News

News & Letters to the Editor
06-27-01

Colombia, drugs and one lone Senator
MexiGo!	by Johnny Hazard
Publisher’s Note: Tillotson missed protest point	by Ed Felien
Police power—a public problem?	by Reilly Leibhard
Letters to the Editor	by People

Colombia, drugs and one lone Senator

The following news excerpts provide evidence that the “War on Drugs” perpetuated by the United States is, in fact, a war against the social-economic justice movement of the guerillas—specifically in Colombia. After these is a letter by Senator Paul Wellstone to Colombian General Martin Orlando Carreno.

BOGOTA (AP)—Three months ago, residents in northern Colombia sent President Andres Pastrana a desperate plea for protection: rumors were circling that rightist militiamen planned to attack their village. The warning went unheeded. An AUC death squad stormed Chengue on Wednesday, torching dozens of homes and hacking to death 26 people after accusing them of collaborating with leftist guerrillas. The killings at Chengue may have been avoidable.

IRELAND (The Irish Times)—Across ever-increasing regions of Colombia, the arrival of truckloads of paramilitary gunmen in isolated villages and towns, by day and by night, often abetted by local security forces, brings death and displacement to civilians on a daily basis. The strategic oil producing city of Barrancabermeja is six hours from Bogota.
Surrounded by rich oil deposits, the city was built on the banks of the Magdalena river, one of Latin America’s greatest waterways, to provide the work force for Ecopetrol, Colombia’s state-owned petrol refinery. Though little oil wealth remains in the city or the region, Ecopetrol pumps 75 percent of the nation’s oil production from Barrancabermeja’s grimy, polluted river port.
Although a combined contingent of army, navy and police is stationed here to provide security for Ecopetrol, their protection does not extend to Barrancabermeja’s quarter of a million inhabitants. On December 22, 140 of Castano’s AUC (United Self-Defense Groups) gunmen entered the impoverished, northeastern sector of the city unopposed and began systematically to terrorize one working-class neighborhood after another. The paramilitaries first came to the city in May 1998. Two truckloads of hooded, armed men drove past army and police checkpoints and pulled up on a local football field. It was around 10 o’clock on a Saturday night, and the neigborhood was holding a block party. When people heard gunfire they assumed, at first, that the revellers were setting off fireworks. The paramilitaries killed 11 young men that night, and abducted 25 others who were never seen again, alive or dead. Carlos Castano claimed they were dead and incinerated. Among the targets of these “macabre human huntsmen,” as a local newspaper described the killers, were doctors, teachers, secretaries, union members, municipal officials, taxi drivers, church workers, human rights defenders.
“The ‘paras’ make fun of us if we call the police. ‘What idiots you are to bring the army and police here,’ they say. ‘They work with us, didn’t you know?’ It’s the historic Latin American phenomenon,” says the Bishop.”
In moments like these an ultra-right appears to impose its own political and economic model. Based on the logic of force rather than the force of logic, it leaves no spaces for liberty, much less for human rights, or for economic and social development based on sustainability and consensus.
A prominent Barrancabermeja human rights defender agrees, and adds: “If this happens in Colombia we will have 20 years of dictatorship in this country.” Powerful economic forces are driving this AUC campaign. Barrancabermeja is the largest city in the Magdalena Medio, a region of vast potential wealth and strategic importance. In addition to oil, Colombia’s most important deposits of gold and nickel are buried in the San Lucas mountains north of the city and large cattle ranches and agro-industry dominate in the east. Yet 80 percent of Magdalena Medio’s economy comes from drugs; the fourth largest drug crop in the country, some 50,000 acres of coca plants, provides the cocaine that finances the AUC and underpins the political power of regional narcotraffickers.

