8The Daily Tar HeelThursday, September 9. 1982
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POri .year of editorial freedom
John Dbjescher, ej.
ANN PETERS, Managing Editor
KERRY DEROCHI, Associate Editor
Rachel Perry, imWraVy Eiw
ALAN CHAPPLE. City Editor
JlM WRINN, State and National Editor
Linda Robertson, Sports Editor
KEN MlNGIS. A iuxiate Editor
ELAINE MCCLATCHEY, Projects Editor
SUSAN HUDSON, Features Editor
Leah T alley, Am tax
. Teresa Curry, Weekend Editor
AL STEELE, Photography Editor
Joseph Berryhill, Laura Seifert, nu fifom
jl firsts -..there s juist pstiii
By ARCHER GILLIAM
Reagan's plan
President Ronald Reagan's Middle East peace proposal should ensure
that the United States will take a more active role in developing a lasting
settlement in that war-torn region. Before the plan can become a reality,
however, the Reagan ( administration must first accept the added respon
sibility of bringing to the negotiating table Israel and her Arab neighbors.
The president's plan, announced last week, met with immediate
criticism and rejection by Israel and only mild acceptance from most
Arab countries. But by proposing the eventual creation of an indepen
dent Palestinian state, the president reaffirmed the basic principles of the
Camp David accords and made possible a lasting peace for the Middle
East.
The administration' has much work ahead if it is to keep the peace pro
cess moving forward ! and must overcome strong Israeli objections to the
plan. Under Reagan's proposal, Israel would be forced to withdraw from
the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, while also placing an immediate
freeze on the number of Jewish settlements being established there.
What has angered Israel even more is the proposal for an autonomous
Palestinian state. Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon has said that his
country never will accept such a state along the West Bank; and, in a
diplomatic slap in the face to the president, Israel Sunday appropriated
$18.5 million for three new Jewish settlements on the West Bank.
However, Israel cannot be the lone targer of the president's peace ini
tiative. Arab nations should finally recognize Israel's right to exist peace
fully. That lack of recognition, more than any other issue, was a sticking
point in the Camp David accords.
So far only Egypt has officially said that the plan has some good
points and only Egypt seems ready to begin negotiations. Other Arab na
tions, in a summit meeting this week, hinted about a response, None of
the countries have yet taken a formal stand.
Israel is right to question the plan; after all, it should not be forced to
accept a Palestinian state near its border when the Arabs will not even
recognize its right to exist. A Palestinian state under such conditions
would likely be a threat to Israeli national security. That is why Reagan
also is calling for Arab recognition of Israel.
Israel's rejection of the plan and a statement by a Palestine Liberation
Organization leader calling on Arab countries to "wipe out" Israel,
shows how important the American proposals will be to future negotia
tions. During the recent Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Israel said its only
goal was to eliminate foreign forces from that country. But recently Israel
has pressured Lebanon to sign a peace treaty, a move that has raised
Arab suspicion. The implication is that if Lebanon does not sign, Israeli
troops will not withdraw.
Israel should agree to pull out of Lebanon and stop the introduction of
new Jewish settlements in the occupied Arab regions. Equally important,
Arab nations must agree that Israel is, and will remain, a permanent fix
ture in the Middle East. Only after those steps have been taken can any
peace talks have a chance for success. The United States cannot afford to
present its plan, and then sit idly by, hoping the Israelis and the Arabs will
agree to talk.
Suddenly a phone call comes. You never expected it.
How do you deal with the words, "They've done ex
ploratory surgery on your mother; she has lung cancer?"
flow do you deal with this knowledge when you're
across an ocean, y 3,000 miles away from home?
How could you deal with it even if you had heard all the
coughing and witnessed all the trips to the doctor, had
been right there?
The first thing that comes is a pain, a weight on your
own chest, as if the awful sickness had somehow found
its way to you. You feel as if you yourself are dying. You
want to die. There's a huge black empty hole somewhere
deep inside you You hate everyone and everything, you
want to scream and hit, scratch, bite,- flail out, punish
SOMEONE for doing this to her. Why to her? She never
deserved it.
