I
OPINION
Thursday, December 3, 1987
Page 4
The Michigan Daily
I
ed m yttganverity
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
4
Vol. XCVIII, No. 59
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board. All other
cartoons, signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion
of the Daily.
Israel deports problem
MUBARAK AWAD, A Palestinian-
American activist, is facing
deportation from Israel because Israeli
authorities consider him a security
threat. Awad is a threat to Israel's
security if you use the Israeli
definition of the word, which
encompasses most forms of protest
by Palestinians against the state.
Awad calls for non-violent
resistance to Israel's military rule and
discrimination against Palestinians.
He should be allowed to continue his
activities in Israel as he is a vocal
advocate of Palestinian rights and
self-determination.
Awad has helped many Israeli peace
groups in their causes. He is an
effective speaker for such groups and
he has broken down stereotypes
which portray Palestinians a s
terrorists or rogues. A peaceful image
of Palestinians is precisely what the
Israeli government fears, and it
explains why they are trying to deport
him.
' According to the Israeli Consulate
in Chicago, Awad, a U.S. citizen,
cannot remain in Israel because his
visa has expired. The Israeli
government chose not to renew his
visa because of his political beliefs.
This charge is rarely brought against
the many other Americans who reside
in Israel. Awad is being persecuted as
a Palestinian because of his political
views.
Awad's status as an American
citizen makes this case unique. Most
Palestinians who protest Israeli
repression or human rights violations
are stifled, either by bullets, curfews,
or prison. In the last year, Israeli
troops shot to death seven Palestinian
students - women and men -
during demonstrations at Bir Zeit
University. Since Awad is a U.S.
citizen, he has more rights than others
like him in Israel, and must be dealt
with differently by the authorities.
The Israeli government needs to
deport him, because they cannot use
other means.
The U.S. State Department, in a
rare display of concern for the human
rights of Palestinians, has decided to
protest the Israeli move. It is helping
Awad remain in Israel and warning
Israel against taking further action.
According to the United Nation's
doctrine on human rights, every
person has the right to reside in their
place of birth. Israel has denied this
right to other Palestinians, and is
trying to do the same to Awad.
It is commendable that the State
Department is challenging this,
maneuver, but it should also use its
leverage with Israel to secure the
rights of non-American Palestinians
in Israel and the occupied territories.
Not only should Awad be allowed
to stay in Israel, but his call for a
peace settlement in Israel should be
heeded. Too often, the opposing side
is not heard or is just drowned out in
the roar of euphemisms and half
truths which justify Israel's
occupation and authority over the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Human
By Mark Weisbrot
Normally I wouldn't bother to respond to
yet another mindless defense of the status
quo through a perverse twisting of "free
speech" arguments. After all, the University
is a breeding ground for such vacuous
abstract formalisms. As a case in point,
philosophy Professor Carl Cohen routinely
defends military research, in spite of all the
threats it poses to the free and open exchange
of ideas at the University, on "civil liberties"
grounds.
So it was no surprise to see Noah Finkel
and David Schwartz express their righteous
concern that the world's largest terrorist
organization, the CIA, be accorded its "right"
to recruit on campus (Daily 12/1/87). But it
is important to pierce through this veil of
hypocrisy, in order to get at the real issues,
which are quite serious.
The argument that the CIA has a "right"
to their recruiting activities of last week can
be dismissed rather easily. The services of
the University's office of Carreer Planning
and Placement (CPP) are not available, as a
matter of right, to any employer, but only to
those deemed acceptable by the directors of
CPP.
This University agency makes its
choices, of course, without any input from
students. I once asked Harold Shapiro if he
would allow the students to vote up or down
on whether the CIA should be allowed to
recruit through CPP. His answer was a flat,
unequivocal no. The University is not a
democratically run institution, and Harold
was not making any pretenses to the
contrary.
So the question has never been one of
"limit[ing] access to facilities for groups
with variant [sic] ideologies" (Finkel &
Schwartz). Groups opposing the CIA would
like nothing more than an open debate in
which the CIA would be allowed to defend
itself and its gruesome record. But of course
neither the CIA nor CPP has been willing to
Mark Weisbrot is a Daily opinion page
staff writer.
rights v
accept open, public debate as a condition for
their recruitment, because "the company"
avoids light like cockroaches.
They prefer to hide behind a slew of
police to carry on their recruiting in the
hidden cubicles of the Student Activities
Building, encountering only those who
would sell their souls for a salary and a
pension with early retirement.
