4 OPINION Page 4 Wednesday, September 27, 1989 TheMichigan Daily Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan 420 Maynard St. a Vol. C, No. 15 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. Camp David Revisited In Praise of Socialism :I a IN 1979, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty ending over thirty years of war between Israel and Egypt. Heralded around the world as the first step toward a solution of the Middle East crisis, it effectively re- moved the international spotlight from Israel's brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza - and the Palestinians residing there. Though the Camp David accords contained numerous provisions cOnceming the future of the Palestinian people, the Palestinians themselves were not included in the negotiations. Now, in 1989, history seems des- tined to repeat itself. This week, Secretary of State Baker will get to- gether in New York with the foreign nministers of Israel and Egypt to discuss the Mubarek Plan -named after Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarek - which is intended to replace the now completely discredited Shamir election proposal. Once again, the Palestinians around whose future the Mubarek Plan revolves have not even been consulted -- and are not invited to this week's talks. Ostensibly offering the Palestinians a compromise, the Mubarek Plan actually demands from them an almost total ca- pitulation. Yes, it calls for Israeli set- tlements - which have illegally swal- lowed over 50 percent of West Bank land and over 34 percent of the Gaza strip - to cease, but only during the two month period of the municipal elections which are the Plan's center- piece. No mention is made of halting. such settlements permanently, let alone compensating a people which con- trolled 93 percent of the land in histori- cal Palestine in 1947. Yes, the plan offers elections. But the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) may not participate in these elections, even though over 90 percent of all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza designate the PLO as their sole legitimate representative. Furthermore, the Plan only calls for the Israeli occu- pation army to withdraw on the day of elections, which flaunts the spirit of U.N. Resolution 1514 laying out the necessary preconditions for the process of decolonization. During the entire electoral period, this army - respon- sible for killing over 700 Palestinians and wounding 50,000 during the first two years of the intifadah - will re- main in the territories, retaining the power to shoot and beat, censor and close, repress and intimidate. Yes, the plan mentions land for peace. But this has always been the Israeli Labor doves' vaguely formu- lated way of doing nothing. It offers no specifics and no borders - not surprising behavior from a state which refuses to define its own and inexorably continues a practice of invasion, occupation, and annexation. In summation, the Mubarek Plan - much like the Shamir Plan before it and the Camp David accords before that - is a whitewash. It buys Israel more time, Egypt more U.S. aid, and the Palestinian people more years beneath Israel's cruel Iron Fist. It does not represent a small step forward, but a giant step backward, one which, like Camp David before it, will serve no purpose except to silence Palestinians' cries for justice beneath the diplomatic banalities of business as usual. By Hans Koning The following is reprinted from the April,1989 issue of the Monthly Review with the permission of the Monthly Review Foundation. The eulogies or maledictions mut- tered these days as a farewell to social- ism are delivered over an empty grave. Socialism hasn't even had a chance yet. To clear one hurdle, let me remind those who need reminding that the cruel indignities perpetrated in the name of socialism come second to the same indignities perpetrated for 200 years in the name of capitalism. It has taken that long, plus enormous and bloody labor fights, plus two world wars, to instill Western capitalism with some respect for its own citizens - and that only in the advanced and privileged democra- cies (whose well-being now is still founded on the iniquities of their pasts). Let us consider then the second and, right now, more relevant flaw of so- cialist endeavor: its inefficiency. At this junction it has surely been shown that the system of everyone for himself or herself, with self-improvement and profit as society's engine, works better in delivering the goods. That does not mean that it will go on working in the future, though. Our planet, with its limited resources and elasticity, is being stripped as if there were no tomorrow. If there is to be a tomorrow, this must end, and not even an avalanche of legislation within our profit economy can take care of the staggering changes in attitude this will require. If the argument that there's no future for socialism, "You can't change hu- man nature," is correct, it also proves there is no future for humanity. In the long run, we simply cannot afford shown not in waving the flag, but in being our brother's and sister's keeper, in protecting nature, in service to the common weal. We have been conditioned to con- sider statements such as these pious claptrap. But what other choice is there? The importance of owning things has to be scaled down; it is ex- hausting the planet. And those who fall behind are engulfing themselves, and 'If the argument that there's no future for socialism, "You can't change human nature," is correct, it also proves there is no future for humanity.' g capitalism. Human nature has to change, and some form of socialism has to do the job. We cannot afford a system where the acquisition of ever more and better consumer goods is the reason for working and, indeed, for living. The problem of the future will not be forcing people to work, but, on the contrary, to keep them fulfilled and unalienated while there is no useful work for them to do. We must find new rationales (maybe consolations) for our lives beyond those of acquisi- tion and profit. They are to be found in the fulfillment of feelings, of solidarity, then all of us, in what they see as their alternative, waves of drugs and crime. Worldwide, capitalism is not only mak- ing the rich richer and the poor poorer,: it is also attacking the lives of those rich now, for they are becoming pris- oners in their own enclaves of posses- sions. :. The world is crying out for decentral- ized societies where production and communications must be under daily and direct control of the people, be- cause success cannot be measured any, more in increase, in the meeting of pri- vate purposes, but only in sharing and conservation. And what better name is there for such systems than socialism? 