Israel's isolation increases as Palestinian revolt grows

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On his arrival in Washington to meet Secretary of State George Shultz last month, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir characterized the Palestinian uprising as "a war against the existence of the state of Israel."

Within a week of this declaration, the Israeli government admitted to the arrest of 2000 people, bringing the acknowledged total to 4000. The real figure is far higher.

A Palestinian professor informed me by telephone from Amman, Jordan, that the number detained by the weekend of March 27 had exceeded 13,000.

Nablus Mayor Bassam Shaka'a placed the total held solely in a hastily constructed barbed-wire encampment at Dahariah at 10,000. Israeli lawyer Leah Tsemel informed the Los Angeles Times "that at least seven new detention centers have been set as de for Palestinians picked up connection with the unrest."

The Israeli onslaught has in Met wherever they go by an outpouring of masses of protesting villagers, Israeli army (continued on page 11)

Struggle for a Democrati and Secular Palestine See supplement pp. 7-11. attempt to gain support for contra aid and to divert attention from the federal grand jury indictments of Lt. Col. Oliver North and other Contragate figures.

Other commentators predicted that the U.S. troops would "come back in their skivvies," leaving behind millions of (continued on page 3, in “Momentum grows for April 30 demo”)

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care for all our children!

8090 There is a major crisis in this country! A crisis borne by the children of this country every day of their young lives. It is the crisis of childcare.

There are now 10.5 million children under the age of six who are cared for by people other than their parents. By 1996, two-thirds of all pre-school children and four out of five school children will have both parents in the work force.

The vast majority of these children are cared for by underpaid, overworked, ill-prepared caretakers in private homes— which often are fearfully inadequate and unsafe facilities. There are not enough investigators to cover even the licensed daycare homes, let alone the unlicensed ones. What care there is is expensive and takes a large chunk out of the parents' income.

We have been assaulted with assorted "childcare plans." Corporate childcare, family-day By RICK MITTS Several meetings have taken place in recent weeks at the University of Cincinnati protesting the school administration's severe restrictions on demonstrations and other political activities on campus.

On Feb. 25, Students for Socialist Action sponsored an open forum titled "Free Speech at the University of Cincinnati." We reprint below excerpis from a speech that Socialist Action member Rick Mitts gave to the forum.

The schools and universities are community resources and should be open to all points of view. However, while great emphasis is placed on teaching skills that will satisfy the needs of employers, very little effort is made to develop informed, critical-minded citizens.

Everyone is taught two things about this society which are drilled into our heads throughout high school. One is that the profit system, euphemisticaly dubbed "free enterprise," is the best and highest form of economic social organization. The second is that the two-party system of the United States is politically superior to all others.

What you're not taught, however, is how to think critically. private homecare, group co-op childcare, and so on. All of these forms of childcare will not provide quality childcare. In fact, there are numerous studies which have shown that these are usually cheap," Kentucky-fried children" childcare.

At the present time, there is a childcare measure being nursed through Congress which would provide $2.5 billion toward programs that already exist. This miserly-stingy bill is called the Act for Better Child Care (ABC).

This bill would start up a national infrastructure for daycare based on what the states are already doing. Of the money, 75 percent would be targeted to help moderate and low-income families pay for childcare. Another 15 percent would go to training providers, setting up standards, and trying to keep people in the profession. The final 10 percent would go to administrative costs.

Star Wars' cost Although I support the ABC bill, I'd like to point out that $2.5 billion dollars is just a spit in the ocean as far as the needs of parents and children are concerned. Let's just look and see what the government is willing to waste on its "Star Wars Program...

In a letter to the syndicated columnist Ann Landers, a reader wrote in to explain what a trillion dollars really represents. He says: "If you were to count a trillion $1 dollar bills, one per second, 24 hours a day, it would take 32 years.

I remember listening to a combination football coach and government teacher (he had a Marine-style haircut that I'll always remember) fulminate against Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto.