And with good reason. Their crimes, too
numerous to recount here, have inflicted
untold suffering on the world. Their victims
include not only those tens of thousands
directly murdered by CIA "counter-
insurgency" programs, but the millions
who, as a result of the CIA's covertactions,
have been forced to live under the repressive
and anti-human military dictatorships of the
United States' choosing. From Latin
America to Southern Africa to the Middle
East, the CIA's violence against anyone
struggling for democracy, independence, or
even basic human rights, is well known.
(The reader is referred to the extensive
documentation beginning with the Church
committee hearings in the U.S. Senate
(1975), through numerous books such as
Phillip Agee's CIA Diary, or Marchetti and
Marks' The CIA and the Cult of Intellignce).
The criminal nature of the organization is
not a matter of debate. Would Finkel and
Schwartz have the office of Career Planning
and Placement help the Mafia recruit
numbers runners and hit men? I assume not.
Their argument for CIA recruiting, therefore,
must rest on the domestic legality of the
organization. To those who would confuse
law and morality, I would refer to the late
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who clearly
knew the difference: "We must never forget
that everything Hitler did in Germany was
'legal', and everything the Hungarian
freedom fighters did in Hungary was 'illegal'
"(Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963).
If Finkel and Schwartz were really
concerned about the state of civil liberties on
campus, they would have been up in arms
about the abuse of authority by police and
campus security at the protest. With the
unprovoked viciousness that one would
expect from a pit bull, rather than an
S.
assistant director of public safety, Robert
Patrick kicked protester Harold Marcuse full
force in the groin. And although Marcuse
never hit, punched or in any way attacked
anyone at the protest, the police and campus
security came with a number of fictitious
allegations of assault and battery - but,
suspiciously enough, only after Marcuse and
numerous witnesses demanded that Patrick
be charged with assault.
The whole incident stinks of a conspiracy
to obstruct justice, commit perjury, and
violate Marcuse's civil rights by trumping
up retaliatory charges against him for
pressing charges against his attacker. This
seems to be a much greater threat to civil
liberties on campus that the possibility that
the CIA may not be able to use CPP for
their recruiting.
There is another reason to question the
authenticity of the civil liberties garb in
which Finkel has draped himself. Just a
couple of weeks ago he used this space to
defend the Israeli military occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza Strip as "relatively
gentle" - perhaps he is unaware of the
torture and shooting of Palestinian
dissidents. But his blind support of Israeli
repression leads me to question whether he
isn't just hiding behind the formalism of his
"free speech" argument to avoid having to
defend the CIA as an institution.
In his previous op-ed piece (Daily
11/16/87), Finkel chides two Palestinian
lawyers for their use of the phrase "crimes
against humanity" in their description of the
Israeli occupation. He claims that such use
of this phrase "trivializes the Holocaust."
But Finkel himself has failed to understand
one of the most important lessons of the
Holocaust, which was embodied in the
international agreements arising from the
Nuremburg tribunal.
This principle asserts that citizens of all
nations had an affirmative duty to try to stop
their country from committing war crimes.
We must never allow specious arguments
about the "rights" of governments to carry
out the business of organizing these crimes
to deter us from these responsibilities.
CIA
Wasserman
UUP6S SNN-DYDOESN'T HAE
CRAzy ?agRS s,,.
AND VHE'S Not E MES
WHAT MOREs COULD '*U WANT
IN A NMINEF?
49 All
4
Soliciting non-sex
LETTERS
A NEW YORK millionaire's recent
offer of $1,000 to young women
who can prove they are virgins may
have been a serious effort to curb
teenage pregnancy, but the offer -
e.xtended only to females - is an ap-
palling example of the sexism that
exists in our society.
And although millionaire John La-
Corte withdrew his cash offer two
days later without citing a reason, his
alternative "prize" for high school
girls in three New York boroughs -
free seminars on becoming "a good
mother, wife, and a good house-
keeper" - is equally offensive.
LaCorte's idea that women should
be chaste while men can philander is
age-old. Although the 78-year-old
millionaire can be relegated to the "old
school" of thought, the publicity his
offer received, for example from the
Associated Press and the Detroit Free
Press where the story graced the front
page, shows modern society is still
receptive to the idea that a woman's
sexuality can be held accountable to
men.
g While there is nothing wrong with
abstinence, a woman's sexuality is
not a commodity to be bought and
sold. The millionaire's $1,000 offer
is little more than solicitation; the only
difference between his offer and
prostitution is that he would have paid
girls to keep their sex instead of giv-
ing it to him.
