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Show The Salt Lake Tribune OPINION eS ee Sunday,April7 , 2002 U.S. Has Mideast Role, But Taking Sides Is Recipefor Disaster RUSSIAN VIEW With all the bloody madness unleashed in the Middle East these days, confusion are abundant. have been simpler to sympathize with Palestinians’ cause if they didn't Ps MICHAEL NAKORYAKOV see the conflict in black and white, lot ofeffort. Images ofPalestinians dying in Is- raeli tank attacks and burying their dead in mass graves dug in the nearby parking lot make rooting for the Is- raelis difficult. Add Ariel Sharon's tried to have a holiday meal. Arafat is saying now that he has denounced complaints behind somebody willing to lose his making perfect sense. Arafat must know whathe is life,” Kaddoumisaid at last week's talking about —he is a Nobel Peace Arab conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Israel's occupation of Palestinian Prize winner,after all. He shared it in 1994 with the assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Then, you see what'sleft of the Israelis at the restaurant in Netanya after a Palestinian suicide bomber paid a visit, and you are not so sure any- more. Those people were not even thinking of shooting someone, they were not throwing rocks — they just territories is “the highest and worst kind ofterrorism, and the human being, if he sacrifices his life — there must be a reason,” Kaddoumi said. “The reasonis state terrorism.” Deputy Foreign Minister Ivica Misicof Bosnia-Herzegovina, chief of his country’s anti-terrorism team who History Belongs to Everyone BY JUDITH FREEMAN At the moment, neither does anyone else, but several experts — Dr. Ses- In an unprovoked assault in last Sunday's Ogden Standard Examiner, Weber State historian Gene Sessions questioned myright to offer an opin- ion on the lead scroll, purportedly written by John D. Lee, that was recently found at Lee’s Ferry, a challenge repeated in The Tribune on March 20. These comments were made in reference to my new novel, Red Water, which Dr. Sessions admits he hasn't bothered to read. Red Water tells the story of John D. Lee and the Mountain Meadows Massacre through the voices of three of Lee's 19 wives. I spent more than five years researching and writing this book, with the help of a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. I worked diligently to comprehendthe history and the period. Theresults can be seen in y book. I don’t knowif the scrollis a hoax. sions among them — have denounced it as a fake. Unfortunately, their reasons simply aren't true. I have no vested interest in the question, unlike Dr. Sessions, whohas staked his reputation on it being a forgery. Butit is importantnot to dismiss it for all the harm’s way and irritating the Pales- sands of years.” ians did live in the region many years ago. But so did the Jews. In any case, using history as a weapon never has worked well. Again and again — in Spain and in Britain, in Yugoslavia and in Russia — it has been proved that establishing a nation's birthright through ethnic and religious violence brings nothing but Thefirst time the name Palestine was used was in A.D. 70 when the Romans committed genocide against the Jews, smashed the Temple and de- clared thatthe landof Israel would be no more. From then on, the Romans promised, it would be known as Palestine. The name was derived from —em- he cangeta dial tone and refuses to do sault on Palestinian cities that doesn’t seem to have a defined plan, let alone strategy, except maybe for “Get ‘em all!” And, as it has become customary: since the end of the Cold War, every. body seems to wait for whatthe United States has to say. Despite his recent statements andthe decision to send in Colin Powell, President Bush seems to try maintaining his “hands-off” approach to the Middle East. But with billionsof dollars in U.S. aid and military hardware Israel receives ann' ly, the United States already is in- volved deeply. Most likely, there would have been noIsrael by now if not for the U.S. help. And, under the circumstances, the only realistic way to stop the violence could be sending’ in peacekeepers, difficult as it may be politically. Being the lone superpowercan get prettyrough at times. disaster. Yet there is little evidence of Tribune News Editor Michael Nakoryakov was a journalist in Moscow, rete until Less Nakoryakoo earlier. The land was under Rome, then would be an understatement. Arafat sits in his battered, besieged welcoi mail michnelontslerth.c aa 1872,” just a few days after the scroll was allegedly written. The diaries also show that Lee was a poor and inconsistent speller. Sessions claims Lee spelled Paria, the river that joins the Colorado at Lee’s Ferry, as “Pahar- “My Fever & agueStill Stick to me, like Poverty which Stands by, then [when] all Friends forsake & was it not for the amountof labour so urgent to be done, we would be lonesome.” Sessions asserts that Lee was church continues to claim. It’s the same conclusion Juanita Brooks reached in her seminal book, The Mountain Meadows Massacre: “While Brigham Young and George A. Smith, hiere” or “Paharhere” and never as “Pahreah,” as on thescroll. In truth, happy “exultant”overhis wife Emma’s pregnancy and having just built Lee used “Pahreah” twice on a single page within a weekof the date on the scroll. How could Dr. Sessions have missed