Meir and the Middle East

Sir: I read your cover story [Sept. 19], "Middle East: Toward the Brink."

Having just visited the Middle East, I found your story to be biased, one-sided, and completely accurate. As an American Jew, I thank you.

ALAN KING Manhattan

Sir: I'm disgusted with the news of the attacks on the Arabs. I'm not overlooking the raids of Al-Fatah, made across the Israeli border, but I admire them for at least putting up a struggle to keep their country intact.

The Arabs are warm, kind, generous people. They do not wish to be the supreme power in the Middle East. They ask only for what belongs to them--that to which they are entitled. Their land, their country, their pride. Is that not the reason we are in the Viet Nam war, so that the Vietnamese may keep what belongs to them? BARBARA D. OWEN Columbus

Sir: The trouble with the Israelis is that they are too damn decent and moral. Arabs are without scruples, and where it suits their purposes they break cease-fire agreements, employ paramilitary terrorists, plant bombs in marketplaces, hijack and shoot at Israeli civilian planes, kill Jews and their gentile sympathizers in Europe and America, enlist the use of U.N. agencies in their cause, and generally ignore civilized conduct and international laws and norms. It is time that the Israelis also ignored international conventions and played the same immoral game.

J. Ross Johannesburg, South Africa

Sir: "A State Department official grumbled, 'When is Israel going to learn that it cannot shoot its way to peace?'" Ah! When is the U.S. going to learn that we cannot shoot our way to peace in Viet Nam? Considering our Government's reaction to a small war 10,000 miles away, one shudders to think of what our reaction would be if we found ourselves in Israel's position. Perhaps this unnamed official should be put in charge of our Viet Nam policy (if we had one).

BOB WOODSIDE Assistant Professor East Carolina University Greenville, N.C.

Sir: That is a very good portrait of Israel's Golda Meir, but there are two things missing: a broom to match her looks, and a swastika to show her true personality and ideals.

FRANCISCO J. PEGO Manhattan

Peace Now!

Sir: It has become increasingly apparent that President Nixon either ignores the fact or simply does not care that innocent Americans are dying by the dozens every day in Viet Nam.

I wish there were some way to force President Nixon to spend a few days at the overseas replacement station in Oakland, where he would have to watch dead Americans from Viet Nam in plastic bags being unloaded from plane after plane, day after day, week after week after week. Maybe he would then get the true picture and realize that he could stop the suffering with the stroke of a pen. Perhaps then this realization would prompt him to do what he should have done long ago: to bring all the troops home now, STEPHEN M. SNOW Salt Lake City

Black v. White in Viet Nam

Sir: In your article "Black Power in Viet Nam" [Sept. 19], you say that many of the blacks in Viet Nam regard the war as "white man's folly." This is not a white man's war; it is a no man's war. There should be no Americans, black, white or otherwise, in Viet Nam. The brown Vietnamese should fight for themselves.

DAVID HULTO Gainesville, Ga.

Sir: Do you think the Viet Cong feel left out? Who can blame them for not wanting to negotiate when they can sit down and watch our side fight it out?

BILLY WARNER Marquette, Mich.

Sir: After just reading your article on Black Power in Viet Nam, I feel kind of sick. I've always been sympathetic to the Negro's search for equal rights, but I think things are getting out of hand.

You talk about how they feel when they see a Confederate flag flying around. Well let me ask you this. How do you think the whites like myself feel when we see Black Power flags or when we see them give their Black Power salute? I can tell you one thing, it sure doesn't make us happy.

They can wear their hair in the Afro style, but I don't think I could get away with wearing my hair like my ancestors did and I think my culture is as important as theirs. They can organize their JuJu and Mau-Mau clubs, but what would happen if whites tried to organize a Klan or something? We both have the same principle but you see who gets away with it.

You state that 52% of them would rather live in all-black barracks. Well what do you think would happen if I stated that I would rather live in all-white barracks when they started to move a Negro into my barracks I would be called a racist, a bigot, and many other things, but all you call the Negro is a brother who wants to be with his brothers.

The blacks can study African culture if they want to, but they had also better get in touch with America's culture, because that's where they will be stopped if they don't.

(SGT.) JOHN W. DANIELS A.P.O. San Francisco

Payments Not Deferred

Sir: Your article "Nationalization in Zambia" [Aug. 22] brings out very clearly some of the dilemmas facing investors in that country in the light of President Kaunda's recent move in asking the owners of Zambian copper mines to negotiate the sale of 51% of their shares to the state.

However, you are unfair to the Zambian government when you state that "the final payoff could be delayed for decades" because, you state, the compensation proposed by the Zambians could not possibly exceed $5,000,000 a year from the two groups' sales of copper.

After royalty and tax payments to the Zambian government that last year to taled $144 million from Roan Selection Trust alone, net income for the recent fiscal year was $69 million. For the first nine months of that year the dividends were $21 million or 46% of net income. Therefore a very considerable capacity exists for payment of dividends to both old and new owners, even after Zambia's very heavy taxation.

IAN MACGREGOR Chairman

American Metal Climax, Inc. Manhattan

>TIME regrets that a transmission error in the correspondent's report led the editors to an incorrect conclusion.

