NATION/WORLD
The Michigan Daily - Thursday, April 16, 1998 - 9A
&Peace Now
'initiative still
Crunch time
elusive in Israeli process
The Washington Post
TEL AVIV, Israel - They were angry young men then,
ry because they thought Israel was missing the chance to
e peace with an Arab enemy.
So they decided to write a letter. The letter sparked a
movement. The movement brought tens of thousands of
Israelis into the streets and helped move a reluctant govern-
merit to sign a peace accord with Egypt.
Twenty years later, the men -joined by the women they
initially excluded -- are not so young, and the peace they
sought with all the Arabs is still elusive.
Their movement was dubbed Peace Now, to their conster-
nation - they thought it was too insistent, too "American."
After two decades the name seems to mock their concern.
bee has not come "now," and the present animosities
:ween Israel and the Palestinians suggest peace may yet
have a long wait.
For many who helped draft the original letter, such as Tzali
Reshef, the current impasse in Israeli-Arab relations is dis-
couraging. "I don't think we have all the time in the world,"
Reshef said. "In the Middle East, if you have a deadlock, the
way it gets broken is with a war."
Their disappointment is all the more bitter for having
come so close to success. Three years ago, the govern-
ment had adopted the basic goals of Peace Now: peace
*h Arab neighbors, return of land to the Palestinians.
But leaving a huge celebratory rally in Tel Aviv in
November 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was
assassinated.
Peace Now watched in dismay as the soaring hopes of
those times fell into suspicion and hostility, and Rabin's
Labor Party government was replaced by a coalition, led by
the Likud party, opposed to the negotiations Labor pur-
sued.
"It caused a depression that paralyzed people" said Janet
Aviad, one of the early activists of the movement. "We didn't
immediately understand the political tragedy of Rabin's
death. I never dreamed that from November to May our world
would explode."
There are now no negotiations with Lebanon and Syria.
Egypt is frosty toward Israel; Jordanians are angry at their
king's embrace of the Jewish state. The peace accords with
the Palestinians are in disarray, as both sides live in appre-
hension of violence from the other.
Faced with a government hostile to its goals, Peace Now
feels4hat it has little voice in the current Israeli discussion.
"There is a change in the country that has marginalized Peace
Now." acknowledged Avishai Margalit, one of the intellectu-
al founders of the movement.
or some, there is comfort in a long view backward. The
movement has waxed and waned in Israeli public favor,
sometimes riding the crest of popular sentiment, sometimes
sounding a forlorn and futile note of protest. Peace Now
demonstrators have been beaten by police, attacked by other
Jews, abused and denounced.
But the movement helped shove then-Prime Minister
Menachem Begin into peace with Egypt; it shamed the
Israeli government into pulling its troops back from
Beirut after the invasion of Lebanon; it has painstaking-
ly helped turn the question of returning land to the
Palestinians from one of "whether' to one of "how
much."
AP PHOTO
Nina Kocher, left, checks her concessions receipts with tax consultant
Donna Lightsey yesterday at the H & R Block tax preparation office in
Hutchinson, Kan.
MIGRANTS
Continued from Page 1A
McGee said the spring training ses-
sions gave her the cultural and linguistic
background necessary to successfully
teach at the camps. But often the teach-
ing conditions were hard to adjust to, she
said.
"The most difficult part for me was
the social issues, because you feel so
powerless against the social structure and
the discrimination (the workers) face'
McGee said.
LSA senior Jon Molenar, who also
participated in the program last summer,
said many of the students' worst teaching
fears never materialized.
"We had been afraid that our lessons
wouldn't be good enough," Molenar
said. "But we actually found out that
with a little winging it, it was fine.
Molenar said that last summer's group
enjoyed their time with the workers and
their families so much that many times
they stayed beyond the two hours of
teaching time designated for the ses-
sions.
"One night they taught us the Cumbia
and we danced for a good two hours,
Molenar said. "Everybody seemed really
excited not just for the chance to learn
English, but that we were taking an inter-
est in them. Our presence was a break in
their week."
Beth Campbell, an LSA and Art and
Design senior, said she hopes to take the
course this summer because she has an
interest in the environment.
"It's great to see classes developed like
this that are very practical instead of
classroom theory-based," Campbell
said.
"I work at an organic farm and am
interested in the agricultural aspect of the
class" she said.
The course has no prerequisite, but
coordinators said they are accepting stu-
dents who are committed and willing to
participate in all the summer activities.
Organizers said they hope to receive
increased funding to expand the course
so students from across the country
could take part in the volunteer program.
To find out more information or to
register for the course, students can e-
mail hcashman@umich.edu.
ITD
Continued from Page 1A
tures in line with its budget. It would
never be our policy to reduce services.
ITD is working with MSA representa-
tives, the Rackham Student Government
LTD's Student Advisory Committee and
other groups to further revise the basic
t computing program for next year.
