4 OPINION Page 4 Monday, February 17, 1986 The Michigan Daily Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Vol. XCVI, No. 97 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board Zionism and apartheid similar Don't pay MSA T HE MICHIGAN Student Assembly will vote tomorrow night on whether to make the of- fices of president, vice-president, and committee chair paid positions. If the proposal is ap- proved by the Assembly, it will go on the March ballot for approval by the student body. This proposal is a case of MSA wasting time on something which has little chance of being approved by the students. University students feel firancially .drained as it is by the University and are not going to vote pay more, even the estimated five extra cents a year this plan will cost. MSA President Paul Josephson claims this plan will make the of- fices available to financially disad- vantaged students and encourage officers to devote more time to their duties. While the proposal may open positions to financially disadvantaged students, the problems it creates outweigh this expected reform. Because only these positions will be paid, it will create an in- congruity between those officers and the rest of the Assembly. Salaries will alter the of- ficeholders' attitudes toward their positions, but not in the positive way Josephson expects. Being paid - by the hour will put a value on the -office which is now determined by *the officeholder's personal dedication to the Assembly. As Law School representative Eric Schnaufer points out, some officers will view their position as a duty while others will consider it a job. Considering the Assembly has been pre-occupied with internal controversies for the past two weeks, controversies similar to those which have interfered with student issues for the past year, it is odd Josephson would propose payment at this time. Students will be especially unwilling to pay of- ficers whose bulk of time is engaged in internal disputes. Josephson's proposal could be con- sidered viable if these officers were actually devoting more hours to issues which concern the average student. Josephson also says 25 to 40 hours per week is too much time to put in without direct compensation. As with all other student activities, serving on MSA should be con- sidered a privilege and part of the officeholder's education. These positions offer their holders first- rate experience and a powerful op- portunity to improve the Univer- sity. The Assembly and any poten- tial effect it could have on the University education would be seriously degraded if run by of- ficers who need monetary incen- tives to devote more time to their elected positions. By Steve Ghannam Material for this article was based on an essay by Steve Goldfield of the November 29th Committee for Palestine. It is amazing to witness the hypocrisy of many liberal American-Jews who are sup- porters of the Free South Africa (anti-apar- theid) Movement in this country. They label the government of South Africa as racist, immoral, and blind to the human rights of black South Africans. They seemingly join the moral struggle to free black South Africans and claim themselves as the moral protectors of oppressed people around the world.. Yetwhen it comes to the Zionist gover- nment of Israel, these same liberal American-Jews, these "moral protectors of oppressed people," suddenly redefine their moral struggle and somehow through tem- pered rationality come to support the Israeli dictatorship over the Palestinian People. They exhibit moral impotence when it comes to questioning the policies of Zionism and its relationship to non-Jews. When Meir Kahane declares on national television that, "Zionism and Democracy cannot exist together; you must choose either one and not both," they shake their heads in disbelief. What these American-Jews fail to realize is that the Israeli conquest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has led to the construction of an overt apartheid system in Israel. The comparison between South Arican and Israeli apartheid is easy to make. Both Israel and South Africa are settler states in which immigrants have seized land from indigenous peoples. There is an impor- tant historical difference in settlement strategy, however: South African policy is to drive Africans into tiny, barren enclaves from which they "emigrate" to work in white enterprises. Israeli policy is to drive most Palestinians out of Palestine altogether, though since 1967 cheap Palestinian labor has become a significant factor in the Israeli economy. The basic system: Neither Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza nor Black South Steve Ghannam is a graduate student in architecture. Wasserman Africans are considered citizens. Both must carry passes. Palestinians living inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel have some rights as do those classified as Asian or Colored in South Africa. Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship may vote, although only for par- ties approved by the courts, which means that they may not question the Zionist nature of Israel. Asians and Coloreds can also vote, but not for representatives in the ruling parliament. Land Massive amounts of land have been con- fiscated. In pre-1967 Israel, 92 percent of the land was controlled by the state and reser- ved for Jews. In South Africa, 87 percent of the land is reserved for whites. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, estimates vary from slightly less than half to slightly more than half of the land taken by the Israelis. Israel has formally annexed the Golan Heights from Syria and East Jerusalem from the West Bank, though these annexations are not recognized by the U.S. government. Contrast these data with historic land ownership anduse patterns. Africans, of course, owned and cultivated all the arable land in South Africa before the arrival of European settlers. And Palestine was the most economically dynamic sector of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, its wealth based on agriculture. In over two hundred years, European set- tlers pushed Africans off their land. The Zionist movement moved faster. In 1947, Jews - primarily settlers - made up ap- proximately one-third of the population of Palestine and owned less than 7 percent of its land. In that year the United Nations alloted 54 percent of Palestine for a "Jewish" state and in the next six months the Zionist armies took an additional 24 per- cent of the territory. In 1967 the Israelis took the rest of Palestine and show no indication of willingness