Euphoric Euphemisms

Sir. After reading your Essay [Sept. 19] I couldn't help recalling my own experience with Government jargon while serving in the Peace Corps in Malawi. Nowhere else can a person be fired by being told he has been "selected out" or ""deselected." If he is lucky enough to be sent overseas, he must never refer to the natives without calling them "indigenous host-country nationals."

DELMARIE P. MOTTA Pasadena, Calif.

Sir: You failed to point out the type of euphemism that, at one time or another, influences every American consumer. This is the "telling it like it isn't" pricing method used on most goods in this country.

With the magical use of "9" (79-c-, 89-c-) and phrases such as: "Under $30" (meaning $29.95), the American shopper is persuaded by advertisers and businessmen to buy items that "sound better" with these euphemistic changes.

It is ironic that even linguists opposed to euphemisms are not free of deception. Mario Pei's book is a euphemistic $6.95.

HARRY SCHUTTE III Westerville, Ohio

Private Plane Plea

Sir: Re your treatment of the recent midair collision near Indianapolis [Sept. 19]: any vehicle traveling three times the speed of another must have that slower vehicle almost directly in front of it for an appreciable time prior to collision. That the crew of the Allegheny DC-9 failed to see the Cherokee in reported visibility of 15 miles indicates nothing but lack of vigilance. The appalling tragedy is that in the last five cases involving an airliner and a private plane, the airliner has run down and destroyed the private plane from behind in clear weather.

R. C. JONES Commercial Pilot Annandale, Va.

Evangelical Enthusiasm

Sir: Thank you for the excellent article on the U.S. Congress on Evangelism [Sept. 19]. It was the fairest and most balanced article on evangelicalism I have ever read in TIME. I am convinced that the Evangelical wing of the church is now where the action is.

BILLY GRAHAM Montreal, N.C.

Sir: I have read TIME for more than 30 years. This was one of the finest pieces of interpretive journalism in the area of religion that I have seen in all the years that I have been a reader of the magazine. It caught the heartbeat of the Congress. It was irenic, it was filled with factual information, and it was as fair a presentation of evangelical life and thought as I have seen in many years.

HAROLD LINDSELL Editor

Christianity Today Washington, D.C.'

Photo Flood

Sir: Lyndon's half-million pictures [Sept. 19] average about one every ten minutes, day and night, for the time he was in office. No wonder he chose not to run--he was too sleepy. And Lady Bird must have been tense as hell with Okamoto always watching.

Your figures have got to be exaggerated.

LEONARD KIMBALL North Miami, Fla.

-- Not at all. The daily total is the equivalent of about four rolls of 35 mm. film, less than an hour's supply for a fast-working professional.

Burning Desire

Sir: I was amused that I could not get through the article "Cold-Turkey Month" [Sept. 19] without lighting a cigarette.

LUCY BERK Escondido, Calif.

Role Playing

Sir: I have followed the William Buckley-Gore Vidal fight [Sept. 12] for over a year. There is a solution! If Raquel Welch and Rex Reed resign their roles as Myra and Myron Breckinridge, 20th Century-Fox could then hire Buckley and Vidal to take their roles. It would be up to the moviegoer to decide which of the two was playing Myra and which was playing Myron. MICHAEL L. WAYNE Los Angeles

TIME on Tape

Sir: Our contact with the blind community indicates that many blind persons are unaware of the fact that the Science and Medicine sections of TIME are available to them on tape from Science for the Blind. This is true in spite of the fact that we have tried to notify the community through notices in Braille periodicals and by direct mail to our own mailing list. The blind people who receive the tapes have been enthusiastic.

MRS. L. FULLER Associate Director Science for the Blind Bala-Cynwyd, Pa.

Sensitive to the Touch

Sir: The Human Relations Institute meetings [Sept. 19] were the most devastating and divisive experience to which black and white teachers could be subjected. Touching, embracing or castigating persons with whom one has scarcely a passing acquaintance does not improve human relations or increase tolerance and understanding. In fact, educated, well-mannered, tolerant, sensitive teachers were repelled by such actions. Color or nationality had nothing to do with the distaste expressed by the majority of teachers and administrators attending.

MARY LOUISE REED Ann Arbor, Mich.

National Awards

Sir: I not only deny that I have denounced the Panthers' Los Angeles Freedom School [Sept. 12] as "brainwashing children to hate the white man"; I declare that if the Freedom Schools constitute that organization's major program, the Panthers should be receiving national awards instead of national harassment.

It is inconceivable that anyone could believe today that black people need special programs to teach them to hate white people. For most of us, years of daily encounters with arrogant, exploiting whites are enough to teach us to hate.

BARBARA SOLOMON Associate Professor University of Southern California Los Angeles

A Word from the Duke

Sir: I want to thank you for putting "Old Ty" and me out there for everybody to see [Aug. 8]; and my deep gratitude for the thought and research that went into the article.

I say this in spite of your cursory, patronizing attitude concerning the political beliefs I espouse. The silent majority of the people in our nation are beginning to vote the way I think and to resent the "care from cradle to grave" philosophy which your articulate liberal-left minority are smugly taking for granted as a way to political power in this country.

JOHN WAYNE Hollywood

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