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Healing or Denial? The review of Michael Lerner’s book Healing Israel/Palestine in your Spring 2004 issue was far too soft. Lerner has a bad rap among Palestine activists for refusing to budge on right of return for refugees. That should have been addressed. And this whole “no blame game” approach denies the reality that one people are the occupied and the other the occupier. White pacifists perennially wonder why our groups remain so white—this kind of thinking tells volumes. Bill Weinberg Remember the Doctors! Larry Gara, in his review of Toward Nuclear Abolition, by Lawrence Wittner (Spring 2004), mentioned a number of organizations in the antinuclear movement. He failed to mention two primary organizations. One of the earliest was Physicians for Social Responsibility, founded in the ’60s by Dr. Helen Caldecott, an Australian pediatrician who recognized the disastrous effects that strontium had on children. Out of PSR came International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. Janet White Loeb Now and Then “Aiming High” (NVA, Spring) raised to mind my own decision to be a conscientious objector in World War II. As draft time came on, I concluded that I could not go out and kill someone. My Catholic upbringing as a follower of Jesus Christ led me to decide this. I would, however, be willing to go in a noncombatant status in the medical corps, thus getting shot at along with everyone else. My mother and grandmother were somewhat upset about this and tried to talk me out of it; an uncle remarked that if everyone was a conscientious objector, Hitler would come over here and say, “Well, well, what a fine lot of conscientious objectors we have here.” I checked my position with the pastor, who was also on the county draft board, and he assured me this was my right as a citizen; he didn’t try to change my mind. It took six months for a hearing to come up, which meant that for six months other men my age were going in my place, a source of guilt for me as well as prayers for them. The hearing was held, conducted by a Quaker. He decided I was presenting an honest case about an honest belief and granted the status I asked for. I still had to go for a physical exam along with all draftees, and I did not pass the exam. I continued to feel guilty about being a CO. What have I done since re war and peace? I’ve written letters to Congress, supported your organization, prayed. Still, those men who had to go in my place. . . . Robert Guinther |
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