have forgotten the question...
...Black community opposition to transracial placement is not as monolithic as Rothschild's article indicated...
...They have been so denied by each successive ruler, but the new generation has been taught only that Israel is their oppressor...
...What is best for the children, orphanage or family...
...You redeemed your editorial integrity with the rest of the piece...
...Have we all loved our neighbors as ourselves...
...Eyeless in Gaza" neglects to point out that Semites have allowed themselves to be divided and seduced into destroying each other...
...These lands belonged to no Arab state...
...But it seems to me that you should view the Arabs with the same scrupulous eyes with which you view the Jews of Israel...
...In defending itself from the second Arab attack in 1967, Israel acquired not only non-Arab lands but lands that were originally Israel's, as defined by the Balfour Declaration, agreed to by fifty nations (including the United States) at Geneva, and reaffirmed by the League of Nations...
...Progressive forces for peace in the Middle East must attempt to achieve a human and durable compromise based on honest appraisals of the reality...
...Domestic adoptions can cost that much and more...
...One bore the following caption: "150 yd long-range projectile, Warning—may start fires, must not be fired directly at persons as death or injury may result, for outdoor use only...
...We do what is required of us in order to get our kids...
...We were told an "emergency" shipment of this type of tear gas had been flown in from the United States...
...Federal Laboratories, Inc...
...Racist" Israel allows Arabs every right that Jews have with but one exception: The right of the return is limited to Jews...
...It was while I was on a Holt Motherland Tour of Korea that I saw and felt, first-hand, the impact of these statistics and their revealing implications about the Korean government's heavy-handed involvement (as well as the U.S...
...the Western Association of Concerned Adoptive Parents, for example, sponsors children in South Korea, India, and the Philippines, and subsidizes a medical clinic in a barrio in Colombia...
...We don't buy our kids any more than someone who pays the $3,000 to $5,000 it takes to deliver a baby these days...
...Finally, I have found someone who reflects what I have unsuccessfully been trying to tell people for four years, ever since my first trip back to Korea since my adoption (at the age of five) in 1966...
...They lost that war, and over the next decade hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from or left their homes in Arab countries, usually penniless, their property and possessions having been confiscated by Arab governments eager to exact retribution for their defeat...
...I commend Rothschild for his informative article...
...First, to suggest that Israel engages in "state censorship and secrecy" omits that in Israel it is easy to pick up the Western press, including The Progressive, which would do well to seek similar access in the nondemocratic nations of the Middle East...
...Peace between the Jews and Arabs—all Arabs, including the Palestinians—can only be created upon a foundation of sincere recognition and acceptance of both people's rights to a secure life in the region...
...We adoptive parents love our kids...
...If those involved in the adoption industry were to confront the economic, political, social, cultural, and racist effects of Korean adoptions, perhaps more questions would be asked and Korea would be held more responsible for its actions...
...Peggy Lindquist Portland, Oregon Matthew Rothschild's informative piece did a good job of covering a complex issue, but a couple of his generalizations were too sweeping...
...We worked harder to get them than if we'd been able to make them...
...You state that Israel "seized" Judea and Samaria and Gaza...
...If you don't, The Progressive is as guilty as any racist in holding Arab nations to a different standard than it would expect of any other civilized people...
...Where is the scandal—in the adoption of Korean kids or in the way the issue was misrepresented to your readers under the guise of investigative reporting...
...David D. Knoll Cleveland, Ohio t is time for Jew, Palestinian, and Arab to unite and fight for each others' rights of self-determination...
...Jonathan Nemeth East Greenbush, New York Your editorial, "Eyeless in Gaza," was disturbing for its lack of historical perspective and its accusatory tone...
...The Arab governments refused to resettle their brethren and created a festering sore in the Middle East...
...Rothschild tries to further his premise—that Korean adoptions are big business— by using such inflammatory terms as "raw material" to refer to babies, "$5,000 a head," "adoption market," "largest supplier," and "tight domestic market...
