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Show Opinion Ghe Salt Lake Tritune SUNDAY, September 10, 1995 NEWSOF THE WEIRD Page D-5 PAGE D1 POLITICAL CONFETTI Page D-7 OUR VIEW The Salt Lake Tribune’s Editorial Position Pulling West Apart Even before the dust has settled over the religious orientation of West High School’s a capella program, a group of parents and students has stirred up controversy over the content of a college-preparation course. This misguided attempt to connect two unrelated issues is doing neither students northe school any favors. Preston Naylor contends it is hypocritical for school officials te retain an offensive novel in his daughter's International Baccalaureate program after revising the choir’s repertoire to satisfy one student. He is wrong. The choir conflict is not based on a mere matter of taste. The alleged offense involves religious liberty guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The highest court in the nation has ruled that public school officers cannot promote any particular religious doctrine without threatening students’ religious freedom. It is up to West High and Salt Lake City District officials, then, to ensure that their programs remain neutral regarding religion. Their teachers must not lure students into religious worship, as the choral teacher has been accused of doing. The choice of literature for an English class is different. Parenis can claim that the content of certain books, such as Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, offends their sensibilities and values, which may even be religious in nature, but they would have a hard time convincing any court that reading fiction endorses a particular religion. The judicial system undoubtedly would advise them,as it has others who havetried to censor school curricula, to either pull their children from the offending class or let them read a different book. West High administrators, then, are well within the law to keep Allende’s novel in the only internationally approved high-school program in Utah. They have given students the option of reading other authors. Mr. Naylor prefers to alter IB coursework and exams, approved in Switzerland, to accommodate complaining students. The question is whether such changes are worthwhile. It is hard to imagine that students of an advanced English course these days of TV violence and explicit sex cannot abide widely acclaimedliterature like House of the Spirits. Thoughincidents of incest, prostitution, rape and murderare implicitly or graphically depicted, these are the grit of humanlife and much ofliterature — they are the obstacles humanity must transcend. if students avoid the topics at West, they will face them in college and elsewhere. Advanced high school students and their parents must understand this. Whatthey apparently fail to appreciate is that their attempt to discredit complaints against the choral program,with an evidently disingenuousattack on the IB program, is disrupting everyone’s education at West by further polarizing students and distracting schoolofficials and teachers. Positive Policy Influence RAWAL Arab Self-Confidence Vital to Mideast Peace Process Century TRUDY RUBIN PHILADELPHIA — Whilepeace talks drag on betweenIsrael and the Palestinians and the Syrians, the quiet pioneers in building the Israeli-Arab peace process are private businessmen. This is especially true in the case of the peace betweenIsrael and Jordan, already a done deal, where Jordan’s King Hussein strongly supports peacebut the Jordanian public remains skeptical. While ordinary Jordanians are waiting to see concrete benefits from the peace process, staff of researchers and analysts who publish regular reports ca topics of public interest. Tax, spending and social policies and trends are identified and, frequently, compared with those in otherstates. These reports, used by news agencies, interest groups, government leaders, businesses and educators, have influenced countless political decisions in Utah. School funding formulas and unemployment compensation are among the issues affected by Utah Foundation research. Mattersof petential influence include traffic solutions and governmentdebt. The ability of a community-oriented educational project to thrive for five decades without governmentassistance demonstrates an acute local understandingof the importance of objective, comprehensive and accurate information in the developmentof public policy. Utah Foundation’s successis a tribute not only to the founders of the research agency, butalso to its insightful supporters and professionalstaff. An informedcitizenry is a bettercitizenry, and a better citizenry leads to better government. That maxim has guided the Utah Foundation, the only private, non-profit research organization of its kind in Utah,for half a centuty now,positively shaping Utah policy. Its impending 50-year anniversary offers an opportunity for Utahns to reflect on the agency's immeasurable con‘tributions to the state. The idea for an organization that could provide a neutral voice on public issues was hatched by a group of 35 business and community leaders meeting in Hotel Utah’s Jade Room Sept. 19, 1945. The concern was that political jeadersand the public needed facts and reliable information to make the best decisions. Utah Foundation’s founding