Dear General Carreno:
Thank you for meeting with me and Ambassador Patterson when we visited Barrancabermeja in March. Our discussion was important, and I appreciated hearing your perspective, as the region’s chief military commander, on the violence in Barrancabermeja and the Magdalena Medio region.
During the debate surrounding Plan Colombia, the U.S. government and Colombia pledged to work to reduce the production and supply of cocaine while protecting the human rights of ordinary Colombian citizens against abuses by both guerilla and paramilitary groups alike. As you know, I had grave reservations about the U. S. government giving such a large military package to Colombian security forces which have yet to break long-standing ties with paramilitary units, responsible for daily
massacres and the bulk of human rights abuses in Colombia today.
On both of my visits to Colombia, I heard repeated reports of military-paramilitary collusion throughout the country, including in the southern departments of Valle, Cauca and Putamayo, as well as in the city of Barrancabermeja, which I visited in December and March.
Consistently, the military, in particular the army, was described to me as tolerating, supporting and actively coordinating paramilitary operations, which often ended in massacres. I was also told that too often detailed information was supplied to the military and other authorities about the whereabouts of armed groups, the location of their bases, and yet authorities were unwilling or unable to take measures to protect the civilian population or to pursue their attackers.
In that regard, I discussed with you the status and location of the San Rafael paramilitary base. The base is operating openly in an area under your command, and its
activities have directly caused much of the bloodshed in the region.
Almost three months after our meeting, however, it is my understanding that you have taken no effective action to curtail the operations of the San Rafael paramilitary base, and that it remains open for business.
For me and many of my colleagues in the Senate, the failure of Colombia security forces to take action against rising paramilitary violence is intolerable. U.S. public support for Plan Colombia will erode if the Colombian military does not take prompt, effective steps to end paramilitary operations, which too often result in atrocities.
I would appreciate it very much if you could reply to me with any information detailing specific actions you have taken or intend to take immediately against this paramilitary base. Thank you for your attention to this serious matter.

Paul D. Wellstone
U.S. Senator

MexiGo!
Two days south of the border, Three days past crazy

by Johnny Hazard

I moved to Mexico City a year ago after having carried on an above-average life in Minneapolis since I was born. With this I initiate a column about Mexico, which I will begin with the answers to commonly asked questions.
Why do I live in Mexico City?
For those who like the farmers’ markets in the Twin Cities during the few months that going there is feasible, think of Mexico City as one giant farmers’ market. For those who used to frequent Maxwell Street, the open-air contraband market in Chicago where John Lee Hooker sings in the film “The Blues Brothers,” Mexico City is also one giant Maxwell Street. (Maxwell Street was closed several years ago, after Mayor Daley the Younger—Richie, he likes to be called, so let’s call him Little Dick—was shocked, shocked, to discover that illegal merchandise was being sold there.)
In Mexico City there are hundreds of museums, thousands of restaurants and thousands of hotels, many of them cheaper than a taxi ride home. There are pyramids, forests and mountains in and close to the city. It was/is good enough for Gabriel García Márquez, Luis Buñuel, Jack Kerouac, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and thousands of refugees from fascism in Spain, Argentina, Chile and Guatemala, and it’s good enough for me.
Can you drink the water?
Yes. You can buy a three-gallon jug for about $1.50, you can boil tap water or you can purify it with one drop of very inexpensive colloidal silver or chlorine for every two liters. (P.S.: Trendy Minnesotans don’t drink tap water, anyway, so why is everybody always asking me this?)
Is it safe to take taxis?
Yes. There has been much international publicity, true but exaggerated, about robbery of passengers by taxi drivers and/or their accomplices in Mexico City. The police say it happens three to five times per day, and in almost all cases the perpetrators are unlicensed drivers of unlicensed taxis, easily identified and thus avoided. There are more than 100,000 taxis in the city, almost all driven by honest people, and there’s no problem hailing one within 30 seconds on a busy street, two minutes elsewhere. Most places are accessible by very frequent bus and train service, so taxis and cars are not daily necessities. (Another thing I like about living here: I never have to answer that stupid-ass question: “How can you live without a car?” which was a daily annoyance in Minneapolis.)
Is it safe to walk?
I guess not at night, but I do, anywhere any time, and have had no problem despite being obviously foreign and white in a place where white equals wealth, and living in a neighborhood with one of the highest reported crime rates. (Yes, there are many worse neighborhoods where no one bothers to report.) Walking is, of course, the best way to see the people, architecture, parks, food and stray dogs. I take the same minor precautions that I took in the United States: when in a risky area at night, walk in the street, not the sidewalk, look confident, establish brief eye contact with everyone I encounter. The best part is that here, unlike in the United States, no one is bigger than I am.
What about kidnappings?
The kidnapping legends stem largely from a semantic difference. The Spanish word, secuestrar, is also used to refer to robberies that involve detaining the victim for a few minutes or hours (secuestro express) while an accomplice takes a tour of cash machines and empties the victim’s accounts as much as possible. My precaution is simply not to carry cards, though some argue that this enhances the probability of a beating. Actual kidnappings that entail overnight detention or more, ransom demands, etc., are much more rare, happen mostly to executives and mostly in the north, not in Mexico City. (If it happens, don’t call the police; the kidnappers often are the police.) Though many Mexican and foreign executives don’t go anywhere without armored cars and guards, the Zapatista comandantes, during their recent tour, went all over the city in the backs of pick-ups with no problem, though they surely receive more death threats than any executive.
Is it safe to drive?
No, but why would you want to? There are a lot of carjackings, I’m told. I rarely ride in a car, and it does seem to be the least safe way to go. The traffic and local unsafe driving habits make it undesirable, but the mass transit is among the best in the world. (See above.)
What about pollution?
I’ll deal with that next month.