If the millionaire is honestly trying
to prevent teenage pregnancy, to fo-
cus only on women is sexist and
wrong. Men are as much responsible
for controlling unwanted births as
women. And men are as responsible
for caring for children and maintain-
ing the home as women, especially
with today's women composing a
large part of the work force. Assum-
ing home and child care are only the
woman's job wrongly distributes la-
bor by gender.
For LaCorte to say, "Virginity
means self-respect. . . . If a young
girl can learn to say no, the young
boys will learn to respect them more"
shows the high value he places on the
woman's chastity.
But if he really wants men to re-
spect women he should send both
men and women to seminars on sex-
ism or rape. And if the millionaire
wants to spend his $100,000 to pre-
vent teen age pregnancy, the money
should go to sex education in
schools, free birth control for teens,
or funding to clinics like Planned
Parenthood.
'U'
states policy on sexual orientation
To the Daily:
I am writing to advise the
University community about
the University's policy pro-
hibiting discrimination on the
basis of sexual orientation and
the mechanisms available for
filing complaints regarding
discrimination and harassment.
On March 21, 1984,
President Shapiro issued the
following Policy Statement on
Sexual Orientation: "The
University of Michigan be-
lieves that educational and
employment decisions should
be based on individual's abili-
ties and qualifications and
should not be based on
irrelevant factors or personal
characteristics which have no
connection with academic
abilities or job performance.
Among the traditional factors
which are generally 'irrelevant'
are race, sex, religion, and
national origin. It is the pol-
icy of The University of
Michigan that an individual's
sexual orientation be treated in
the same manner. Such a
policy ensures that only rele-
vant factors are considered and
that equitable and consistent
standards of conduct and per-
formance are applied.
"Any University of
Michigan employee having a
complaint of discrimination
because of sexual orientation
(now called the Lesbian -
Gay Male Program Office) for
counseling and advice.
It should be noted that this
policy does not apply to the
University's relationships with
outside organizations, includ-
ing the federal government, the
military, and ROTC."
This policy continues to
protect students, faculty, and
staff from discrimination which
is based on one's actual or
presumed sexual orientation.
As the policy statement in-
dicates, any student who has a"
complaint of discrimination or
harassment because of sexual
orientation may report this to
the Office of the Ombudsman
(763-3545) or the Affirmative
Action Coordinator in her/his
school or college. Any em-
ployee with such a complaint
should notify her/his immedi-
ate supervisor or the appropri-
ate Personnel Service Center.
A student or employee may, at
any time, contact the
Affirmative Action Office
(764-3423) to register a
complaint. Any incidents
which involve threats or actual
harm to personal safety and/or
property should be reported
immediately to the Department
of Public Safety and Security
(763-1131).
In addition to these offices
any student, faculty, or staff
structed by President Shapiro
to submit a reporting form to
the Affirmative Action Office
as part of a new centralized
reporting mechanism.
Students and employees
me also communicate their
complaints and concerns to the
University's Task Force on
Sexual Orientation. This task
force was established by me to
examine the various issues
surrounding the Policy
Anti-semiti
To the Daily:
I put my assigned disk into a
terminal at the UNYN
computing center only to find
that the user before me had
created his own original desk-
top... hundreds of swastikas. I
was horrified at the sight and
pointed it out to a computing
center manager. He assured me
the disk would be remade im-
mediately commenting that
this was not the first time such
a desktop had appeared %mong
their disks.
No, this was not the first act
of blatant anti-Semitism I have
witnessed at the University. I
have seen the swastikas which
so regularly decorate the eleva-
tors in the Graduate Library,
and the desktops in Angell Hall
and the MLB.
Statement on Sexual
Orientation and its implemen-
tation. People may contact the
Task Force on Sexual
Orientation through its chair-
person, Dr. Jayne Thorson,
1210 Angell Hall.
-Virginia Nordby
Director of
Affirmative Action
Programs
November 25
sm exists
of Jewish men scrawled in
thick black marker in these
bathrooms as well as the bath-
room at Charley's. He has seen
"Arbeit Macht Frei" (work
makes you free) a slogan which
graced the entrance of the Nazi
death camps in a bathroom at
the Grad. He has also seen
"Shalom means shell-em" and
a swastika with "Amerika
Awake" written beneath it in
other bathrooms at the Gradu-
ate Library.
While I applaud the efforts of
UCAR members who are so
diligent in their fight against
racism, I wonder why there is
so little effort put forth b y
Jewish and non-Jewish mem-
bers alike to eradicate anti-
Semitism on this campus.
If the Holocaust has taught
4
'" {. ".V. "". }, h. L {11".?. " "'.}Q " 1. .. ."". .l 4, Y t.
r PZ4
=