Soviet Jews face renewed anti-Semitism Behind the Lines

Scan page 2

ACTioN Staff: Alex Chis, Paul Colvin, May May Gong, Malik Barbara Putnam, Kwame M.A. Somburu, Sylvia Weinstein.

Socialist Action (ISSN 0747-4237) is published monthly for $8 per year by Socialist Action Publishing Association, 3435 Army St., No. 308, San Francisco, CA 94110. Second-class postage is paid at San Francisco, Calif.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Socialist Action, 3435 Army St., No.

RATES: For one year (12 issues)—U.S. 2nd Class: $8, 1st Class: $16; Canada and Mexico 2nd Class: $12, Ist Class: $16; All other countries 2nd Class: $15, Ist Class: $30. (Money orders, checks should be in U.S. dollars.)

Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of Socialist Action.

2 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 1990 dressed or eating. Father is running around the kitchen making lunches and snacks for both children.

Each child sits down at a breakfast of cereal, juice, and toast. Daughter is now ready for school, her books in her back-pack.

One out, one more to go: Son is to be picked up for childcare in a few more hectic minutes by another mother whose child attends the same center. Father gets him dressed, shoes tied, jacket on; hands him his snacks, and he is out the door. All of this whirlwind activity is carried out with love and tenderness by mother and father.

When my children were going to school I used to threaten to throw away all of their clothes if they didn't get dressed immediately. Of course, they didn't believe me because I made this threat too often (and they knew that I couldn't afford to do it, anyway). But in this family, there was no yelling, and every question or statement the children asked or made was treated with interest and answered by the parents.

I thought of the millions of Editor: ALAN BENJAMIN Asst. Editors: MICHAEL SCHREIBER Business Manager: DAVID KIRSCHNER 308, San Francisco, CA 94110.

These are expressed in editonals. that violence against the Jews "rarely" happened under the Tsar. The Jews were "happy," he said.

In reality, most pogroms were organized by the Tsarist government. As strikes and peasant rebellions multiplied beginning in 1903, the Tsar's minister of the interior called for a wave of pogroms as "a short vicious war that would stem the tide of revolution."

Bloodthirsty articles were printed in the newspapers about alleged atrocities by Jews and non-Jewish socialists alike. Mobs were recruited and fitted out with flags, vodka, and a portrait of the Tsar. Their leaders were generally poClosing date:

March 31, 1990 soGan licemen. If resistance was offered, army troops and mounted cossacks came to their rescue.

One of the bloodiest episodes took place in August and September 1903 in the city of Gomel, where my grandfather and other family members lived. Troops were used there.

Two years later, the workers were in full-scale revolt. Again, the Tsarist government scapegoated the Jews. In October 1905, about 100 towns were attacked; as many as 4000 people were killed. In fact, the anti-Jewish pogrom was employed by the Russian government right up until the 1917 Revolution.

Increased attacks

Now, people in the Soviet Union are asking if the pogroms will return. Anti-Semitic leaflets have been widely circulated by Pamyat and other right-wing groups. They blame the Jews for the economic crisis in the country and even for the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

The right-wing forces are threatening to organize a large pogrom on May 5, the birthday of Karl Marx. So far, the Gorbachev government has done nothing to counter the threat.

There have been increased reports of organized attacks on Jews. An engineer here in Leningrad described an attack on his family in a letter to the London-based Women's Campaign for Soviet Jewry:

"We opened the door and in our apartment run in three strangers armed by machine guns, knives, and brass knuckles, wearing white Ku Klux Klan masks," Yuri Mezhibursky wrote in broken English.

"In process of this battle, my wife received deep wound by knife in the stomach," he continued. "After 20 minutes, militia [police officers] came to us, but banditspogromers disappeared, and nobody look for them."

"Go to Israel!"

I spoke to several Jews living in Leningrad about the terror campaign against them. "Men often taunt us in the street," I was told by one woman, Masha. "Hey, Jew!" they yell. 'What are you doing in our country? Why don't you go to Israel!'' Even so simple an act as buying goods in a shop can cause a confrontation. Soviet citizens are required to show their passports when making purchases. And people conthe entrance of Jews. When looking for a job, she was repeatedly told that "the position is filled."

'I'm afraid for my children. We must leave." Masha concluded. She would like to emigrate to the United States or Canada, where she has friends and family. But U.S. and Canadian immigration restrictions make that virtually impossible.

Her only opportunity would be to become one oi the hundreds of thousands preparing to go to Israel. Masha knows that Israel's land was stolen from the Palestinians. Yet, she asks, what else can she do?

Masha's parents are similarly torn. They were born here and lived through the blockade of Leningrad by the Nazis. They lovingly showed me books and photographs of their beautiful city. "But if our daughter goes," they told me sadly, "We must go too."

Some of my own relatives, in the city of Gomel, have also been forced to flee—this after surviving the Nazi invasion and decades of discrimination under the Stalinists. But anti-Semitism, plus the effects of the Chernobyl disaster (65 miles away), has finally caused them to emigrate.

My cousin Alexei, a journalist, was a member of the Communist Party. "When I apply to leave," he said to me recently, "they will put me on trial in the party. And I will tell them that my whole life has been a lie. I will speak out so that the young people will learn. Hopefully, the young people will change the country."

