The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 46

Friday, April 29, 1988 Part II 7 Hoi Anjjelco (Eimeo Should We Take in the Contras? Beware of Impulsive Action That Affects Other Refugees is that special admissions programs after the end of a conflict have long-term domestic and foreign -policy consequences. Considering these broader, longer-term implications, it is important to avoid making our decisions about when, how and whom to resettle in a crisis atmosphere. It is not too early for the Executive Branch and the Congress to be consulting on these matters. A final point: Central American countries, while they have produced tens of thousands of refugees and displaced persons, have a good record in terms of providing safe haven to people who have fled their homes. Central American nations have repeatedly reaffirmed their intention to maintain that generosity even as solutions to the refugees' problems are sought.

Both the Contadora and Arias peace plans have provisions for dealing with refugees. Given this commitment, there is no reason to believe that Contras who have laid down their arms will be unable to find at least temporary safe haven in the region. This affords time for neighboring countries, the rest of Latin America (including Mexico), the United States, Canada and Europe to address the broader problem of the more than 1 million Central American refugees and displaced persons. Working with the Central American countries can also provide the United States with a greater ability to target its assistance including resettlement on those who arc most in need of such help, whether they be Contras and their families, Contra sympathizers or simply refugees. Dennis Gallagher is executive director of the Refugee Policy Group, an independent research center in Washington.

Given the similarity of their circumstances, would we see the same political divisivc-ness that resulted from inequitable treatment by the U.S. government of Haitian and Cuban boat people in 1980? Who and how many would be resettledall of the Contras or just the leadership? The numbers of armed Contras arc small, between 10,000 and 12,000. Estimates of the number who would not likely be covered by an amnesty granted by the Nicaraguan government range from 300 to 2,000. This implies that most of the rank-and-file will be able to return home, although a substantial portion of the leadership may not qualify for amnesty. But will we resettle only the leadership? What about those who are not combatants but are so opposed to the Sandinista regime that they want to leave, or are already refugees in the region and won't go back? What about the families of the Contras or of others opposed to the Sandinista regime? What legal mechanisms would apply? If the Refugee Act of 1980 is used to resettle Contras but not other Central Americans, will this not be evidence that it serves ideological rather than humanitarian purposes? Only 400 Central American refugees have been admitted to the United States during the past year.

If the Contras arc paroled into the country under Executive authority, why is this priority given to the Contras but not to other people of concern to the United States, such as the Khmer at the Thai-Kampu-chean border? These questions and others will require answers that ought to be formulated now rather than after we commit to the Contras' resettlement. If we have learned anything from resettling Cubans and Indochinesc, it By dennis Gallagher In tho hack of many people's minds is an assumption thai when and if Nicaragua's Contras give up their armed struggle, they will come to the United States. There is reason for this assumption. Take as a point of comparison the resettlement of Indochinesc after the Vietnam War. Or the resettlement of Cubans following Castro's takeover.

Or, moving even closer to the case at hand, the safe haven afforded Anastasio Somoza's followers after the Sandinistas came to power in 1979. The assumption has even more basis when one considers these elements: the interest that the United States has taken in the Contras for the last seven years; tho likelihood that Nicaragua will not grant amnesty to a portion of the Contras; the probability that Costa Rica and Honduras will urge the United States to take the Contras, and the presence of tens of thousands of Nicaraguans already in this country, legally and illegally, including Contra leaders and their families living in Miami. To many people, the question is not whether the Contras will come here but when and how. Yet a formal decision to resettle the Contras would raise a number of difficult issues! What effect would that have on the status of upwards of 100,000 Nicaraguans estimated to be in the United States, most of them illegally? Can we assume that they would be allowed to remain, even in the event of a political settlement in Nicaragua? If so, would the United States continue to view the nearly 500,000 Salvadorans in this country as deportable illegal aliens? Supreme Court votes 5 to 4 to restudy rights in minority suits. Apology Now Due in Full for the Blot of Internment Settlers Can't Buy Security With a Purge Israeli Army, Even If Politically Distant, Is Their Only Shield By EDWIN M.

YODER JR. After a leisurely repentence of 47 years, Congress is preparing to "apologize" by law to the Americans of Japanese ancestry we locked up after Pearl Harbor and to modestly indemnify the survivors. The bill passed both houses easily. But some reactions from the small band of opponents on the Senate floor are worth noting. They show how grossly an obvious point can be missed.