Talk to Johnny Hazard direct
from Mexico.
Email: jhazard99@yahoo.com

Publisher’s Note:
Tillotson missed protest point

by Ed Felien

Kristin Tillotson’s columns are always intelligent, always insightful and often amusing. They make the Sunday Strib worth its weight. But her column on June 24 criticizing the demonstrators at the Magic 8 fund-raiser at the new county jail missed the point.
The demonstrators were not criticizing the beneficiary of the fundraiser, the Crisis Nursery, where you can take kids if the parents are out of control, under the influence or in custody. The demonstrators did point out that such a program should not be dependent on charity, but it is in the interest of the community that those children be cared for by public funding.
Rather, the demonstrators were critical of the “jailhouse mock,” as Tillotson so cleverly puts it. People who went to the fund-raiser might have had exotic fantasies of the Marquis de Sade or Oscar Wilde, but the reality is that the jail will be used to house mostly young men of color whose major crime is poverty. Most of them will be casualties of the war on drugs. They will be caught in possession of small amounts of marijuana or crack cocaine. People of color don’t do most of the drugs in this country. White people do. But white people do it in the suites and poor people do it in the streets.
The mockery was cruel, certainly unintentionally, but cruel nevertheless.
It is one more example of how out of touch the people who run this community are with the people who are being run.
Just before the Bastille was torn down and the French Revolution began, the women of Paris marched on Versailles demanding bread. That’s when Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake.” It’s actually always been a bad translation. What she meant was let them eat the crusts of the bread that the royals threw away. In any case, when the mob heard that, their fury led to the Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
The gulf between the very rich and the very poor in America is wider than it’s ever been. Affordable housing is an impossibility. The only jobs for poor people are minimum wage where the health care plan is “Don’t get sick.” People of color are busted for looking like criminals. Our public schools are a mess, and a college education is beyond the means of the working poor.
For many people, these are hard times.
The people who run this city and this county better pray those poor people never get it together, because if they did the first thing they might do is tear down that $96 million Bastille downtown.