Scan page 3

assaulted in Idaho & Guam Pro-choice demonstration of 60,000 on Oct. 15, 1989, in San Francisco.

By JONI Less than one year after the United States Supreme Court's Webster decision gave states the right to restrict abortion, several state legislatures have enacted laws infringing upon abortion rights. Last month, the most restrictive abortion legislation to date was passed in Idaho and Guam.

Both bills explicitly challenge Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. That case recognized a constitutional right to privacy in making reproductive choices that states could not interfere with.

These new bills, however, did more than interfere with the right to privacy-they outright denied women the right to make choices concerning reproduction.

Guam law

On March 19, Governor Joseph Ada of Guam signed into law the most restrictive abortion legislation in the United States. The law will not take effect for some time, however. U.S. District Judge Alex Munson issued a temporary restraining order which blocks enforcement of the new law until its constitutionality can be decided in court. There is little doubt that it will eventually be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Guam law outlaws abortions in all but the rarest of instances and sets criminal penalties for those seeking, performing, or providing information about abortions.

Under the new law, all abortions are illegal-including those for rape, incest and fetal abnormality-except when the life and health of the mother is endangered or "gravely impaired." Even then, the abortion must be approved by two independent physicians, whose decision is then reviewed by the Guam Medical Licensure Board.

The law also makes it a felony to perform abortions or aid in the procedure. Women who solicit or have abortions would be charged with a misdemeanor, as would a person who solicits a woman to have an abortion.

Already misdemeanor charges were filed against a pro-choice activist who, in a speech at the Guam Press Club, urged women needing abortions to travel to Honolulu for the procedure. Janet Benshoof, director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Reproductive Freedom Project in New York, faces up to a year in prison and a $1000 fine if convicted.

The Idaho bill, which was vetoed by Governor Cecil Andrus in the face of mass pro-choice pressure, was not quite as restrictive as the Guam law. But it also outlawed abortions in as many as 95 percent of all cases and set criminal and civil penalties for violating the law.

Exceptions to the law were made for victims of rape or incest, women whose lives or health were endangered by the pregnancy, and cases of fetal abnormality. Yet the regulations for the exceptions were so strict as to make them all but meaningless.

The law even provided that the father of the fetus, or anyone else with legal standing, such as a parent of a minor, could sue a doctor who performed an abortion. Under these provisions, a man who committed Retran Catholic Pro-Choice!

TORTION:

Joseph Ryan/Socialist Action sht "date rape" (sexual assault by an acquaintance) could conceivably have forced the woman to carry the pregnancy to term.

The Idaho law was drafted by the National Right to Life Committee, which considered it "model" anti-choice legislation. By placing the criminal penalties for abortion on the doctor, rather than the woman, the group had hoped to appease U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's major objections to overturning Roe v. Wade.

But pro-choice activists did not give the anti-choice forces their day in court on this bill. They threatened a national boycott of Idaho's major crop-potatoes-and flooded the statehouse with 20,000 phone calls to demand that Gov. Andrus veto the bill.

The governor, an avowed "pro-lifer," said the bill was "drawn so narrowly that it would punitively and without compassion further harm an Idaho woman who may find herself in the horrible, unthinkable position of confronting a pregnancy that resulted from rape or incest."

He criticized the National Right to Lite Committee for drafting the bill "outside of our state for the sole purpose of getting this issue back before the Supreme Court." He also denied that the threatened boycott and mass pressure had anything to do with his decision.

In Maryland, voters will also decide on the fate of abortion rights in their state this fall. An abortion rights bill permitting unrestricted abortions during the early stages of pregnancy will become law unless voters reject it. Anti-choice organizations are gathering signatures to put the issue on the ballot.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court's ruling on parental consent laws is expected this spring. The Court could further restrict abortion by denying teen-aged women the right to seek abortion without receiving permission from one—or both-parents.

How to fight back An independent, nationally coordinated, mass women's movement is needed now, more than ever, to fight the growing attacks on women's right to choose.

The Webster decision helped to divide the women's movement by focusing the fight in the state legislatures, rather than at the nation's capital. The result is that in states and territories where the women's movement is weakest, the anti-choice movement is winning their biggest victories.

The women's movement must pay attention to what's happening in state capitals around the country. But the most effective response to these local attempts to restrict rights must be national.

Nationally coordinated rallies at state houses on the same day would remind legislatures that Americans are pro-choice.

Moreover, the most effective pressure the women's movement has to influence state legislators is its independence and its numbers. Instead of working to elect "pro-choice" candidates, the women's movement must organize mass rallies, demonstrations, and teach-ins to demand full reproductive rights for all women.

Emergency response demonstrations to the expected court decisions on parental consent and the constitutionality of the Guam law are essential. The women's movement must build these emergency response rallies by reaching out to students, labor unions, civil rights organizations, and the vast majority of people who support the right to choose.

It is clear that the anti-choice movement is not in retreat. But to beat them, the women's movement must also not retreat into the ballot box. Instead, we must remain visible, independent, and in the streets.

----- pull-quotes -----

CTION end women's rights

By Michael Schreiber