TO CLARIFY

Thank you for the recent article about the Greater Portland Chamber of Commerce debate. With six candidates, it was a difficult format to get across detailed information, and your reporter did a good job of capturing much of the information bouncing around the room. But just for the record, I want to cover two points:

1. I do not favor a “sales tax hike” to offset the property tax. I do believe the property tax is too high and the best way to lower it is to control spending. I also believe we should consider a broader sales tax base, but only in the context of an overall cap on government spending so that Maine people are not worse off by the “reform.”

2. Your reporter is right that I do not favor a taxpayer-funded so-called “clean election” law for a statewide gubernatorial race. At a time when the state is running huge deficits, putting up millions of taxpayer dollars for any number of candidates seems a strange priority. However, I do not have the same concern for state legislative races with very modest limits.

Again, thanks for an informative article on a series of complex issues.

David T. Flanagan

Independent Candidate For Governor

BRUDNOYęS DIATRIBE REVISITED

James Brudnoy’s diatribe against the Palestinian people makes the ravings of Rush Limbaugh look tame (“The Case for Israel,” May 24, 2002). We should certainly expect a more objective and balanced view from a professor in the College of Communication at Boston College and a radio talk-show host (WBZ, Boston). Brudnoy points to Ariel Sharon as a democratically elected head of state and decries he is likened to Hitler. Lest we forget, Adolf was also democratically elected, and used the Jews as scapegoats to further his aims. Twenty years ago, Sharon was complicit in the massacre of over 1000 men, women, and children by the Christian Phalangists at the Sabra refugee camp. We may rightly ask, what were the citizens of Israel thinking when they elected (by an overwhelming vote, no less) a notorious “butcher” (so named because of the Sabra massacre) as their prime minister?

Brudnoy speaks of nearly 500 Israeli deaths, but fails to mention that the ratio of Palestinian deaths to that of Israelis is approximately five to one. No one in their right mind condones the killing of innocents by suicide bombers. However, Brudnoy’s attempts to impugn the efforts of the Palestinians to establish a homeland (as did the Jews in 1948), is to resort to demagoguery at its worst.

Phoenix readers deserve more from a man of Brudnoy’s status. Hopefully, the editors will give equal space in a future edition for a responsible response to Brudnoy’s rantings against the Palestinians.

Petros Panagakos

South Portland

TWO WRONGS?

As a child I was taught that “two wrongs don’t make a right,” an old adage that still holds true today. This viewpoint, according to David Brudnoy (“The Case for Israel,” May 24-30, 2002), is not true, two wrongs do make a right. Brudnoy sheepishly uses the right and wrong issue, or should I say the wrong and wrong issue, throughout his article. In the case of Israel versus the Palestinians, so many wrongs can be attributed to both sides for the past 30 years that no right can ever be achieved. Both combatants in the Middle East have gone to such extremes within the past year that nothing but bleakness seems inevitable for the near future. Prime minister Ariel Sharon, the butcher of Sabra and Shatila, and PLO leader Yasser Arafat, terrorist extraordinaire, are the worst possible representatives for their people. Both parties have contributed equally to bloodshed and continue undermining negotiations for a lasting peace. Both antagonists must give up their elected positions for the betterment of the masses who are greatly suffering from hostilities that are being directed from both sides. The two leaders should step aside — calmer and clearer heads are needed.

Two issues that Mr. Brudnoy did not include in his article were water rights (the region’s aquifer is under the West Bank) and Jewish settlements built within the Gaza and the West Bank. Both issues are a bone of contention to the Palestinians that need to be addressed before anyone talks of peace or Palestinian statehood.

Les Eastman

Greene

SEMANTICS REVISITED

Martin Shields’s letter (in response to David Brudnoy’s article in the May 24 Portland Phoenix) has left my head spinning. He claims that: because Phoenicians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Cannanites are all descendants of Shem who fall under the category of Semites, because they all speak Semitic languages, and because “linguistic classifications are the only sensible classifications worth making where Semitism is concerned”; somehow anti-Semitism is a meaningless word. Huh?

The word “anti-Semitism” was coined by Wilhelm Marr, an anti-Semite himself, to replace the German word Judenhass (Jew-hatred). It was meant to sound less vulgar and more scholarly, but make no mistake it was and is still always a term to denote hatred of Jews, Judaism, and (more recently) Zionism. So Mr. Shields’s statement that “any religious or ethnic classification” conveyed by this term “in the popular imagination of propagandists . . . is delusional” is ludicrous. Anti-Semitism is not some willy-nilly term coined by people to cry foul, it is very real and carries with it a meaning that doesn’t pertain to a linguistic classification of people. By the way Mr. Shields, what makes Mr. Brudnoy a “propagandist”?

The rest of Mr. Shield’s letter is equally stymied by false premises and hyperbole.

We can argue all day about whether Israeli occupation leads to greater Palestinian insurgency or Palestinian violence leads to a tighter Israeli grip on occupied territory. Obviously these actions inflame each other. Fundamental to the conflict we are witnessing today is this singular fact: The PLO, which was established in January of 1964 (before the Six-Day War in which Israel captured the West Bank), established as its primary mandate the elimination of Israel. This means that Israel has to be pretty damned certain that they do everything they can to protect their sovereign statehood and its citizens. This means that trust is now something earned by, not granted to Palestinians. It is daunting to imagine what truly valuable contributions Palestinians would be making to society if their ruling party had embraced a policy of co-existence. To suggest that the terrorist bombings delivered by the Hamas, Al-Aksa, and others is inevitable because of their condition spits in the face of all dignified and enlightened resistance movements of the past. The Palestinians are in a desperate situation, to be sure, but the reasons for that are complex and not only the result of Israeli policies.