Police power—a public problem?

by Reilly Leibhard

It’s a creature comfort we’d all love to have. It boils the swirling multitude of experience and perception down into one simple image. It projects the Real Deal with a minimum of effort . . . no bias, no interference, infinite clarity and resolution. (Eat your heart out, DVD). With this little gizmo, you can see both sides of any situation all at once. With a nod to George Orwell’s term for the simultaneous acceptance of conflicting information, it’s called the DoubleView.
And, as we all know, it doesn’t exist.
Which makes it all the more difficult to engage in any sort of meaningful dialogue on the relationship between Minneapolis police and the residents whom they are supposed to serve and protect. And, by extension, tougher-to-answer questions of right and wrong in a recent incident involving two Minneapolis police officers and New Brighton resident Michael Forcia.
Did the boys in blue, hampered by the stress inherent in patrolling a city of 400,000 souls, simply make the best decisions they could with their limited information? Or were their forceful actions against this Native American man actually indicative of a larger pattern of distorted justice for ethnic minorities, a symptom of a general campaign of fear and terror in the City of Lakes?
As usual, both sides of the stereoscope seem to agree on some basic portions of the image. Nov. 1, 1999, Forcia was attending a function at the Elaine M. Stately PeaceMaker Center, a major Native American community gathering point located at 23rd Street and Cedar Avenue. On a brief stroll outside, Forcia observed a peculiar situation taking place in a nearby intersection. After some time, he left the scene on foot and was arrested by Minneapolis police officers R. C. Fuller and B. E. Sand, who forcefully subdued Forcia (as noted in the police report). Forcia has since filed a lawsuit against the officers for assault, battery and violation of his civil rights. He is being represented by Larry Leventhal, a local attorney who specializes in civil rights cases.
In this particular incident, the uncertainties arise when one attempts to determine just why force was deemed necessary. According to a press release issued by the Stately Center, Forcia noticed four Native American females being dragged by police officers through the intersection of 24th and Cedar. He ran back into the building to inform Stately Center director Clyde Bellecourt, and both men returned outside in an attempt to determine what was going on. By this time, Forcia’s family had become interested, and he ran to shepherd them back into the building for their own safety. At this time, the press release states, Forcia was violently pushed to the ground by the officers, sustaining significant injuries to his shoulder and head. Forcia now complains of migraine headaches and says he’s nearly unable to continue with the daily operation of his New Brighton business.
The actual public record of the incident is only marginally informative. It simply notes that Forcia was subdued with force at the scene of a stolen vehicle, cited for disorderly conduct and released at the Hennepin County Jail.
Tim Skarda, the city attorney representing officers Fuller and Sand, was able to elaborate. “The officers followed a stolen car, which ended up facing west in the intersection of 24th and Cedar. The females in the street had been stopped by another squad car, and the officers being sued had actually come up looking to see if any reinforcement was needed.”
As for Forcia, Skarda said, “You can draw your own assumptions as to why you might stop someone running from the scene of a stolen car. The stories diverge from that point on.”
If one looked into Skarda’s side of the opera glasses, it would appear that this particular case belonged in the same file with the many police operations which do pass without incident and preserve public safety. A skeptic, however, might notice some parallax when she looks through the other lens, and her observations would not be entirely off the mark. Even Skarda “had no opinion . . . at this preliminary point” when asked whether the officers truly considered it necessary or logical to use force against Forcia (whose business, incidentally, is a doughnut shop).
Twin Cities lore is rife with tales of police power run amok, many of which are apocryphal but some of which are completely true. Just ask the young Asian-American pulled over by police who “didn’t think a guy like [him] should be driving this kind of car.” Or the black men accused of “gang activity” when they were merely playing basketball in a public park. Or journalists and lawyers at the ISAG genetics protest last July, who were beaten and pepper-sprayed when they asked for the badge numbers of Minneapolis officers.
Forcia’s attorney, Larry Leventhal, has handled such cases for quite some time. As one might expect, he’s at the forefront of those who question the motivations of some Minneapolis officers.
“I would have no speculation” as to the motivations of officers Fuller and Sand, said Leventhal. “[Forcia] certainly wasn’t a viable target for arrest, and I’m sure the officers knew that their actions were harassment and not a legitimate arrest.” He said the very presence of the patrolmen was dubious: “We allege in the complaint that the purpose of their being present was to harass members of the American Indian community.”
But it’s not just the case of Michael Forcia, said Leventhal. “There is a long history in Minneapolis of actions taken against members of the American Indian community that have been brutal and out of proportion to what members of the majority community would expect. We’re aware of others,” Leventhal said, citing his involvement with a highly publicized 1996 case in which two American Indians were locked in the trunk of a police car.
With or without the presence of racism and unnecessary roughness, it’s tough for outside observers to have a total understanding of any police case. Even a video camera might record a falsehood or two, depending on the angle from which the footage was taken. Forcia’s experience is no different. Only those who were present at the PeaceMaker Center that day can fairly claim to know whether officers Fuller and Sand were acting in the public spirit to apprehend a man whom they considered suspicious, or merely taking advantage of their ability to intimidate and use force. But one thing’s for certain: Forcia’s case serves as a landmark in the ongoing debate over the proper nature of American justice. Do we wish to aim for a 100 percent apprehension rate, risking the possibility of a Brave New World in which innocent men and women are beaten and wrongfully arrested? Or is there inherent in America’s social contract a bargain which limits the powers of the police, taking a chance that some evildoers will “get away with it” in order that we might all reap the fruits of maximized freedom? It’s food for thought for all of us—police and civilians alike.