to give any of it up. Economy Conditions strongly discourage African development; the policy is to have a cheap labor force. Palestinian development is prevented because harsh conditions are in- tended to drive Palestinians out. Palestinian access to land and water is sharply circum- scribed and shrinking. Neither industrial nor agricultural development are perm it- ted; nothing which would produce jobs for Palestine is allowed. Human Rights In South Africa, Blacks can be imprisoned with charge (commonly referred to as "administration detention") for up to four- teen days; they can be immediately rearrested for extended periods. In the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians can be im- prisoned without charge for up to eighteen days; they can be immediately rearrested and thus be held continuously. More than three-quarters of South African Black men and more than half of Palestinian men in the West Bank and Gaza have been imprisoned, many for past violations. South African prisoners are routinely tor- tured; many have died from torture. Palestinian prisoners are also routinely tor- tured, particularly to extract false con- fessions, and many have died including many held in Ansar Prison in Lebanon. Many Palestinians and South Africans have, of course, been massacred by soldiers and police. A growing phenomenon for Palestinians, better-known in Latin America, is that of the disappeared. Both Palestinians and South Africans suf- fer town arrest: restriction to a particular locality. South Africans can also be banned, which means they cannot go to public meetings, must check in with the police regularly, and cannot even receive more than a few people at a timein their homes. They cannot be quoted and their photographs cannot be publicly displayed. Palestinians are also banned - though the terminology is a little different; restrictions are essently the same. Palestinians are not permitted to identify themselves as "Palestinian," only as Arab. The-colors of the African National Congress of South Africa, founded in 1912 - green, black, and yellow - are banned in South Africa. The colors of the Palestinian flag - red, green, white, and black - are banned in Israel and areas under its control. These are some of the effects of apartheid on non-whites and of Zionism on non-Jews. To support Zionism and, in turn, support the Free South Africa Movement is a crime and an insult to the anti-apartheid movement around the world. Both Americans and American-Jews must realize that Zionism is just as racist as South African apartheid and neither should be allowed to infest the evolution of any race of people. Pro-life violence . Pro-life picketers have made it necessary to choose between the absolute right to free speech and the right to a safe abortion; the picketers are causing disruption of health care at abortion clinics by unsettling both doctors and patien- ts. For example, one hospital that does some abortions but mainly delivers babies is the target of pro- life picketer. A pregnant woman who had had difficulty conceiving visited the clinic to receive atten- tion for cramps. When she arrived at the hospital she had to walk th- rough a gauntlet of pro-life picketers, who screamed "don't kill your baby," "murderer' and other confrontational slogans. The pregnant woman, who wanted to have her child, made it through the gauntlet only to have a miscarriage. No one can say for certain that the miscarriage resulted from the picketers actions. The same can be said of the difficulties of pregnant women with high blood pressure. The stree caused by the screaming picketer may cause high blood pressure to rise, but it would be dif- ficult to prove in an individual case that stress caused pregnancy com- plications. According to Joseph Scheidler, one of the more extreme pro-life organizers, who has visited Reagan twice, picketers increase hospital "confusion and comnlications...bv women. Intimidation may cause clinics to close temporarily and women to stay away until the picketing stops. Unfortunately, it is not a safe strategy to wait out the picketers. Women who have abortions in weeks 16 through 20 of their pregnancy are 12 times as likely to die as women who have abortions after 9 to 10 weeks of gestation and the death rate increases for every week of delay. A delay in health care caused by picketer intim- dation undermines legally man- dated conditions of "maximum safety" for abortions. The law also mandates that abor- tion is a private decision, but patients have no choice but to pass through picketers when they go to a hospital. The picketers who stand in front of the main doors of the hospital necessarily invade the privacy of patients, who can not opt out as one might choose to do at a Nazi rally or other distasteful ex- pression of free speech. Judges should go beyond issuing injunctions against picketers guilty of assault or invasion of privacy. The safety of patients should be the first concern, especially since the free speech of pro-lifers is so easily protected by giving them space at hospital corners away from the main doors. People who want to talk to pro-lifers should have the option of doing so, but they should not have to walk amongst Al W i5{oaefvirus that VIas iiivaded our Shiores aiicl ?oisonled Q our bood. 4 t T (/ VNT IT SUFFICENrTo0 Sy C'sr ANE\W M t -c thAF T ATINS M'ILLONS ~ O F P~OPL 6 77A t screei- lke a eueilla amy ron iorders -frown o cw inlto r Ci~mlhuyitje5 ac7ross Americza. O e 1 ( f J 1 NOT \w 1oW YV'12 . Th/ING To EQAT FUINDING TI2 9aT w. , J STRRT~t ! I rll ~~2- t LETTERS: 'Journalism keeps pace with morality' To the Daily: In response to Gail Kirshen- baum's editorial "Television Redefines 'News"', I would like to commend her for a well-done article which identified the rift of indecisiveness that troubles the journalistic community of tary to the disaster of Challenger, but it was a major part of the story. It is sadening, and possibly unfortunate, that their reactions were captured by the eager eye of a camera lens, but the fact that they were, links them, in a highly year old son, was news as well. Personal reaction, whether it be brought to us through television, radio, newspaper or personal ex- perience serves as a barometer by which we can guage the con- tent of our own character. It is not the responsibility of the nalist's integrity should never outdistance their respective pace of morality. The public can, and will, trust the media only if given the appropriate reasons. As you further your journalism career, Ms. Kirshenbaum, I hope that competent, caring jour- t