What can vou do so very far away? Should you leave,
when you have almost finished your one year of studying
abroad? And even if you stay, can you go on living with
yourself? You can't not without constantly thinking of
her there, in that huge impersonal hospital, in pain, all
doped up, lying so sick without your special help. You
never can get the image out of your head, even when
you're exploring the Costa del Sol of Spain, or hanging
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
out at "Discoteca La Reja or watching a bullfight in
Seville.
So you learn to live in spite of the awful fear, the feel
ing that something dreadful will happen and no one will
let you know in time. You find out what time planes
leave for America so as to save time if she suddenly
worsens and you have to leave. You go abom ihc
You hate everyone and everything, you
want to scream and hit, scratch, bite,
flail out, punish SOMEONE for doing
this to her ... you want to question so
meone, whoever it is who's supposed
to be there listening, 'Why?'
business of attending classes, meeting the natives, speak
ing the language, learning to understand the culture. For
after all, that was the object of going away in the first
place and you know your mother would want you to go
about your business in spite of her. You manage to hide
your hopelessness from your friends, most of the time,
and present a reasonably normal facade to the world.
Yet you've always got that black creature tearing up
your insides, clapping a deathgrip on your heart.
Walking down the street, it suddenly grabs hold of
you and you just want to cry. You're at the beach with
friends and you realize with awful desperation that she
might never again see the ocean that she loves so much.
Sitting in a church service, you want to question someone,
whoever it is who's supposed to be there listen
ing, "Why?" ' You wonder again and again if you
should go home, but then what could you really do there
anyway? Nothing seems to matter much anymore. How
can you obliviously drink and dance away at the Spring
Fair of Feria, knowing that she's too weak to everr walk
across a room?
And in the end there's really no answer. No one can
help you through it; you must help yourself. You must
find your own strength. Life and health and living
become very important. And a mighty strong lesson
comes to you: live and breathe and strive for the best
TODAY, for you never know what tomorrow will bring.
Archer Gilliam, a senior International Studies major
from Atlanta, Ga., spent her junior year in Seville,
Spain.
lock seating policy tightened up
Incredible pass
UNC students, don't take a bow. Forget the curtain call. There won't
be any standing ovation.
In the past students have gotten away with poor attendance at produc
tions by the Playmakers Repertory Company. At last year's plays, less
than 10 percent of the audience was students.
It doesn't make sense. Only a handful of campuses nationwide have
professional repertory companies on campus. The professionals have
brought big name actors to campus and performed new plays sometimes
later seen on Broadway.
Well, no more of this. This year, members of the company have
created "The Incredible Student Pass." For only $15, students can see
five plays. With PRC single tickets for a play averaging $7.50 on
weekdays and $9.50 on weekends, it's a great buy. It's any play, any
time.
In anticipation of the season's opening Sept. 22, Chapel Hill town of
ficials have declared this week as Playmakers Repertory Company Week.
Beginning with the musical Life on the Mississippi, the season will include
Pymaglion, a comedy by George Bernard Shaw and The Greeks, the
Royal Shakespeare Company's interpretation of the Greek play cycles.
The scripts are assigned, the costumes made. The season is set.
'But so far only 55 students have bought the new pass. When the box
office opens today, about 450 tickets will be left.
Don't wait till the last minute. Rush to the box office, stand in line and
write a check.
Break a leg. .
To the editor:
The CAA Ticket Commission has ap
proved for this year three changes that
will alleviate past problems in the distri
bution of block seats for football games.
1) Block seats will be awarded in a ran
dom drawing. In the past, block seats
were distributed on a first-come, first
serve basis, resulting in long lines that
caused students to miss classes. An ad
ditional problem with the past system was
that larger groups had an advantage over
smaller groups in that they had more
members to take turns standing in line.