Letters to the Editor

by People

Crocker shows that solar can save cash and earth

Hats off to George Crocker for his alternative energy efforts (June 20) but his figure of $27,000 for his solar array is much more than a household has to spend to be completely free of electric bills.
As a retailer of alternative energy technology, the first thing I tell somebody interested in solar or wind technology is to be sure they have an efficient house first. That means super-insulation, compact fluorescent lighting and modern efficient appliances, if you must have all the appliances. In most cases you can do without dumb and wasteful appliances such as clothes dryers, electric toothbrushes, oversized refrigerators, giant TVs, etc., etc.. For every dollar you spend doing this, you will save $3 on solar and wind tech installation.
For $10 to $12 thousand dollars you can be free of electric bills for life, and more frugal and resourceful folks can spend a lot less.
The prices on solar and wind tech have come down a little in the last 30 years. Not much, but a little, while electric costs will probably continue to increase around the world. The biggest breakthrough is intertying inverters that not only change the DC current to AC current, they also put the current in phase with the power company’s current so you can send it onto the grid, turn your electric meter backwards and supply electricity to the whole continent. This is called “net metering” and is now done in most states across the country.
Another big plus is taking advantage of the state’s incentives for all renewable (free) energy technologies. There are good incentives right here in Minnesota. The state will pay up to half of the installation costs. Like a New York customer of mine said, “it’s a no brainer”.
If you are running a business there are big depreciation write-offs as well and much more.
Do more with less until you can do everything with nothing.
Don Johnson
Minneapolis

Palestine/Israel: Do you know your ABCs?