...Not all agencies have given up sponsorship programs...
...Who could ever guess, from your journalistic prostitution, what were and are the facts...
...His facts to support this view are that many children are being adopted out of Korea by Americans and that a family pays about $5,000 for an adoption from Korea, $2,000 of which goes to the agency...
...And it would have had to substitute substance for sensationalism...
...Israel resettled the Jewish refugees...
...Arabs sit in the Knesset...
...Anne Mi Ok Bruining Cambridge, Massachusetts The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...And there's a lot more involved than paying out money, believe me...
...Israel has more right to those lands than the United States has to the lands it took from the Indians and from Mexico...
...Lee F. Dinsmore Elcho, Wisconsin Kudos and huzzahs for your courage in printing "Eyeless in Gaza...
...My concern is that an article like "Babies for Sale" undermines all of us who are working so that the hard-to-place—and all children—can grow up in families rather than in institutions...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...I searched through your filthy rag from cover to cover but could find nary a mention of Arab racism...
...The article, Rothschild, and perhaps even I will undoubtedly come under attack from the adoption industry, including adoption social workers, adoption agencies, and adoptive or pre-adoptive parents...
...The Jewish community must express its own outrage at the beatings, deportations, arrests, and killings of its Semitic brothers arid sisters...
...Now the sore is a canker...
...They are mayors of towns throughout Israel...
...Should Big Daddy America step in and teach them how to love their children better and not be so concerned about blood lines, or should we do what we are doing—offer to take the children they can't handle until they find a better solution...
...The brutalization of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank could have been and still can be avoided, but only by a constructive dialogue, and no dialogue can be constructive when it is clouded by mischaracterizations of fact and emotionally charged accusations...
...This anger is the biggest single obstacle to peace between the peoples of the region...
...Lane Morgan Sumas, Washington share Matthew Rothschild's concern about the number of babies being adopted from Korea, but in view of domestic prospects of adoption there, what's the alternative...
...I don't recall an editorial as long on any other country in the Middle East—not on the barbaric war between Iran and Iraq in which hundreds of thousands have died, not on Libya's invasion of Chad, not on the genocidal attacks being perpetrated against the Kurdish people, not on the Syrian massacre at Hama, not on the Moroccan war in the Western Sahara...
...Quite often, I do not feel like one of the "lucky ones...
...Rothschild's statistics are staggering...
...The first wave of black children adopted into white homes are young adults now, and studies find that they have a strong self-image and positive feelings about being black...
...it takes two to tango), the slick economic process, the less than progressive social system (which turns its hypocritical back on these children), the disturbing political denial, and the accepted cultural excuses, all of which function to meet the relentless demands of a disturbing trend that has lasted more than three decades...
...After twenty years of collective punishments, detentions without trial, continuous land expropriation, and slow strangulation of the Palestinian economy in the Occupied Territories, it should be very clear to the world who is victim and who is oppressor...
...I am an adult Korean adoptee...
...The United States is a racist environment...
...However, after mingling with the adopted children, mostly happy and cheerful, my attitude changed drastically...
...Am I trying to justify Israel's actions against the Palestinians...
...In the mire of conflict, an exchange of populations took place...
...I began reading the essay cautiously, and by the second paragraph I was angry with you for what appeared to be another "Israel as victim" approach...
...Chan H. Im Burke, Virginia Matthew Rothschild's "Babies for Sale" struck a personal, emotional chord for me...
...The Progressive might have done a good article about foreign adoptions, but to do that it would have had to give up all the preconceptions, the snappy market analogies, and such hard-hitting illustrations as the stork carrying a money-wrapped baby or the dollar-sign pacifier...
...The programs are supported by the donations and volunteer labor of adoptive parents who did not just buy a baby and run...
...Eyeless in Gaza" falls into the trap of the same destructive anger that has fanned the flames of hostility against Israel...
...they had been seized by the Arabs in 1948...
Vol. 52 • April 1988 • No. 4