This year a member from each group re-,
questing a block will sign up his group on
the Monday morning prior to the game at
the Carmichael ticket office. A .group
may request up to two tickets for each
name on its roster (see below). If a group
fails to pick up at least 60 percent of the
tickets it requests, it will not be allowed to
request block seating for any future game.
The drawing will take place Monday
afternoon, continuing until half of all the
tickets allotted to students are used for
block seats or until all groups have re
ceived blocks. Results will be posted at
Carmichael by Monday evening.
2) There will be a mandatory token
system. In the past, students were able to
pick up seats in a block assigned to a
group to which they did not belong. This
year, group members will have to present
a token of their choice and unique to
their group in order to pick up their tic
kets. A copy or photograph (not just a
written description) of the token should
be presented to the ticket office on Mon- .
day when the group applies for block
seating.
The token may be changed each week
at the group's discretion. Anyone pos
sessing the group's token may pick up
seats in that block; the rosters of group
members' names will not be used in dis
tributing block seats. It is therefore im
portant that group members keep their
token a secret, so that non-members can
not use it to pick up seats in the group's
block. A student may pick up two tickets
on the Tuesday prior to the game.
3) In order to be eligible to apply for
block seats on Monday, groups must
have first turned in a roster containing the
names of its members. In the past, there
was a problem of the same group signing
up for two different blocks using two dif
ferent group names and then using only
the seats in the better block. This was a
problem even when students had to stand
in line to sign up for each block and we
foK mni, know that the tv amp Eyewone on campus thinks that this
rrr 6ian th season. vjeu., one 6amf voes. not a ggteohj makf. . . '
i Xd Twwt Vou to vo vour &e$t)
anticipated even more of a problem of
this kind after we decided to implement
the random drawings and thus reduce the
line for block seats.
Therefore, to prevent the same group
from signing up for two or more blocks,
each group desiring a block will be re
quired to turn in a roster of at least 10,
but not more than 50 names of its mem
bers to the ticket office by the Friday
eight days prior to the first game for
which the group desires a block. Thus
groups requesting block seats for the
Vanderbilt game must turn in their rosters
by this Friday.
. The CAA will then check the lists to
make sure that no two rosters are the
same. Once again, these rosters are for
CAA use only and will not be used by the
ticket office in distributing tickets. If the
group's membership changes during the
season, the group may add names to its
roster, or turn in a new roster.
Please feel free to come by or call the
CAA office (962-4300) if you have any
questions.
George De Loache
Ticket Commission
Open your eyes
To the editor:
The concept of being a
seems to be a way of pretending that you
are still in "prep" school (the apparent
origin of the word) and therefore still pre
paring for college. The valuable editorial
space of our university's newspaper
should be written for people already at
tending college and provide useful insight
for them.
So what if you have staffers that are,
gasp, in fraternities and sororities,
("Preps for Rent," DTH, Sept. 8). I am,
gasp, in a fraternity. That doesn't mean
that I want to read about how innovative
it is to have Greek members on the DTH
staff or how some people think that
dressing in expensive cute clothes and do
ing odd jobs is somehow worthy of
editorial space. There are many more im
portant things to write about. Open your
eyes.
Apology owed
To the editor:
In three silly sentences Jason E. Dowdle
has managed to exhibit both a vicious
bigotry and a contempt for history, "Israel
at fault" (DTH, Sept. 7). The Daily Tar
Heel ov.es all readers an apology for
publishing such anti-Semitic trash as:
"Hitler created a monster." Such
thoughtless stuff surely deserves no place
in a responsible newspaper.
Daniel S. Silver
Chapel Hill
Ned Irvine
Chapel Hill
The Daily Tar Heel welcomes letters
to the editor and contributions of col
umns to the editorial pages. All con
tributions should be typed, triple spac
ed on a 60-space line and are subject
to editing.