Consider, for instance, that noted contrarian, Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina. "Fair is fair," he intoned, offering an amendment to "provide that no funds shall be appropriated under this title until the government of Japan has fairly compensated the families of the men and women who were killed as a result of the bombing of Pearl Harbor." The "fairness" of this bizarre idea is concealed by its stark irony. After Pearl Harbor, thousands of unoffending, law-abiding U.S. citizens say it, senator, until it sinks in: U.S.

citizens were summarily stripped of rights, property and, in the case of some elderly people shipped off to drafty huts on the plains, life itself. Unlike Americans of, say, German or Italian descent, the Japanese-Americans could be identified and stereotyped. They paid a hideous price for being racially identifiable. Helms' weird notion of fair play, these 47 years later, is that the Nisei should again be held hostage for a distant racial connection to the Japanese in Japan. They are as American as Jesse Helms perhaps a bit more so, in fact, in their grasp of what the U.S.

Constitution is all about. But they look like the Japanese Japanese. Let us not blame Helms entirely, however, for his strange adaptation of a theory that Americans are entitled or as he would have it, not entitled to some benefit by virtue of racial identity. That kind of thinking is fashionable today, so long as the goal is alleged to be beneficial. The senator's strange borrowing of a trendy idea shows, however, how easily it can be perverted into something quite nasty and wrong.

The whole point about the Nisei is that they became victims of an unconstitutional discrimination by virtue of racial identity, and for no other reason. "Racism" is an overused epithet today; but if their internment was not an example of it, the term has no useful meaning. Moreover, the policy that interned them, without any juridicial finding, was far from casual. It had distinguished sponsors. There was President Franklin Roosevelt, to begin with.

Walter Lippmann, the newspaper columnist, approved. Earl Warren, who later would become Chief. Justice and a great civil libertarian, backed the internment. Justice Hugo L. Black, also a significant libertarian, thrice voted in the Supreme Court to uphold the policy.

John J. McCloy, a dedicated public servant then and later, continues even today to defend the indefensible. About the only notable dissenter was Sen. Robert A. Taft, who questioned the enabling bill when the Senate was casually whooping it through.

The excuse was that the West Coast, after Pearl Harbor, was of a sudden exposed to sabotage and espionage, with Americans of Japanese ancestry the automatic suspects. This supposed threat was imaginary. It was known to be imaginary by the two most competent sources of relevant information, the FBI and Naval Intelligence; and they said so. Naval Intelligence had earlier detected and smashed the only significant West Coast spy ring, centered in the Japanese consulate in San Francisco. But even if the threat had been real, it would not have excused the wholesale abolition of basic liberties for a whole class of citizens whose loyalty was unimpugned by evidence.

Interestingly, no such hysteria broke out in Hawaii, presumably because people of Japanese ancestry there were not a vulnerable minority whose property was coveted by their neighbors. Aside from slavery and various sharp practices against the Indian tribes (and slaves and Indians were long deemed to be non-citizens), the internment of the Japanese-Americans is the worst blot of its sort on our history. In apologizing to compensating the victims, we are also apologizing, all too belatedly, to our better traditions. Those like Sen. Helms who would hinge this overdue gesture of healing on some imaginary obligation of the Japanese government show that they still don't get the point even after nearly half a century.

Edwin M. Yoder Jr. writes a syndicated column in Washington. Israeli inhabitants ever criticized the defense forces. But when Molotov cocktails were flung at Israeli vehicles in the territories, some settlers chose to call Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin a murderer.

Soldiers who tried to bar settlers from breaking into an Arab refugee camp to attack stone-throwers were called Nazis and even beaten up, to boot. Yet under the present political structure in Israel, and as long as the generals are not appointed exclusively from among those who sympathize with the settlers' views, Israelis on the West Bank will be unable to realize their aims. Consequently, the confrontation goes on. But it would be wrong to suppose that the clash is restricted to times when a Labor Party member holds the rank of defense minister. A serious clash also erupted when Moshe Arens of the Likud bloc held the post.

During a visit to Hebron, extremist settlers almost overturned Arens' car when he disagreed with their demands. Mitzna is also not the first central command chief to be the target of attacks and a boycott on the part of the settlers. When Arens was defense minister, they gave the same treatment to Gen. Uri Or. Their insolence reached new peaks when they told Arens to keep his military commander out of a meeting on security affairs.

Arens categorically refused to comply. When he was head of the civilian administration, Brig. Ephraim Sneh was another senior defense forces officer to be boycotted and maligned. The settlers disliked his liberal policy toward the Arab population. Mitzna's predecessor, Ehud Barak, was also viewed with some suspicion.

At a party given on the occasion of his replacement by Mitzna, Barak noted in his farewell speech that 20 years had gone by since the occupation of the territories. Because he dared use the word occupation, the settlers walked out. However, the settlers did enjoy special privileges when Ariel Sharon was defense minister. At the head of the defense forces ByZEVSCHlEF JERUSALEM One of the repercussions of the Palestinian uprising in the Occupied Territories has been the renewed confrontation between Jewish settlers and the Israeli Defense Forces. The situation intensified greatly after the military corrected the account of West Rank settlers concerning the death of a 15-year-old hiker earlier this month.