I just finished reading letters to the editor in response to Jennifer Gulbrandson’s cover story “Just Another Day Under Israeli Occupation.” Like some letter writers, “I am so upset I do not know where to start.” But I will try to be calm. Rather than escalate the debate, I mean to open it. I challenge and support the editor to keep this discussion ongoing, despite the backlash he is receiving.
I am a Jewish woman with family who lived in Haifa from 10 generations ago, prior to the Zionist project. I just returned from living in Ramallah, the West Bank, Occupied Palestine for eight months. I was involved there in nonviolent demonstrations and acts of grassroots international intervention and solidarity. In the nonviolent demonstrations in which I participated—such as dismantling with our bare hands the roadblocks that prevent thousands of people from accessing vocation, trade, basic services and even emergency medical treatment—I cannot tell you how many people I saw shot, wounded and killed. I lost count.
After the first murder I witnessed of the man standing in front of me, I grew numb. Then it was just a stream of bodies—the guy with his head blown off, the little boys so small you don’t even need a stretcher for them, and old women—carried off into ambulances which every single time were shot at by the Israelis directly on the driver’s side of the windshield. Ambulances turned back at checkpoints.
Throughout this Intifada/Israeli Siege, what I witnessed was an overwhelmingly nonviolent struggle within civil society for justice. Every one of the endless demonstrations I attended began as marches with signs, banners and chants. The Israelis shot first every single time before any rocks were thrown. Rocks—thrown at armored jeeps—seldom hit fenders—stones that are a symbolic way of saying, “We will resist our oppression, even if you have a tank and I have a rock.” In fact, the Israeli soldiers even shot at some of our demonstrations when we were singing “we shall overcome” and no stones were thrown even after the Israeli soldiers began and continued to shoot us! Every night I went to sleep to the sound of shells falling on the nearby school for blind children. I walked to do my shopping past 10-year-old boys with patches over their eyes. How come all of them in the eye? Accident? That’s quite a
sharp-shooting accident.
The death toll for the Israelis is about 100, the death toll for the Palestinians about 600. Numbers cannot reflect the losses. The Palestinians also have about 20,000 wounded civilians, some in critical condition and many permanently disabled while hospitals are being attacked and medical clinics destroyed. I had to walk through streets of crippled people, through the human traffic of funerals, which become demonstrations, which become more funerals, just to get a can of soda.
And that’s just Area A.
Area A is like a vacation. Don’t know what that is? Learn your ABCs. I’ll be happy to help you. Then maybe we can have a conversation. In Areas B and C—where the majority of people live in villages completely surrounded by clusters of Israeli settlements such as Ariel, which even within Barak’s generous offer were set to remain permanently, in order to maintain permanent military bases—life is much worse. The children cannot breathe. The tear gas day and night being thrown at their windows has damaged their respiratory systems, maybe irrevocably at this point. I have even tried to scream at the soldiers pleading, “the children are being taken to the hospital.” But then they shot at me so I ran back inside the house I was visiting.
Night and day there are settlers attacking, backed up by soldiers, shooting into the villages and
screaming “Death to the Arabs,” burning down property, even marching into schools in broad daylight and shooting the kids. The soldiers shot my friend in the middle of the day while he was standing outside his house bringing the kids inside as the troops stomped through the village. They threw a stun grenade into his brother’s face and then pointed an M-16 at his head and threatened to shoot anyone who would try to bring my friend to an emergency medical vehicle. It took 30 minutes before he was permitted to be taken to a hospital. Now
he is paralyzed.
This is only a partial list of what I have witnessed in the past eight months. What is happening is called ethnic cleansing. The death toll in baseball terms may be 100 to 600, but this isn’t baseball. The figures do not describe the conditions of life the Palestinians are living under, which is a fabric torn from the seams of hell that you cannot imagine without knowing it firsthand. One side goes out dancing in nightclubs when it gets dark (a nightclub right next to the Russian compound where Palestinian detainees are being interrogated and tortured while listening to people laughing and drinking and dancing). The other side sits in fear inside their homes or is under forced curfew. I have lived on both sides and I am not sure the realities are in the same universe.
This is an army—one of the most powerful in the world—against a civilian population. This Israeli army has an intact infrastructure and state and a government capable to give orders to kill—or not to kill. The Palestinians do not have an intact infrastructure, state or government capable of telling anyone anything in particular. I will let you in on a little secret. Not even Chairman Arafat can stop suicide bombers. Only justice can. And no, Mr. Baehr, of course it is not the collaborators that are killing the Israelis. (Although, as far as shots at night go toward the settlements and collaborators/Israelis doing it, I can tell you only one inside scoop: The Israeli settlers chartered several buses and brought children to recently stand on the roof of Gilo settlement to watch the shelling. The point is, they had to schedule the occurrence and charter the buses, get it? And if it was so dangerous to the Israelis, why were they standing on the roof at the time eating treats?) People who have come to understand that violence is the only language the Israelis reward are killing the Israelis. Thus far they are absolutely correct. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called the ceasefire after the suicide bomber at the mall. The Israelis are rewarding violence. Otherwise, why do they renew negotiations only after their own death toll is on the rise and why do they shoot nonviolent protestors?
Violence is less of a threat to Israel’s existence in its present racist and fascist form than nonviolent public demonstrations and freedom of expression and the struggle for the exposure of truth, liberation and democracy and the end to Zionist apartheid. Violence should not be rewarded. But unfortunately it is—and it will be that way indefinitely until the international community takes a stand and insists upon international protection for the Palestinian people. Then, with the protection of the innocent, with freedom of expression, with the complete and total withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, can a discussion toward justice—toward what justice even means—begin.
I will let you in on another secret: the occupation is violence. There can be no negotiations under violence. When and if we finally reach it, it will be a long discussion—even prior to any successful or worthwhile negotiations—since currently even Israeli researchers are censored and taken to court for daring to publish their findings concerning what really did occur in the Palestinian massacres of 1947 and 1948. There is a lot to talk about before signing any deals or even bringing them to the table.
I hope that those who become defensive of Israel and upset can take a deep breath and consider, have they ever visited or lived in the West Bank or Gaza? Jennifer Gulbrandson has. I have. Rather than condemning Gulbrandson, we should all thank her for bringing back the truth and taking the effort to inform us and encourage us to think about it. I am sorry if this hurts some of those who feel for the Jewish people and for their difficult history. They are my people, too. My journey to the truth was very painful. But my people have no right to kill the Palestinians, steal their land, destroy their communities and culture and leave them refugees from their homeland. My people have no right to disregard international law and U.N. resolutions. Our history is not the fault of the Palestinians.
But the Palestinian history of recent generations is the fault of my people. After nearly 6,000 years of experience and survival, I think that my people can find more creative and ultimately sustainable ways to survive than by becoming murderers and war criminals or by choosing to be those who defend or support them.

