DATE=03/29/02
TYPE=U-S EDITORIAL DIGEST
TITLE=FRIDAY'S EDITORIALS
NUMBER=6-125625
BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
INTERNET=YES
EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS
TELEPHONE=619-3335
CONTENT=
INTRO: The American press is reacting with uniform condemnation for the Passover bombing in Israel, and is expressing heightened concern over what promises to be escalated fighting in its aftermath. The Arab Summit also draws comment, mostly in relation to the bombing. Saudi Arabia's strict Islamic laws continue to be criticized in the recent girls' school fire that killed several students.
President Bush draws more comment for his foreign aid and free trade policies; and Senator Jesse Helm's turnabout on AIDS funding is again covered in the commentaries. Now, here is ___________ with a closer look and some quotes in today's U-S Editorial Digest.
TEXT: Both major dailies and regional newspapers are editorializing revulsion at the Seder bombing attack at an Israeli seaside resort on the first night of Passover. In Florida's Sun-Sentinel from Fort Lauderdale, there is the question: "Does Anyone Want Peace?" followed by this axiom:
VOICE: It is not easy to make peace when you don't really want it. Despite statements to the contrary all around, and despite the actions of the Arab League … Thursday, many Middle Eastern leaders continue to act as if they don't.
TEXT: In California, The Fresno Bee says of the bombing: "… its timing seemed to be aimed not only at Israel but at Arab leaders gathered in Beirut to discuss a new peace proposed by Saudi Arabia." The New York Times, while not looking past the brutal attack, is heartened by what was said in Lebanon.
VOICE: The Arab League took an admirable, if long overdue, step … when it offered to establish normal relations with Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state's being built on the land captured in the 1967 war. The assertion that Israelis have a right to peace and security … rings hollow, however, when juxtaposed with the league's indifference toward one of the most horrific Palestinian suicide bombings to date. … Yet talk of peace plans seems disconnected from reality right now.
TEXT: Under the editorial headline "Outrage and hope," today's Philadelphia Inquirer sounds emotionally drained.
VOICE: Wednesday, it felt as though sorrow had damned the last stream of hope, as though blood and bluster had choked off the last opportunity. Even for the conflict-wracked Middle East, Wednesday was a horrible day. Yesterday's [3-28] events at the Arab League summit can't erase what went before.
TEXT: Boston's Christian Science Monitor says, "this week's events … offer up a stark choice for the United States. How much should it push a political settlement on the players while the violence rages on?" In California, The Los Angeles Times, hoping for a moderate counterattack, says: "the despicable attack of a Palestinian suicide bomber … may well kill a Mideast peace process that was showing faint signs of life. But a display of restraint now by Israel could be a powerful signal of strength.
Kentucky's Louisville Courier-Journal calls the Seder bombing in Netanya "an incomprehensible horror," while Rhode Island's Providence Journal says the "massacre by Hamas is a remainder of why Israel must tread very carefully in responding to what might or might not be a genuine peace offer from its Arab neighbors…"
"Nothing justifies the suicide bombings" says The Houston [Texas] Chronicle, adding "no political cause, no matter how just, justifies this approach."
And on New York's Long Island, this sad observation from Newsday about timing: "if only the Arab League had made its declaration when it might have done some good."
Portland's Oregonian, calling the bombing "barbaric" describes the group claiming responsibility, Hamas, as "… the enemy of the Arab leaders who gathered in Beirut … to approve the … Saudi … peace proposal…"
In one other commentary related to the region, Saudi Arabia's strict religious police, who prevented firemen and rescue workers from aiding girls trapped in a recent school fire, draws this excoriation from Pittsburgh's Post-Gazette:
VOICE: Saudi newspapers reported that firefighters battling the March 11th blaze in Mecca were not allowed inside the school immediately by religious police because the girls were not wearing the required garments. … Fifteen girls died and 50 others were injured. … those who enforce its religious law …suffer from a profound poverty of human decency.
TEXT: President George W. Bush draws praise for his recent promise to double foreign aid as long as recipients strive to reduce corruption and use it wisely. Today's Salt Lake City [Utah] Tribune says the:
VOICE: … proposal that foreign aid …be tied to political and economic reform is a straight forward call for some sanity in the way the United States doles out money to poor and developing countries… a common-sense proposal that … will encourage recipient countries to effect … improvement[s] that can get them off the dole…
TEXT: However in the Midwest, the Chicago Tribune is furious at Mr. Bush for saying he supports free trade but, the Tribune adds:
VOICE: …he sure has an odd way of showing it. Just a day before the president [said "trade produces liberty and freedom" … his administration decided that the only way to protect the U-S lumber industry from those nasty Canadians was to slap 29 percent tariffs on softwood lumber - - used in building homes … This is the second time in a month the Bush team has moved to protect a domestic industry from the world marketplace.
TEXT: The Tribune then cites the tariffs placed on various kinds of imported steel. Turning to medical aid, several papers have been commenting this week on a dramatic turnabout - - some are calling it an Epiphany - - on AIDS relief. The San Antonio [Texas] Express-News is one.
VOICE: During his nearly 30 years in the …Senate, Jesse Helms has made a name for himself, mainly for attacking foreign aid and harshly criticizing liberals, gays, feminists, civil rights activists and anyone else he considered a troublemaker. But life is full of surprises. The … North Carolina … Republican …has had a change of heart - - partially [reversing] himself on the AIDS issue and now plans to co-sponsor legislation that would add 500-million dollars to …fight … mother-to-child transmission of the deadly disease in Africa. … The sooner that happens, the better."
TEXT: In Latin American issues, today's New York Post is glad that President Bush on his recent visit to Peru did not ask for clemency for convicted U-S terrorist Lori Berenson, in penitentiary there for aiding Communist guerrillas.
Far to the south, in Antarctica, a huge ice shelf dissolved recently within a month, reportedly as a result of global warming. This development draws the attention of Connecticut's Waterbury Republican-American. Writes the New England daily:
VOICE: Warmists seized upon this isolated development in billions of years of climate change as the proof-positive du jour that autos and industry are combining to put the planet in a carbon-dioxide pressure cooker. … It helps to know sensationalism and the ability to extrapolate unmitigated disaster from one climatological anomaly are prerequisites for admission into the global-warming fraternity. … A 35-year-study of Antarctica by University of Illinois scientists found [most of it] is cooling faster than almost any place on earth…
TEXT: Lastly yet another tribute to the famed "Iron Lady" of British politics, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who recently withdrew from public life due to a series of strokes. Says The Deseret News in Salt Lake City Utah:
VOICE: Her impressive legacy will live on. Not only Britain but the entire world has benefited from her leadership … a contemporary of … President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union Premier Mikhail Gorbachev … she took an economically decaying Britain …and turned it into a confident country with a new sense of free enterprise and private property. … Her presence … will be missed by all.
TEXT: On that heroic note, we conclude this editorial sampling of Friday's U-S press.
NEB/ANG/SAB