Column writers should include their
majors, and hometowns. Each letter
should include the writer's name, ad
dress and phone number. Unsigned
letters will not be printed.
Jews just want a home
The Bottom Line
Spud soiree
One potato, two potato, three
potato, four. Five potato, six potato
nine tons more.
Florida has its Orange Bowl,
Texas its Cotton Bowl, so naturally
the folks in Grand Forks, N.C. felt
they had to go all the way to attract
some more attention to their Potato
Bowl.
With the help of radio station
KNOX, they came up with an
18,260-pound serving of mashed
spud's from the Red River Valley's
potato-producing region.
Their concoction required 3,755
pounds of flaked potatoes, 1,600
gallons of water, 100 pounds of but
ter and 25 pounds of parsley. They
left out what probably would have
been another ton of salt.
KNOX program director John
French said he would submit results
of the event to the Guiness Book of
World Records. The book now lists a
10,286-pound portion as the pinnacle
of mashed potatodom.
While it may have looked tasty,
the mixture was not intended for
human consumption. After a few
onlookers stuck in their fingers to
sample it, the glop was trucked to a
nearby farm and fed to a buffalo
herd.
Uninvited guest
Ever been sitting around your
apartment or dorm room studying
for an exam or just relaxing when all
of a sudden you hear a knock at the
door and you find yourself host, to
some uninvited guests who make
themselves at home?
It seems a 6-foot pytnon greeted a
pair of French tourists when they
checked into their room at a hotel in
San Diego, but the two'tourists took
the uninvited guest in stride.
"Sir, there is a snake in the
room," hotel manager Wayne
Liebhart quoted Christian Aita as
saying when the nonchalant tourist
came back to the front desk.
"It was just sitting there, right on
top of the dresser, all coiled up and
its head sticking out," Liebhart said.
Police soon arrived and carried the
reptile off in a pillow case.
"1 thought they would want a re
fund," Liebhart said. "But they
decided to stay on."
And that'sssssss the bottom line.
By RITA S. WOLFGANG
I am responding to the letter "Israel at fault" (DTH,
Sept. 7) written by Joseph E. Dowdle. I feel that Dowdle
shows a great lack of knowledge about the history of the
settlement of Israel and the Jewish people, besides a lack
of knowledge about the present situation. I would like to
clarify a few things so that insensitive, uninformed and
apparently prejudiced statements like "Hitler created a
monster" and the "jackboot is on the other foot" will
not be printed again.
When Jews came to Palestine in the late 1800's and
early 1900's, they bought land from Arab farmers at
highly exorbitant prices in order to establish collective
farms. There are receipts in Israeli, British and even Jor
danian historical archives which prove that these lands
were bought honestly. The objective of these Jews was
simply to lead a peaceful life in the historical homeland
of their forefathers. A growing anti-Semitism was evi
dent in Europe and reached a fervor during the trial of
Alfred Dreyfus in 1895. The Jews were inspired to come
to Palestine by Theodor Herzl, considered to be the
father of modern Zionism.
Herzl was a reporter at the Dreyfus trial and quickly
realized that the only way that Jews would not be per
secuted would be if they had a land to call their own.
Many places were considered even African areas
but Palestine seemed the logical place, having such
strong historical and religious meaning to the Jewish
people. Anyone who knows the history of the Jewish
people recognizes that the Jews were exiled from
Palestine by the Romans in 70 A.D. Since that time, the
Jews have been shuffled from land to land, used by
European governments and grossly persecuted by the
Church. After thousands of years of persecution, it is
only understandable that the Jews would want peace.
Having bought this land, the Jewish settlers were able
to change it from a malaria-infested swamp into a pro
ductive area. This was due to their European education
and their knowledge of modern agriculture and scientific
techniques. These lands had lain barren in Arab hands
for hundreds of years, and the Arabs were very jealous
of the success of these settlers. They cruelly and ruth
lessly slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children
who were living on these legally-bought lands just be
cause they succeeded where the Arabs hadn't.