Tzaporah Ryter
Minneapolis

Borderline anti-semitism lacks legitimacy of ideals

As a left-leaning Jew, who has generally been sympathetic to the Palestinian side of the Middle East conflict, I have been deeply hurt by much of what has been printed in the past few issues of Pulse. There are legitimate concerns that I, and many others, hold regarding the current government in Israel. There should be a Palestinian state, and overall Palestinans are treated unfairly by mainstream corporate media. As a left-leaning Jew, I am supportive when I see legitimate criticisms of the Israeli government presented in alternative media.
However, in the past few issues I have seen things in the comic section, and in the editorial section which cross the line of legitimate criticism, and read as hate speech to me. Vaughn Klingenberg wrote, “both nations have been founded on a master race ideology. In fact, it is easy to argue that . . . to be an Israeli is to be, de facto, a Jewish Nazi, whether you are in a peace movement or not.”
Well, most Jewish Americans have friends and relatives who are Israeli, so to attack all Israelis as being Nazis, is to inflame an entire ethnic group in this country. Vaughn’s statement is false, propagandistic and goes beyond legitimate political discourse. It is indeed hate speech, intended to inflame an entire community. My Israeli friends and relatives are good people, who believe in peace, as well as respect the Palestinians. I hope my relationship with them makes me, de facto, a good person.
I can no longer read the Pulse, because I do not believe that this type of hate speech targeted toward any other ethnic group would have been allowed to be printed in a left-leaning publication. So, the only explanation that fits is latent anti-semitism. As a Jewish leftist, it is disturbing to me that anti-semitism is not only tolerated by the Pulse readers, but is embraced as legitimate political commentary. I don’t need to be hurt anymore by reading a publication that has language in it designed to do psychological violence to me and my people. I hate Ariel Sharon, but I am proud to be Jewish, and I am proud to be connected to my Israeli friends and family, including my Arab friends in Israel. Pulse, thanks for what you’ve given in the past, but obviously as Jewish Peacenick, I no longer feel welcome by your publication.
Jordan Stein
Minneapolis

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