mission was “to study and encourage the study of state and local government in Utah andthe relation of taxes and public expenditures to the economy of Utah.” Some 1,200 subscribers finance a smail Framework for Peace unique. Perhapsthe best that can besaid of the Geneva principles is that they do reflect political and military reality. It has been clear for sometime that Bosnia probably would be partitioned. The compromise in the principlesis that the Serbs would get virtual autonomy in their half of the country but they would be denied annexation to Serbia itself. Bosnia-Herzegovina would remain one nation within its existing borders, on paper, at least, as the Bosnian government has demanded. All the nitty-gritty details, including whogets whatreal estate, remain to he worked out. That could take months to settle before a peace treaty is ready to The Muslims, Croats and Serbs have agreed on a set of principles to serve as a frameworkfor peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina. That's progress. But a frameworkis not a peace, and a land divided into two ethnic “entities,” maintaining the fiction of a single country, is not a nation. A peace concluded on these principles, then, would be an uneasy one. Afterall, the old Yugoslavia fell apart when its ethnic communities couldn't settle their differences politically. The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina erupted when Muslimsand Croats, envisioning a multi-ethnic state including Serbs, voted to secede from the old Yugoslavia. The Serbs living in Bosnia would have no part of such a state and rebelied. sign. Meantime, NATO must continue bombing the Bosnian Serbs as long as they refuse to remove their heavy weapons from around Sarajevo. That's an issue separate from the Geneva principles. Those principles have created a framework for peace. Now the diplomats from the warring parties must hammertogether the rest of the building. Until that work is completed and signed, the pressure for peace, including U.N. sanctions, must be maintained. A new Bosnia divided into two democratic “entities,” as the Geneva agreement puts it, one a Muslim-Croat federation, the other a Serbian land, would be a house divided as the old Yugoslavia was. Its chancesof functioning as a workable nationstate are slim, It is true, of course, that the political boundaries of nations rarely take account of all ethnic divisions, yet most nations do manage to hold together. A politically divided Bosnia would not be TheSaltLake Tribune UTAH’S INDEPENDENT VOICE SINCE i871 PUBLISHER PAST PUBLISHERS John F. Fitzpatrick (1924-1960) John W. Gallivan (1960-1963) Jerry O'Brien (1983-1994) | | | Dominic Welch EDITOR James EB. Shelledy EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR Harry £. Fuller, Jr. KEARNS-TRIBUNE CORPORATION,143 §. MAIN ST, SALT LAKE CITY, 84111 Se Group hasorganized $40 million worth of joint ventures with KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS some individual Jordanian businessmen are rushing forwardto create them. Suchbold initiatives involve a certain amountof risk — of public disapproval or even physical attack by diehardpolitical opponents of peace. But the new mentality of these business pioneers focuses on how to make the peace process work for the Arabs, rather than waiting for guaranteed results. Case in point: OmarSalah, 28, scion of a Palestinian-Jordanian family that founded and runsa leading contracting company in the Mideast.“I’m from a generation of Arabs whoare not willing to live with an inferiority complex (toward Israel),” he says. Translation: Unlike the older genera- tion of Arabs, who once waited for governmentleaders to defeatIsraelin battle, and now often assume that no matter what agreements they sign, Israel will take unfair advantage, Salahis confident that heis the equalof his Israeli counterparts, and thereforeis unafraid te deal. But Salah won't enterjust any deal. His Israeli subsidiaries of European andU.S. companies that produce products such as underwear, knitwear and yogurt. His conceptis to take advantageof Israeli trade agreements with the United States and Europethat attract multinationals who would not invest direcily in Jordan. Whathe can offeris a highly educated labor force that worksat rates far lowerthan those in Israel. Also crucial to Salahis the creation of new jobs in Jordan (he says his projects will ultimately create 5,000 new positions in a country that suffers from an official rate of 16 percent unemployment). And, he insists that his projects involve more than piecework, introducing new technol. ogy and positions for designers, engineers and computeroperatorsas well. Salah’s kind of vision ultimately bene- fits Israel, too. Israel’s peace with Jordan is invested with great hopes that the two countries, which are intertwined geographically, can work together on many mutually beneficial economic developmentprojects. According to Shimon Shamir, Israel’s ambassador to Jordan, “Peace with Jordan is the peace of the 1990s, in a world without the Cold War, a much more pragmatic world. This peace will be an economic, not a militarily strategic peace.” But that goal is hampered by the fact that Jordan’s economystill lags way behind Israel’s. Jordanis reluctant to enter into free-trade agreements with Israel, lest it be swamped with