The Arabs, with their already growing oil power,
pushed the British colonial government of Palestine into
forbidding the entrance of further Jewish settlers into
the area. By then, Naziism was in full swing in Germany.
Hundreds of boatloads of Jews were turned back from
the shores of Palestine and sent back to the gas chambers
and death camps of Europe.
The British were put in a very awkward position. They
needed the oil that the Arab countries could offer them
for their war effort, yet felt a moral obligation to the
thousands of Jews who were being innocently killed in
Europe. Finally, they pulled out of Palestine and let the
newly-formed United Nations determine the future of
the area. On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to
partition the land of Palestine into a Jewish state and an
Arab state.
There are innocent victims in any
war what about all the victims in
Vietnam and Hiroshima? ... Israel
felt that the time had come when
enough was enough the PLO
murders had to be stopped.
The Arabs were not satisfied. They didn't like the idea
of sharing land with the Jews. The Arab nations of
Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and volun
teers from Saudia Arabia, Yemen and Libya declared
war against Israel, vowing to "push the Jews into the
sea." Arab propaganda warned the Arab population livr
ing in Israel to leave, creating stories not based on any
past evidence as to what the Israelis would do to them.
These people fled to Jordan and settled on what is now
known as the West .Bank.
I These Arab refugees lived under horrible conditions
for 19 years. Their Arab brethren didn't take care of
them. They had no schooling, sanitary conditions, hous
ing or medical care. They were used as pawns to show
the world the awful thing that Israel had done, when in
fact these people left under their own free will because of
the rumors spread by their Arab leaders.
In 1967, when these lands were taken over by Israel
after the Six-Day War, these people finally were given
the chance to lead a decent life. I was a student in Israel
for four years. Many of my friends were Arabs. If you
asked them about their lives before the Israeli occupation
all of them would tell you that their lives were much better
now. It is the Arabs who live outside of Israel, who never
have been to Israel, that are victims of Palestine Libera
tion Organization propaganda.
The PLO does not care about the average Arab citi
zen. The Arabs interviewed by American television jour
nalists in Lebanon were glad to see the PLO go. The
PLO used the Lebanese population as a means to gain its
own political ends. Thousands of Lebanese were ruth
lessly murdered when they would not donate their houses
and businesses to the PLO. How many times did the
PLO raid northern Israeli towns from Lebanon, killing
innocent children at Ma'alot, Netanya and innocent vic
tims at the Munich Games in 1973? What about the Jews
outside of Israel that the PLO has murdered in Euro
pean countries? How can the PLO hide behind the lie of
wanting only a Palestinian state for its people when it
murders Jews around the world? Who truly is wearing a
"jackboot?"
If members of the PLO want Israel to talk to them like
human beings, then they must begin treating Israeli citi
zens like human beings and recognize their right to exist.
Many people, like myself, do not necessarily agree with
Israeli Prime Minister Menacheni Begin's settlement tac
tics. But if you were an Israeli, a Jew, who simply wanted
to live in peace in the land of his forefathers and had seen
friends and family killed year after year by the PLO raids,
you would probably be over-defensive too.
There are innocent victims in any war what about
' all the victims in Vietnam and Hiroshima? If the
Lebanese had not allowed the PLO to use their home
land as a base, their lives might have been saved. Israel
felt that the time had come when enough was enough
the PLO murders had to be stopped. Many Israelis also
died throughout the years, just because they lived in
Israel. The Lebanese people were forewarned that this
would happen, which is much more than the Jews ever
were by Hitler.
I would suggest to people like Dowdle that before
writing such uninformed letters to the Daily Tar Heel,
they make an effort to understand the situation in the
Middle East. Dowdle has obviously never been to Israel
or Lebanon. The "monster" that he speaks of is really the
prejudice created by the lack of knowledge that exists in
his own mind.
Rina S. Wolfgang is a Jewish educator in Chapel Hill.