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Your story "The Women of Israel" [Feb. 20], with the subheading "second-class citizens," tends to leave a rather distorted impression. The true situation is something in between the Amazon image of the fierce combatant pictured in the movies, and the bleak portrait Ms. Hazleton is quoted as portraying in her book...
Despite the fighting Amazon image in American movies like Exodus and Judith and in a stream of popular novels, women in the army are not allowed in combat-or anywhere near the fighting. Instead, they serve mostly in support jobs as typists, clerks, nurses and teachers. The reason, says Hazleton, is that Israel is committed to paternal protectiveness toward women: "The army exists to protect Israel's women, not to endanger them in its ranks...
...last week S.I.L. missions faced a serious rebuff in one of their most successful fieldwork areas-among tribes deep in the Amazon jungles of Brazil. The natives are not hostile-far from it. Forty-four field teams, mostly married couples, backed by five support bases equipped with light planes and sophisticated radio gear, have been peaceably at work for 22 years. But the government of Brazil has suddenly announced that in 1978 it will not renew permits for S.I.L. field teams to work in remote areas administered by the National Indian Foundation. No official explanation has been offered...
Near the end of A Handful of Dust ( 1934), Evelyn Waugh sentenced one of his characters to a bizarre fate. Tony Last was trapped forever in the backwaters of the Amazon, held prisoner by an illiterate half-breed who demanded, at gunpoint, that Tony read aloud to him the collected works of Charles Dickens. Waugh's barbed tribute to Dickens' universal popularity hilariously summed up an attitude then prevalent among the literati: Dickens was fine for soothing savage breasts, but he was not a writer with whom educated gents would care to spend much time...
...land and resources of the indigenous populations in South America. It appears that now the governments of South America are trying to compensate for their past laziness. Hunters licensed to shoot animals now pursue Natives as prey in South America, bringing back Indians as trophies. With the new Trans-Amazon highway plans, the Brazilian and other governments are performing "search and destroy" missions on the native people. A Brazilian museum advertised recently that "Indians and other beasts" could be found stuffed for display; this practice occurs at museums in urban centers throughout South America. In Paraguay, the hunting of Indian...