I asked him during the discussion, since the Communist Manifesto was obviously so flawed and awful, if it wouldn't be good for the class to read it themselves. Without hesitating, this "teacher" instantly demanded that I get on the floor and do 20 pushups as punishment for my apparent impertinence.

Court upholds censorship Since those days, students have become less willing to submit to such summary punishments for the crime of free thought. And so, the courts have had to act as bulwarks in defense of the controlled environment inside the high schools. On Jan. 13, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public-school officials have broad powers to censor school newspapers, plays, and other "expressive activities."

And he goes on: "Or to put it differently, it has been figured that with $1 trillion you could buy a $100,000 house for every family in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Iowa. Then you could put a $10,000 car in each one of those houses.

"There would be enough left to build 10 million-dollar libraries and 10 million-dollar hospitals for 250 cities in those states. There would be enough left over to build 10 million-dollar schools for 500 communities."

But there is more: "And there would still be enough left to put in the bank and, from the interest AGENUA CHILD CARE $$$ $ 00б0 COSTS PAY CHECK LgAYCHECK PAYCHECK D inside the public-school system, with early childhood developmental programs geared to the alone, pay 10,000 nurses and teachers, plus give a $5000 bonus for every family in those states.

He concludes, "Worth noting:

President Reagan's fanciful Strategic Defense Initiative, the Star Wars anti-missile scheme, carries a price tag of $3 trillion."

Public schools Now you know why $2.5 billion for child-care is a spit in the ocean. We know what is really needed. Childcare should be Students who escape high school without having their minds sufficiently dulled and trained to stay within the limits of safe thinking are regarded as dangerous. They are watched by the political police with suspicion.

A particularly odious example of this is an FBI program called the Library Awareness Program. The way this works is that college librarians are requested by the FBI to report to it the names of students who check out books by Karl Marx and other radical writers. I don't know if those who agree to do this dirty work get paid as government informers or not.

The head of the FBI, William Sessions, recently admitted that the agency had been spying on the Committee In Solidarity With the People of El Salvador (CISPES).

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which exposed the FBI "probe" into CISPES, says that information it has uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act reveals that the investigation "covered hundreds of groups and individuals who were engaged in activities protected and encouraged by the U.S. Constitution."

needs of each child.

We should simply lower the school age of all children, regardless of their parents income, to two years of age.

We already have the publicschool system upon which to build an excellent program for first-class educational childcare to meet the needs of all parents and all of our children. And a childcare program was developed by the American Federation of Teachers back in 1974.

We have the teachers, many of them unable to work at their profession and forced to become clerks and office workers because this government (which includes both political parties) refuses to spend the money for adequately educating our children.

What we need to do-parents, teachers, labor, and students—is to demand that the government scrap the "Star Wars" plan— along with the entire military budget-and use that money for human needs.

This will take a massive movement. But we have the numbers and the ability to do just this. In the past, we were able to fight and win public schools, unemployment insurance, social security, trade-union rights, and women's suffrage. We were able to end child labor in the mines, mills, and sweat shops of this land; end Southern Jim Crow Laws; and were even able to stop the Vietnam War.

So it can be done. If the human race is to endure, we must fight for all our children and all our children's children.

extended voting rights. And only social struggle will protect and advance our basic rights today. One of the ideas of the French Revolution (that the early American ruling class felt compelled to suppress) is that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

What should be considered at the University of Cincinnati is the immediate formation of a broad-based ad-hoc committee that can discuss and implement a campaign to win a reversal of administrative policies that violate First Amendment rights. On that basis, the university can move forward as a recognized bastion of open, free, and critical thought.

ACTioN Editor: ALAN BENJAMIN Asst. Editors: MICHAEL SCHREIBER JOE RYAN Staff: Paul Colvin, May. May Gong, David Kirschner, Hayden Perry, Kwame M.A.. Somburu, Sylvia Weinstein.

Business Manager: DON MAHONEY Socialist Action (ISSN 0747-4237) is published monthly for $6 per year by Socialist Action Publishing Association, 3435 Army

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