Israeli goods. Therefore, boosting Jordan's economy andjobbaseis very muchin Israel's longterm interests. More Omar Salahs are needed, even though he estimates that right now there are only about 100 such pioneers in Jordan, and only about five whoare thinking in termsof job-creating joint ventures. Salah stresses that future Jordanian business ties with Israel will depend heavily on how peaceis implemented on the West Bank and in Gaza, since more than half of Jordan’s population has Pal- estinian roots. ButSalahisn’t waiting aroundforfate. He urges Jordanian trade officials to clarify trade laws, andtells Israeli officials to ease the processforletting Jordanian trucks cross the Jordan River. Andhetries to promote the peace proTt wherever opportunity presents it- seif. That may involve sending his employees on four-day training trips to Israel. “They are reluctant at first,” he says, “but then they make friends and want to go back. From an emotionalpoint, people have to start accepting that israelis are not all terrible.” Orit may involve fighting back against Israelis who exploit the powerof occupation. WhenSalah crossed the bridge near Nablus on one of his frequent business trips to Israel, he was ordered brusquely to shut up by a young female Israeli guard as hestood talking in line with a business associate. Rather than back down, as many Palestinians would to avoid trouble with Israeli military au- thorities, he told her she was making a big mistake and reported her rudeness to a superior. She wasfired. “We have to have some marketing of the peace process,” Salah says. That is the kind of Arab self-confidence that is vital to the future of regional peace. Mark Fuhrmansof Wor'd Do Untold Damage JESSE E. TODD JR. NEWPORT NEWSDAILY PRESS THE Goop NEWS Js... HE QUALIFIES FoR A Jo’ AT THE L.A.P.D. NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — If Mark Fuhrman were a disease, he'd be a cancer, an excruciatingly painful variety that eats away at the soul well as the body, killing the victim a littie each day. The former Los Angeles polic: officer stands before this nation exposed as the worst kind ofliar, fool and racist. During the early stages of the invostigation of the murder of O.J. Simpson's formerwife, Fuhrman found — s?idhe found — a bloody glove or on’s property. The glove was later mined to match another glove four re Nicole Simpson and herfriend, kun Goldman, werekilled. To discredit Fuhrman’s testimony, Simpson's lawyers tried to paint Fuhrmanasa racist, but he held his ground under tough questioning. He said under oath that he had not used the word “nigger” in 10 years. Now,taped conversations show Fuhrman is a good liar. During conversations recorded by a screenwriter gathering information for a project, Fuhrman uses the racial epithet repeatedly while talking about how police falsify information and beat black suspects. . The tapes also show that Fuhrman doesn’t like women or Mexicans.! assume he likes dogs or baseball or hunting or I imagine he would make a good Serb,full of hate for Bosnian Muslims. Whata prison the manis in, sentenced to life behind bars made ofprejudice. Of course, people can change. Maybe Fuhrman will undergo an intellectual and emotional transformation and free himself of his stupid hates. Butevenif he doesn’t, Americans owe Fuhrmana debt of gratitude. He's a kind of national weathersatellite, but instead of showing a picture of a monstrous hur- ricane, Fuhrman offers a hideous picture of racism. Without the weather satellite, people mightnotice the water getting rough, but thev'd have no idea of the strength of the & bearing down on them. Without Fu irman, some naive people might want to deny the cffect racism can have on the nation’s cultural weather. Fuhrmanis living proof of the ogre that white America would love to pretend no longer exists: the white cop who hates black people. How many Fuhrmans are there? I have ne idea. Precious few, I hope, will he think of Fuhrman? Will he trust the system? Leapingacross the continent, the same week that Americans were getting a look inside Fuhrman’s ugly mind, Mark Fuhrman think-alikes in Richmond, the for- but it doesn’t take many to do damage. ter, something those who distributed the fliers can’t even define, much less pos- How many black people. some perhaps innocent, have been convicted on evidence gathered, maybe manufactured, by Fuhrman? How many of them will now challenge their convictions? How many will have their convictions overturned and how many of those wil! really have been guilty? How muchwill that cost Los Angeles’ taxpayers? And the next time an innocent young black man is stopped by a white police officer in Los Angeles BS a anycity — mer capital of the Confederacy, were distributing fliers in a neighborhood near the site of a statue planned to honor Arthur Ashe. Thefliers referred to Ashe as “an AIDS-infected nigger.” Ashe, of course, was a man of characsess, Also in Virginia, the Prince William County school system has been jarred by the revelation that the baseball team used a symbol with a racist meaning for good juck. How depressingallthisis. How much energy racism wastes. You'd think people would be too busy for such blind hatred. But they aren't. And so they do their damage. The verdict isn't in on how much Mark Fuhrman will have done. Butit will be rer x |