6 Perspectives: Starting By Philip Cohen Young Baby Adul in the&nMhe ----- - BensonO1988. Reprinted by permission: TribuneMedia Services. Cashing in on environmental awareness: We were all about nine years old when our Sunday school class had an end-of-the- year party at one of the kids' house. Somehow we got to talking about some- thing all of us had heard about, but didn't talk much about - Hitler. So there we were, eating our milk and cookies, and the teacher asked each of us if we were alive during the War, and we could kill Hitler, would we have done it knowing we would ourselves be killed. Nine years old, we went around the room, and like a rite of passage, each of us solemnly swore that we would have laid down our lives to save our people. Patriotism and nationalism are powerful things, and their effects on children can be both positive and negative. I was certainly proud of what I viewed as my Jewish na- tionality when, at the age of six, I refused to say the pledge of allegiance because I had a feeling we weren't talking about the same God. But I was also confused and lost. The teacher told me we were all Americans, but I didn't buy it. And when I realized that the nationalism which had been such a strong part of my conscience as a child was tied to an inter- national political situation which had somehow never been adequately discussed, I was already old enough to be angry about it. Israel was a mythological place for us as children - it was always brought up in sort of abstract, biblical terms. I never un- derstood how on the one hand we were learning that we were the chosen people for Israel, and that land would, always be our home, and on the other that it had only recently become a state. Hadn't it al- ways been this way? The confusion I suffered, in retrospect, was quite understandable - Israel, for us, didn't really have a history between the Old Testament and the formation of the modern state. What was it in between? Nothing. When I realized - almost too late to change an ideology which had practically become part of my body chemistry - that there were people living in Israel all that time, and that the state had been con- 'When I realized - almost too late to change an ideology which had practically become part of my body chemistry - that there were people living in Israel all that time, and that the' state had been constructed upon the rubble of their broken homes and villages, I was furious.' identity I have always felt persists, as it should, but the organization of the reli- gion, the mechanisms of its practice, and its apparently blind acceptance and support of the nation of Israel, seem too far re- moved from the values and moral support I look to a religion to provide; I can find structed upon the rubble of their broken homes and villages, I was furious. The supposed aim of all Arab people to destroy our nation and our people was al- ways just another piece of ancient, unques- tionable history - the Philistines, the Romans, the Spanish, all that. Of course they wanted to destroy us - everyone al- ways had. But the Old Testament was just a story, and as a story it made sense that a noble but impoverished people were al- ways under attack and persecution as they wandered desperately around. But as current reality, the situation didn't translate; the facts had to be left out or the story didn't hold up. So left out they were. Suddenly I felt like I needed a new Central Processing Unit. Then an interesting series of changes began to take place. I started looking more closely at the orthodox members of my family, at the religious rites and practices we had observed. I began to feel the same distance between those practices and my life that I felt between the Old Testament and the history of Israel. Ultimately, I be- gan to feel cheated and deceived. Now, for all intents and purposes, Judaism has lost me. The strong cultural those expressed around me in less conflict- ing media. When I get right-wing Jewish propa- ganda in the mail (something which has only started happening since I started writ- ing for the Daily), one of the recurring themes is the loss - both potential and real - of devoted Jews from the fold. "Intermarriage" statistics are cited, and var- ious reasons are suggested for the loss. But nowhere have I seen mentioned the simple fact that popular Judaism in the United States has tied itself so directly and so firmly to Israel that it is nearly impos- sible to be a part of the religion without supporting the state itself. And if the morals we have learned as Jews in the United States happen to contradict every- thing we see the government of Israel now perpetrating, we are left with a choice: drop our morals or drop the expression of our religion - that is, abandon the for- mal, collective aspects of Judaism, and be- come a statistic. This is the choice that I and many others are painfully making. Paper politics RECYCLED PAPER is in vogue. In response to Ann Arbor's growing con- cem about global environmental issues, and about the city's landfill reaching capacity, several copy shops around campus have begun to sell "post-in- dustrial recycled paper." The name sounds environmentally responsible, but the well-intentioned people who purchase this type of paper are in no way helping to end the solid waste crisis or saving valuable forest resources. Instead, they may actually be hurting the market for post-con- sumer recycled products. Post-consumer recycled products are Made from the resources recovered through curbside pickups or drop off stations. These recovered resources have been purchased, used and dis- carded. They include flyers, newspa- pers, office paper, old bottles, soup cans and the like. The practice of gathering trimmings and scraps from the factory floors and redissolving them in solution has been used in paper mills for decades. But it is only in the past few years that it has been labelled "post-industrial recy- cling." Consumer awareness and the grow- ing market for recycled paper products has exceeded the current production level of post-consumer recycled paper. Indeed, some recycling collection sta- tions cannot find adequate markets for their collected materials. This situation will not improve until paper mills switch over to using recovered materi- als rather than virgin timber and scraps from their factory floors as the basis for the paper they produce. Products labelled "recycled" must meet certain criteria for improving the nrryrtmr+At, -. nnrn1wr ~l Philip Cohen is an Associate Opinion page editor. ft -. Wasserman 't er WAS A N1E OUTRcY AS, ORLDWIDE CONADEi#MNIOVI tOW' VE BODY COUNT %S. OVER x00, AND PEOvLE POL'oT AY thWcI AT~TENTION -TIM~4S GET EASIt YoU'Re IN A 6RooVG owe~ I Letters to the Editor Israel's not R 0 ien ocidal destroy any attempts at dia- If you are going to have a