Sept.-Oct. 2005:
Activist Editorial
Israel Divestment
Drummond, Merchant of Death
Student-Farmworker Alliance
Judith Pasternak
Letters
Activist Reviews

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Activist Letters

Agitated

As veterans of the peace movement, as a CO, as war tax resisters of the 1960s-1970s, and as supporters of the WRL for decades, we write to you in great sadness and disappointment. Your description of A.J. Muste, a beautiful and profound peacemaker, as a peace “agitator,” is perhaps the best indicator as to what has changed over the last 40 years.

It appears as if great violence and bigotry has insinuated itself into the current peace movement. In your “Activist Editorial” on the London bombings, you deplore the bombings in London, the bombings in Baghdad and Fallujah and the rest of Iraq as well as in Kabul, yet you do not condemn the terrorist bombings of civilians in Israel: at pizza restaurants, in buses, in cafes and even supermarkets. Over 2000 casualties and not a word of condolence, eliminating Israel from your list as a prime victim of terrorism; at best this is a reflection of ignorance; at worst, it is an omission out of bias and bigotry.

You deplore the bombings but do not blame the perpetrators. Yes, there is tremendous violence unleashed by nations, but you fail to separate individual responsibility from institutional. You do not confront the cultures of violence that breed terrorism.

Your elimination of Jewish/Israeli victims from your condolences is a major moral failure, reminiscent of pre-WW II propaganda. You have included Israel’s measures of self-defense along with terrorism, while ignoring the acts of terror Israel is trying to prevent. Also, there is no country “Palestine” at this time; you are obviously joining the army of those who do not feel Israel should exist, and referring instead to an entity that seeks to destroy and replace it. We do support the creation of a Palestinian state, but not at the cost of the destruction of the state of Israel.

We deplore this attitude, which seems to have been taken by much of the peace movement and of the left in recent years. It now prevents us from participating with our whole hearts in support of your programs and those of other progressive organizations. It is a great loss for all of us.  

Stephen & Marilyn Mohr
South Orange, NJ

We wrote “We do not condone those or any bombings,” referring to the recent attacks highlighted in the editorial.Which part did you not understand?

—The Editors

Benjamin Rush, whom you had listed as a nonviolent activist in your publication in the June 2005 issue of the NVA, was the founder of the American Mental Health Movement among other things. As such, he conducted inhumane and very terrible experimentation upon helpless inmates of nut houses in hopes of “curing” mental disorders. These experiments caused severe pain and suffering, including death, upon his defenseless victims and “cured” none. As a mentally ill person myself I just wanted to point this out.

David Tyler, LA

Thank you for raising this important fact about Benjamin Rush’s failed and often inhumane psychiatric experiments. As it turns out, Rush is a contradictory figure. He believed that African-Americans suffered from a form of leprosy he called “Negritude” (unrelated to the cultural movement in the 1930s) which once gotten rid of would turn them white. Yet in 1803, he was president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, condemned public and capital punishments, and advocated prison reform.

—The Editors