The New York Times · 26 November 1989

CP-1989-042

Suppose the Town Was Promoting Insurrection

Clinton Bailey

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Transcribed from the clipping

To the Editor: Anthony Lewis, in a column about Israel’s handling of a tax strike in the West Bank Arab town of Beit Sahour (“It Can Happen There,” Oct. 29), writes: “Suppose the people of some small American town decided to protest Federal Government policy by withholding their taxes. The Government responded by sending in the Army. . . . Unthinkable?

Of course it is, in this country. But it is happening in another: . . . Israel.” If Beit Sahour were an Israeli town that did not pay its taxes merely to protest government policy, Mr. Lewis’s comparison would have been apt. However, that is not the case.

To give the proper context, he should have written: Suppose we were still in the pre-glasnost period and Mexico had become Communist, demanding that the United States return territories taken from it in the wake of the Mexican War: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California.

Suppose also a majority of former Mexicans lived in some of these areas, who felt they were discriminated against, wished to secede from the Union and started a widespread insurrection that was supported and financed by Mexico and other Communist states in Latin America.

The insurrectionists obstructed communications and access to their areas of residence and attacked civilians, the police and the National Guard with stones and Molotov cocktails; and to bring about a breakdown in governmental activity, they killed former Mexicans holding jobs with the state or Federal Governments and then began to withhold their taxes. If Mr.

Lewis had given the Beit Sahour affair this context, it would have been a constructive contribution toward understanding Israel’s position.

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