orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) (03/24/86)
The account of persecution of Nicaraguan Jews seems to plainly contradict the account given by the leading rabbi of a Jewish organization in New York who visited Nicaragua last year. The rabbi reported that there was no persecution of Jews in Nicaragua and no evidence of antisemitism. This should be further colloborated by the fact that numerous religious groups testified and demonstrated *AGAINST* the lies being disseminated about Nicaragua (which they should know about since these groups have missions, churches and synagogues in Nicaragua) and to stop the killing. The Catholic bishop of Nicargua has hardly been shy about criticizing the Sandinistas or their shutting down the Catholic radio station there. Curious then that all these religious groups have never criticized the Sandinistas for antisemitism. Until evidence is forthcoming from accredited sources such as these religious groups or Amnesty International or Americas Watch I have to conclude that these charges are bogus. tim sevener whuxn!orb
orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER) (03/25/86)
The charge of anti-semitism being made against the Sandinistas
is a red herring. The following is a quote from an
article in the Star-Ledger analyzing the veracity of
Reagan's numerous lies in his Central American speech:
(Star-Ledger, March 21,1986, p.12):
(quoted without permission):
"Reagan charged the Sandinistas had persecuted Nicaraguan Jews
and desecreted a synagogue. But two American Jewish leaders
say the synagogue is unused because most of the small
number of Jews who were in Nicaragua before the 1979
Sandinista revolution have left.
Rabbi Balfour Brickner of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue
in New York, who went on a fact-finding mission in 1984,
said most of Nicaragua's handful of pre-revolution Jews
had close ties to the dictator, Anastasio Somoza, and left
of their own accord.
Brickner said Israel supplied Somoza with military hardware.
....
In September 1983, the US Embassy in Managua reported it
had "no verifiable ground" to accuse the Sandinista government
of anti-Semitism.
....
Hyman Bookbinder of the American Jewish Committee in Washington
said he supports aid to the contras - but not because Jews
have been mistreated by the Sandinistas."
Just as in Vietnam we are being subjected to a parade of lies
to justify an immoral policy.
tim sevener whuxn!orbberman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman) (03/26/86)
> > The following is an excerpt from an open letter by U.S. senator > Chic Hecht, of Nevada: > ================================================================== > > Nicaragua's Jews suffered at the hands of the Sandinistas even > as the revolution was beginning. On a Friday evening in 1978, > Sandinista gunmen threw a fire-bomb at the Managua synagogue > while it was filled with worshippers. As members of the congrega- > tion tried to escape, the gunmen forced them back into the burn- > ing building. > ................................................................ > The seventy Jewish families in Nicaragua were terrorized both > during the revolution and after. > ....... Now the Nicaraguan Interor Minister, Borge has pledged > to Yasir Arafat that: "Nicaragua is his land and the PLO cause is > the cause of the Sandinistas." > > To demonstrate this commitment, the Sandinistas allow the PLO to > maintain an "embassy" in Managua and provide PLO members with Ni- > caraguan passports with which to travel freely as they plan and > execute their terrorist attacks. > I feel a little uneasy with the testimony of the Nevada senator. New York Times published a rebuttal to those charges by Jewish clergymen who investigated the matter. We deal here with a very small community which allegedly was very much connected with Somoza. Thus the reprisals could have purely political character (which perhaps is nasty, but we talk here about a civil war). The last charge is clearly made up. I do follow the news and I never heard about terrorist carrying Nicaraguan passports. This is even not very plausible: an Arab guy would carry Nicaraguan passport as not to create any suspitions? The terrorist attacks occurred in West Europe where there are millions of persons with Algerian, Tunisian, Morrocan and Egyptian passports, and, not surprisingly, those kinds of passports were used by the terrorist which were caught. > > The Federation of Jewish Communities in Central America and Pana- > ma have expressed the fear felt by the region's Jews in the face > of the Sandinista threat: : "The Jewish communities would be the > first to feel the consequences" of another revolution in Central > America. "The communities would disappear or be trapped". > > Just how real is this threat? In April, 1985 when a Nicaraguan- > trained terrorist network was broken up by police in Costa Rica, > one of the terrorists told the police that the group had plans to > kidnap leading members of the Costa Rican Jewish community. Again, this is not so clear cut evidence as it seems. First, the assumption that all terrorist belong to the same ilk (but why they quarrel so much as to kill each other occasionally?). Second, testimony of a guy who wants its sentence reduced may well be an 'improvemnt' of real facts. Third, traditionally kidnapping rich bissnessmen was a source of money for terrorist groups in Latin America. So we could deal with only slight 'improvement' of the real facts. The problem with Sandinista is that there are not nice enough to like them and not ugly enough to justify the current Reagan's rhetoric. I challenge anyone to prove that they are any worse that PRI, the ruling party of Mexico. Piotr Berman