Lastly, Mr. Shields suggests that Arafat is still in power because the Knesset can so easily manipulate him and that Israel would realize their error in “removing” him if he were to be replaced by an “intelligent statesman.” Good God man! What are you reading? I think we can at least agree that Arafat has been a disaster for Palestinians and Israelis. He has sent his people to slaughter for false hopes. Arafat is still in power because he has lots of money, lots of weapons, and is not particularly fond of elections. If Arafat were a true and intelligent statesman as was Anwar Sadat, Israel would have peace, Palestinians would have a state and all of the privileges therein accorded, and I wouldn’t have to read jive-ass letters like Mr. Shields’s.

Barak Olins

South Freeport

FACT OR FICTION?

David Brudnoy’s attempt to stake out exclusive high moral ground for Israel in its struggle with the Palestinians is an entertaining piece of polemical fiction (“The Case for Israel: Is Israel Justified?,” Portland Phoenix, May 24, 2002). Let’s take a more sober look at exactly what Brudnoy thinks Israel is justified in doing.

To be sure, suicide bombings of Israeli citizens are unjustifiable atrocities that hurt Palestinian causes much more than they help them. But is the US-backed Israeli program of occupation, collective punishment, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as Brudnoy suggests, moral and justified? Brudnoy has no good argument in favor of this except to screech, based on some cloddish AM-radio callers, that critics of Israel are historically uninformed, anti-Semitic, and support those who would murder Jews.

The facts of the Israeli occupation are stark and undisputed in the international and human rights community: Israel has conducted assassinations (essentially summary executions without the benefit of trial); demolition of vast numbers of homes of Palestinian civilians, destroyed Palestinian agricultural production, and killed Palestinians in numbers several times higher than Brudnoy quotes as the toll of the suicide bombings. All this goes on while land continues to be appropriated for illegal Israeli West Bank settlements. This is a brutal, unforgiving occupation that the Israelis have maintained for 35 years.

In response, the world community — save one exceedingly important member, the United States — has repeatedly condemned Israel for its practices, not for reasons of anti-Semitism. Brudnoy should check the historical record. It’s far too long and tangled to cover it all here, but one recent example will suffice. When 114 countries met last December concerning the 4th Geneva Convention — in order to issue an official declaration which condemned Israeli settlements and “grave breaches” including willful torture, killing, unlawful deprivation of rights to fair and regular trial, and destruction of property carried out willfully and wantonly — the United States boycotted the meeting. The effect of such US action is that the judgment of the world is effectively muted and Israel is free to continue its repressive policies. No audible peep could be heard in the US media. This has been the pattern for over three decades.

Meanwhile, Brudnoy feels free to paint all Arabs with the brush of “rabid juvenile delinquents routinely employed in the slaughter of innocents” who are simply not grown-up, civilized adults. Curious that a guy who rightly finds any form of anti-Semitism reprehensible could engage in this form of anti-Arab bigotry.

Eric T. Olsen

Veazie

MISUNDERSTANDING

Arch-conservative and Libertarian writer David Brudnoy expresses a similar misunderstanding that John Ashcroft and George W. Bush exhibit toward the Middle East (“The Case For Israel,” May 24).

Mr. Brudnoy describes Europeans, and by association Americans, who abhor violence in the Middle East as “ ‘proponents of peace, aided by unruly mobs of Arab thugs, proclaim their peaceful urgings in fine Orwellian style by burning synagogues, beating up Jewish kids playing soccer, and harassing old folks ambling along the streets.’ ” He then goes on to describe “peace-mongers” as anti-Semites.

Mr. Brudnoy confuses peace advocates with Neo-Nazis. How can this be?

But more importantly, he simply cannot understand that people may disagree with the position he and George W. Bush espouse AND that these same people are as equally American as he.

We may disagree with you, Mr. Brudnoy, and our President, and that does not make us anti-Jewish.

I am truly afraid that the thinking of Mr. Ashcroft and Brudnoy and this War on Terrorism will become a cancer that will turn on itself — and begin to destroy the very fabric of American freedoms and liberties, and will pit Americans against one another because of a difference of opinions.

The problem does not lie with people who disagree with you, Mr. Brudnoy and Mr. Ashcroft.

The problem lies with violence in the Middle East. Turn your attention to where it belongs, Mr. Brudnoy, rather than degrading your neighbors who happen to have another opinion than you.

The solution to the Middle East crisis lies with the brilliance of the American Jewish leaders who printed their view in the New York Times, May 31. In part, their piece read:

“We therefore call on the United States to take two actions at once, and simultaneously:

1. Bring about the creation of an international force to protect both Israelis and Palestinians from violence.

2. Call a regional peace conference including Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and all the Arab states, and peace-committed religious leaders and leaders of civil society in the region, to take up at once the Saudi proposals for regional peace endorsed by the Beirut Conference and the peace proposals that came close to agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority at Taba late in 2000.”

We have seen the success of peace-making in our lifetimes with Gandhi and King, Jr., South Africa, Northern Ireland, and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the integration of Russia into the West. None of this happened through war.

We must expand our view beyond a “War on Terrorism” and encourage this dialogue with the highly respected spiritual, religious, political, and business leaders in the Middle East region.

America must turn its view toward peace-making in order to create a peaceful Middle East. America must also allow all of her citizens to differ, and to live in freedom and dignity, without the threat of being a casualty of its “War on Terrorism.”

Frederick Lancaster

Falmouth

 

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