Palestinian revolt grows; defies Israeli terror drive

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Palestinian women, defiantly displaying their national flag, protest against Israeli army brutality on the West Bank and Gaza.

South Africa:

majority rule See Special Supplement, On Feb. 23, House Speaker Jim Wright and other House Democrats unveiled a $25 million plan to provide "humanitarian" aid to the Nicaraguan contras over the next four months. The aid is to be disbursed by the Pentagon.

One provision of the plan would permit the possibility of a vote on military aid to the U.S.-backed mercenaries if the Nicaraguan government is deemed to be the obstacle to a cease-fire accord.

House Democrats who had opposed Reagan's request have endorsed this plan enthusiastically. One example is Representative Michael Lowry (D.-Wash.), who called it a "positive package that really helps the peace process."

The New York Times, in a Feb. 25 editorial titled "Why contra aid promotes peace," likewise argued that Wright's plan should be supported as the only way to "strengthen President Arias [of Costa Rica] and Cardinal Obando y Bravo in their struggle to keep diplomacy alive."

The purpose of this "diplomacy," as Jim Wright and Costa Rican President Arias openly avow, is to press the Sandinista government to make further concessions to the contras and their allies inside Nicaragua. [See article on the role of Oscar Arias on page 13.] End U.S. support to apartheid! South African troops have pushed forward into southern Angola in the largest invasion in eight years. At the same time, almost all legal opposition to whiteminority rule in South Africa has been eliminated.

On Feb. 24, the South African government banned the activities of 17 anti-apartheid groups. In addition, the country's largest union federation, the Congress of South Atrican Trade Unions, was barred from conducting any "political" activities. In a news conference on the same day, President Reagan downplayed any U.S. response to the crackdown. He dismissed South Africa's racist measures as stemming from a "tribal policy."

The demand "End U.S. support to South African heid" has become ever more urgent and should be up this spring in mass protests across the country.

-The editors With this new contra-aid packagewhatever modifications or delays it may encounter in the coming weeks—it is clear (continued on page 13) aparttaken The rebellion of the Palestinian people of the West Bank and Gaza has engulfed every village, town, and refugee camp. Children as young as eight and old people in their seventies and eighties defy the Israeli army daily. Entire village populations waving makeshift Palestinian flags of bedsheets and cloth mass defiantly, singing and chanting and hurling stones at soldiers firing automatic weapons.

The Great Uprising—the "Intifadeh"_ has become a symbol of Palestinian nationhood as the brutal repression that once filled the people with despair now fuels their determination and will, which encompasses the readiness to die.

The Israeli reprisals have been barbarous. The repression has been unleashed with particular savagery against the refugee camps and the old quarters of the cities inhabited by the impoverished.

Over 150 have died. The wounded number in the many thousands. Kidnappings of youths by the army occur daily. The injured are taken from their hospital beds and from their homes by special army units, and disappear.

In the Balata camp outside Nablus, and in the Casbah-the old quarter-1000 people were arrested in a period of 48 hours. The discovery of people in ditches in the fields-shot in the back or with their heads caved in—has been reported from villages throughout the West Bank and Gaza.

Report from Nablus

Nablus Mayor Bassam Shaka'a described on the telephone the rampage of the Israeli armed units:

"No matter which house one calls, the anguished accounts of family members wounded or arrested pour forth. Convoys of buses cruise the streets of Nablus followed by vans of the Mossad, Israel's secret police. Army units go from house to house pulling youths from their beds at 3 a.m. As the buses fill, the soldiers beat the youths viciously around the head, shins, groin, and back. Shrieks fill the air.

"As the army makes its rounds kidnapping the young from their homes, people gather at their windows and on the roofs of houses (continued on page 11)

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Footing the bill for mass murder ight back! • Last month, a Democratic Party task force in the House of Representatives proposed a $25 million aid package for the Nicaraguan rebels. This was to be an alternative to the $36.3 million package that the Reagan administration proposed in January.

The Democrats made loud noises about how they supported the "peace effort" in Nicaragua and did not want to supply the contras with "military" aid. But all that was a bunch of hog-wash. The Democrats, like the Republicans, knew that there was already enough military supplies in "the contra pipeline" to last a year.

The contras have enough missiles, fire bombs, machine guns, rocket launchers, land mines, and other instruments of death—already paid for with our money-to continue blowing up children, mothers, farms, schools, and hospitals in Nicaragua for a long time to come.

The least the Democrats could have done is call their proposed $25 million giveaway what it is—not humanitarian aid, but anti-humanitarian aid.

Full steam ahead!

In the meantime, the private "Friends of the Contra" are going full steam ahead to set up their tax-free foundations to collect funds for more military supplies for the contras.

Those Ollie North-buddies made out like bandits on the IranContragate gig, so they immediately set out to swell their private Swiss bank accounts with more of the same. Perhaps their bank accounts have suffered due to the economic "earthquake" which hit the stockmarket October.

It is very expensive to hire and supply a bunch of die-hard mercenaries such as the contras. This is true even when the U.S. government tries to keep costs down by supplying a "McDrug Franchise" to its hired hoods, so that they can sell cocaine and heroin to Americans, among others.

STEP ONE

I have come up with a solution. Why not offer "humanitarian" aid to former Nazi S.S.

butchers?

The final solution?

Even though the U.S.

government protected many of Hitler's best S.S. men and concealed their records from the world in order to give them another start in life, some of the THE NICARAGUAN PEACE PLAN AGUAN PEACE IN ACTION:

STEP TWO former stormtroopers still did not do so well. They were forced to flee to Brazil, Australia, Colombia-and even Detroit, Mich. (And you know what the winters in Michigan are like!)

Among the retired Nazi elite, you will find people with even more experience than the contras in the art of repression, bonecrushing, and mass murder. They would fit right in with the international death squads systematically trained in Florida by the U.S. imperialist leader of the "free world."

Meanwhile, the Zionists, who set up the state of Israel following the holocaust in Europe, have adopted the methods of the German fascists to subjugate the people of Palestine. Since the U.S. government provides the major source of support for the Israeli government, perhaps it can send along some former S.S. guards to help "solve the Palestinian question."

Does anyone have a contribution for humanitarian aid for elderly S.S. troops? If not, then perhaps the Democratic Party congressional task force will help out.

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Democrats push contra aid; mass protests are needed

The fight for Black Pages 7 - 10.