this? Wedisagree about Lee’s health in 1872. Thescroll states “I am nowill,” “malaria-like fever” was not debilitating. Where, I wonder, did he come by suchauthoritative medical knowledge? When was thelast time he went through a malarial shakingfit? Lee’s words show that malaria was not pleasant. “Encountered a desper- ate wind storm,” he wrote on Jan. 16. two cabins. Never mind that Lee was a fugitive who had lost his wealth and wives, and been excommunicated from the church he loved. His name wasa “hiss anda byword”in Southern Utah for the atrocity at the Meadow, andhe had good reason to hide. Was helonely and troubled as the scroll indicates? Dr. Sessions says no, but I disagree. After all, why did Lee and his wives nametheir harsh and remote new home“Lonely Dell”? Dr. Sessions raises the issue of Brigham Young’s role in the massacre. He says somepeople, like myself, believe Young bears some degree of guilt for the massacre. This is true. After years of research and reading,I ated “January” as “Jany.,” rather “| had a heavy ague & fever.” Two dayslater, he was sick again: “For the last 3 hours I worked through fever & ague & when I reached the fire on than “Jan.,” as itappears on the scroll. But Lee’s diary used “Jan. 19th, shore I was so near exhausted that I motion in the north, by the highest church authorities, and that it was not Stagered.” He was still ill on Feb. 1: the work of “local fanatics,” as the sions claims Lee consistently abbrevi- headquarters with no water andelec. tricity, talks to the world leaders when and to say anything to defuse the situation. Sharon pushes on with his as- anybody learning those lessons, and the ongoing Middle East ordeal is a perfect example. To say things lock pretty bad there the Philistines, a Goliathian people conquered by the Jews centuries and Lee wrote about suffering from “ague,” malaria. Sessions claims this bythe rules historians follow.” I wonder who makes those “rules,” but Iam happyto counterDr.Sessions’ charges that I am ignorant of the facts. Ses- tinians at the sametime. There is an issue there, though.IsTae] didn’t take those territories from Arafat. It captured them from Jordan’s King Hussein.Incidentally, Jor- dan nowis at peace with Israel bassies andall. Sessions says Lee was not ill or despondentin January 1872, as the scroll claims, and that the spelling on the sions suggested “literary types” like myself should Jeave history to historians unless they “are willing to abide its citizens, basically putting them in There is truth to whathesaid, of course. The ancestors of the Palestin- wrongreasons. scroll is inconsistentwith Lee’s. When I challenged these observations, Ses- ‘True, the modern Israeli state did not have the West Bank and East Jerusalem before the Six Day War in 1967. It did take those territories by Sharon offered Arafat a humiliating “one-wayticket” from Ramallah, the me.Is it his [Sharon's] homeland or ours? We have been here for thou- “Tt is not necessary to condemn the give them a small piece of land there, even Josef Stalin approved. military force, and has been stubbornly building settlements there for angry Palestinian leader’s reaction was, “Nobody can exile me or expel know. the area, though, and when the United Nations in 1948 decided to formally enjoy talking about history. After terrorism. Maybe he should have done wartimerecord —and Yasser Arafat’s start intentionally blow up infants. When making their respectivecas- es, both sides in the Mideast conflict it more forcefully, or at least let his foreign minister, Farouk Kaddoumi, suicide bombers, because we have to take into consideration the reasons militant rhetoric — andhis appalling Turks, then — briefly under the British. The Jews always havelived in be.” Well said — it certainly would with the Palestinians being the inno- temptingas it mightbe,it has to take a under the crusaders, then under the so sure. matter how noble his struggle may There aiso is envy toward those who have no trouble taking sides. Amazingly, there are plenty of such people around. That must be really comforting to cent victims and Israelis as the “evil doers,” or the other way around. But also attended the conference, was not “T don't care about race orreligion,”Ivica said. “If a person kills or harms a civilian he is a terrorist, no there is no shortage of strong emotions. Anger, frustration, sadness, the church authorities chiefly responsible, did not specifically order the massacre, they did preach sermons and set up social conditions which madeit. possible.” Evidence ofthis, she states, “is abundant and unmistakable, and from the most impeccable Mormonsources.” I have great respect for historians and theworkthat they do, but history belongs to everyone. It is the repository of human memory. These stories are our common heritage. And it doesn't take a Ph.D.to access them,as Juanita Brooksso ably proved. And that, as Mark Twain would say, is the word with thebarkstill on it. Thatstill leaves us with the matter of the scroll. Is it a hoax? Is it real? I suggest westay tuned. concluded that the massacre wasset in Judith Freemanis a novelist, essayist, and critic wholives in Los Angeles. WELLS FARGO Homeequity loans The Next Stage® madeto order. Wells Fargo Home Equity Loans and Lines of Credit Here's a fresh way to get the money you need. 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