Defiant Begin

To the Editors:

Menachem Begin [Sept. 20] has said, "A friend does not weaken his friend." Begin's actions have weakened the U.S. in the Middle East, especially with the moderate Arab states. Before Begin accuses the U.S. of not being a true friend, he should look at his own actions.

Kenneth E. Morris

Coffeyville, Kans.

The Arab League still refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist; yet you imply that Prime Minister Begin is the foremost obstacle to peace in the Middle East.

Amy and Dan Goldberger

Mountain View, Calif.

What right has Begin to demand that the world bow to his dictates for bringing back a biblical Israel? If it weren't for the help the U.S. gives Israel, Begin would not have a country to defend.

Al Hoenicke

Sterling Heights, Mich.

As an American of Jewish descent, I am disgusted by Israel's acts of the past five months. The Israelis may not think they have become the oppressor, but if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck and has feathers, well?

John H. Cone

Pasadena, Calif.

As a Jew who recalls the silence of a Pope and the indifference of President Roosevelt while 6 million of my people were burning, the choice for me is simple.

Rabbi Esor Winer Ben-Sorek

Great Neck, N. Y.

More than any other group, Jews ought to be sympathetic to the Palestinian plea for a homeland. The Palestinians do not want to be scattered over the Middle East any more than the Jews wanted to remain dispersed throughout Europe.

Mary Hanna

Berkeley, Calif.

Remembrances of Things Past

I agree with your Essay [Sept. 20] that Israel cannot dwell forever on the Holocaust and use that tragedy as its motivating force. However, the Israelis would do well to keep attuned to the guns and bombs going off at synagogues in Paris, Brussels and Vienna.

Helen W. Joffe

Hamilton, Ohio

The past is proof of the Jews' ability to survive when other nations would crumple. It is a history to be borne with sadness and pride. However, Prime Minister Begin is creating a past that may not be remembered with pride. He could prove to be the next disaster for the Jews.

Stephanie Vincent

Burlington, Ont.

Since time immemorial the Jews have risen from the ashes, standing yet stronger in their beliefs. How else could they have survived, if not for their devotion to the past? In every Jew, including American Jews, is the remembrance of those who came before and of their trust that tradition will be carried on.

Ellen Barson

Hamden, Conn.

Anti-Semitism has existed for centuries in Western civilization. Its culmination in the Holocaust occurred only 40 years ago. Has the Western world become so morally transformed since then that anti-Semitism is no longer a threat to the Jewish people? I doubt it.

Lawrence M. Rubin

Tonawanda, N. Y.

Doing Time

In laying out the prison problem [Sept. 13], you stopped short of telling us what works: restitution. As you point out, virtually half of all inmates are convicted of nonviolent offenses. Why not require these offenders to pay back their victims and go to work for their communities, rather than crowd them into expensive and violent jails? Valuable cell space could then be saved for the dangerous offenders who should be in prison.

Charles W. Colson

Prison Fellowship

Washington, D.C.

In 21 years as a prison chaplain, I have encountered a number of Sy Johnsons who feel they are chronic victims, abused and misused. One of the alienating choices the Sy Johnsons repeatedly make is to sustain themselves with anger, bitterness and inner turmoil. In their distorted view, these intense and destructive emotions are the glue that holds their fragmented lives together. Such individuals are totally threatened, even panicked, at the suggestion of giving up their anger.

Perpetual time-doers like Sy Johnson have created a self-image as a loser. They see themselves as inferior, inept, unworthy and unlovable.

D. Eugene Anderson

Twain Harte, Calif.

As an eight-year veteran of Ohio prisons, I read your special section with interest and skepticism. Prisons are for punishment: to give society the retribution it is due. But punishment should be handed out fairly. When an inmate sees police, judges and politicians, the same people who draft and enforce laws, receiving wrist slaps for conduct that landed him in the slammer for years, the lesson of sure and swift punishment is lost.

Robert B. Rankin

London Correctional Institution

London, Ohio

In your article on prison life, you mention the 1978 Supreme Court decision Hutto vs. Finney, 'involving sickeningly bad conditions in Arkansas." In that case the Arkansas system was the first to be declared unconstitutional. This past August the U.S. district court, citing "important and significant achievement," ended the 13-year litigation over the conditions in the Arkansas department of correction.

Steve Clark, Attorney General

State of Arkansas Little

Rock, Ark.

Compared with the jails in Brazil, American prisons are a paradise. Nevertheless, prisons have failed society as well as inmates. There is only one solution. We ought to restrict confinement to the truly dangerous. For the others, probation, fines and compulsory community service are sufficient.

Luiz Felipe da Silva Haddad

Nitero, Brazil

Senior Citizen Crime

The elderly who commit crimes [Sept. 20] present an increasing problem, particularly in retirement areas like South Florida. As a judge, I have presided over hundreds of cases involving senior citizens charged with shoplifting and other nonviolent crimes. Our criminal justice system, with its traditional solutions of jail, probation or stifffines, is neither appropriate nor effective in dealing with someone who has otherwise been productive and proper for 70 years. To deal with this situation, Fort Lauderdale has instituted a senior intervention program for first offenders that offers guidance, counseling and supervision that permit the individual to maintain dignity.

Steven G. Shutter

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Simple Melody

The term minimalism for the new music [Sept. 20] is a misnomer. Far from being a look at sound through a microscope, it is more like a Xerox machine run amuck. Steve Reich's Four Organs is not deceptively simple, it's just simple.

Michael Ingham

Santa Barbara, Calif.

In denigrating minimalism, Composer Elliott Carter comments: "One also hears constant repetition in the speeches of Hitler and in advertising. It has its dangerous aspects." One also hears constant repetition in the song patterns of birds and in the sound of the tide breaking on the shore.

Eric J. Ziolkowski

Chicago

Sue the City

Municipalities socked by damage suits [Sept. 13] are ignoring the message. Raising funds to satisfy the judgments is not the answer. The solution lies in eliminating the arrogance of law enforcement authorities and the indifference of public employees.

Thomas E. Beck

Los Angeles

Defecting G.I.

You describe PFC Joseph White, who defected to North Korea [Sept. 13], as an earnest, straightarrow, all-American youngster, too shy to be popular, and unabashedly patriotic. That is just the point. Such a severely self-disciplined and rigid personality is exactly the type that would defect to more tyrannical conditions.

Richard C. Wisberger

Indianapolis

Plummeting Peso

Your story on Mexico's bank nationalization [Sept. 13] was all too accurate. Appropriation would be more like it. Surely the spontaneous takeovers of industry, media and private property are not far behind.

Nicholas O. Collins

Mexico City

If banks in Mexico had been nationalized as a result of a well-planned federal policy, Mexicans would feel proud. But President Lopez Portillo did it for what little prestige he had left.

Juan Sanchez

National City, Calif.

Lopez Portillo called the private bankers traitors, blaming them for the crisis. The government's corrupt and miscalculating economic policy caused it.

Fernando Compean Martinez Sotomayor

Satelite, Mexico

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