"We're looking to meet approximately
95 percent of all students' needs,"
Griffiths said.
lTD's main goal for future policy
changes is to make sure computing ser-
t vices for students are not reduced.
"We want to provide as much service
1 as we can with our funding" McCord
said.
Student
S -.
paper aims
or diversity
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) -- The
editors of the Harvard Crimson recently
looked around the newsroom and came to
a sudden realization: too many Jews.
-ditors of the student newspaper said
tey wanted more diversity among the
editors and columnists, and they added
positions to include other ethnic groups.
But Justin Danilewitz, who is Jewish,
says the concern was so great that it led to
his exclusion from the editorial board. He
aired his complaints in a Commentary
magazine article titled "Counting Noses
at the Harvard Crimson."
Crimson editors say that Danilewitt
the story wrong and that his failue
nothing to do with his faith, but 1."y
would not elaborate.
The 125-year-old Crimson, Those
alumni include former Preidents
Franklin Roosevelt and John F K:nnedy,
has about 300 mostly volunteerstaffers,
about one-fourth of whom woK in the
news department.
Danilewitz, a junior and guost colum-
nist, applied for the chairperonship of
editorial board, which tictates the
p, per's editorial policy and ismade up of
he columnists and top editos. He claims
hat two other students wer, selected for
he job because they advocted reducing
he number of Jewish colunnists.
Wealthy countries describe
Japan's problems as serious
"Officiilly, they say there isn't a quota
sysem," he said. "But the editors have
shown their intentions. If their rejection of
m wasn't about religion, then I have to
thnk that religion wouldn't have had to be
brought up."
Danilewitz said that during the applica-
tion process last winter he was told by an
outgoing Crimson editor that she felt it
was a "problem" that eight of the paper's
10 columnists were Jewish. He added that
the two Jewish students selected as co-
chairs of the editorial board were chosen
because they felt they should recruit
columnists from various ethnic back-
grounds.
"In their position papers, they specifi-
cally said that Jewish columnists from the
tri-state area (New York, New Jersey and
Connecticut) were over represented," said
Danilewitz, who wrote his article in the
April edition of the journal published by
the American Jewish Committee.
Crimson editors admit that there were
newsroom discussions about the high
ratio of Jewish staffers. Incoming editors
wanted to broaden the editorial staff's
racial and ethnic makeup, which now
includes eight Jewish columnists out of
16. Black, Islamic and female students
were among the six additional colum-
nists.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Japan came under increased
pressure yesterday from the United States and other nations
to do more to boost its flagging economy, with top finance
officials depicting Japan's economic problems as serious and
growing worse.
The officials are concerned that troubles in the world's sec-
ond-largest economy could cause renewed financial turmoil
in Asia and beyond.
"The challenges facing Japan are serious and have intensi-
fied in recent months," the group said in a joint communique.
The economic fallout from the Asian crisis was topic No.
I during, more than five hours of discussions of finance min-
isters and central bank presidents from the world's seven
wealthiest industrial countries -- the United States, Japan,
Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada.
Japan signed off on the communique from the G-7 group
but participants indicated there were some differences of
view on the issues.
"I would not describe it as heated," Treasury Secretary
Robert Rubin said of the afternoon talks. "The Japanese gov-
ernment officials very much wanted to express their views
and I think other G-7 ministers ... wanted to express their con-
cerns and their focus on the enormous importance of these
objectives being achieved."
Financial markets had been wary in advance of yester-
day's meeting, wondering whether the seven nations would
embark on a coordinated effort to boost Japan's flagging
currency, the yen, by intervening in currency markets.
But Rubin had told reporters not to expect any policy
change and the language on currencies in the final statement
largely tracked wording used when the G-7 officials last met
in February in London.
In both statements, the finance ministers and central
bank directors said that "excessivatility" was undesirable.
But the new statement made no explicit commitment to
intervene and instead said the group supported Japan's
efforts to deal with the problem "by stimulating domestic
demand led growth."
That wording echoed comments the Clinton administration
has been making with increasing frequency recently as the
Japanese economy appeared to be teetering on the brink of a
recession.
Bowing to strong foreign pressure, Japanese Prime
Mnister Ryutaro Hashimoto last «;eek proposed a$S75 billion
package of tax cuts and new government spending aimed at
restarting Japan's economy.
While that was the biggest in a series of stimulus efforts
attempted by Japan, financial markets have been skeptical,
believing it is too late to keep the country out of a recession.
Japanese Finance Minister Hikara Matsunaga told
reporters the group had shown "great understanding" about
the Japanese efforts. Vice Finance Minister Eisuke
Sakakibara said the ministers also talked about the potentia
threats from the high-flying U.S. stock market.
U
Need a
A
G
If
me See Stand-up Comedian
ete Lipsey
before
EXAMS?
3Iso featuring Comedy Company's
van Messinaer
y... ...' r,. frI ;.. w. 1111 ,.