The girl, the military said, had been shot in the head by a Jewish settler, not stoned to death by Palestinian villagers. This outraged the leadership of the settlers, as well as many extreme right-wing members of the Knesset. They accused the military of spreading rumors and demanded the dismissal of both the chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Shomron, and the central command chief, Maj.

Gen. Amram Mitzna. In essence, the settlers and some of their political supporters were calling for a purge of the Israeli Defense Forces. It is quite obvious what the settlers have in mind, even though they do not say so openly. They want the defense forces to let them do as they please in the territories, and the expulsion of the Arab inhabitants is not excluded.

They want to bring the military in the territories under their command and influence, thus dictating Israel's defense policy as well. Such a policy would then bring about the annexation of the territories to Israel and create an intolerable situation for the Arab population, prompting many to contemplate emigration. The settlers demand the impossible. They want the defense forces to provide perfect, deluxe security. There is no such thing anywhere in Israel today, nor has there ever been throughout much of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Further, the public and its leaders have usually taken great efforts to view the military as a nonpolitical entity. Thus, political attacks against the defense forces arc quite exceptional. Even when Palestinians were shelling settlements on the Lebanese frontier, no stood Gen. Rafael Eytan, known for his extreme political views. For a time, the settlers did become part of the defense Establishment in the territories.

They could be spotted at meetings on military affairs, and the military's allocation of weapons to the settlers reached its zenith. Eytan also ordered the creation of territorial reserve battalions manned by settlers. Contrary to other defense forces units, these battalions were of a political nature, the reservists sharing identical political views. They were not deployed along the border against an outside enemy; their task instead was to guard against their Arab neighbors. About a year ago, when Shomron was made chief of staff and Mitzna the chief of central command, the settlers were deeply troubled.

At the head of the military command dealing with the territories stood three officers (Sneh being the third) known for their liberal approach. Mitzna reorganized the settlers' territorial battalions with the clear idea of prohibiting their operations against Arab neighbors. They also were refused permission to establish a civil guard to operate outside the settlements. To circumvent these restrictions, the settlers formed a civilian militia that took upon itself the task of guarding roads into the settlements. The common pretext for taking the law into their hands was that the Israeli Defense Forces had failed to guarantee the safety of the Jewish settlers.

But that was sheer demagoguery. By provoking a confrontation with the defense forces, the extremist settlers broke off the branch on which they were sitting. Without the military the settlers will be unable to stand their ground in the territories and will very soon find life there intolerable. If the settlements are enjoying the relative security even in these times of the Palestinian uprising, it is solely thanks to the Israeli Defense Forces and the settlers should know it. Zev Schiff is defense editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz.

In the Battle Against Aging, We Forsake Grace for a Larger Arsenal of Weapons By ELLEN GOODMAN don't intend to grow old gracefully. I intend to fight it every step of the Anonymous, 1988 This quotation may never make it into Bartlett's. The author is not a poet after all, but a unknown copywriter, maybe a committee of copywriters, who seek inspiration at the wcllofOilofOlay. fighting gracelessly against the inevitable, the natural? If I had a role model of an older woman, it would look a lot like Katharine Hepburn or the artist Georgia O'Keeffe. It would not look like Zsa Zsa Gabor.

I note approvingly the gray strands in Kathleen Sullivan's hair. I have been struck by the strong images of women in Lear's, the new magazine "for the woman who wasn't born yesterday." But I don't know how Katharine Hepburn feels when she looks in the mirror or whether the women in Lear's harbor small vials of Retin-A in their drawers. There is an ad in that magazine that admonishes: "Take control of your skin's age." Clearly the money is in youth products. There is no way to sell self-acceptance. There may be a profit in the natural "look" but not in nature.

As we are offered this expanding array of weapons, we increase our defense budget. And with each item, with each choice, how much harder it becomes to negotiate a peaceful coexistence with our own age. How much harder it becomes to age gracefully. Ellen Goodman is a syndicated columnist in Boston. Nevertheless, it stuck into some groove in my own brain, like a song that you don't like and can't expel.

I cannot open a women's magazine without seeing this sentiment emanating from the well-contoured mouths of a rotating cast of models. "Growing old gracefully" is apparently out of fashion. It's an admission of a defeat rather than the story of a success. What am I to make of this message? Tho Census Bureau just announced that the average age of Americans is now a notch over 32 years old. The first of the 75 million baby-boomers have passed 40.

Their midlife is marked by the emergence of all sorts of products to help them "fight it every step of the way." There are more than the usual number of unguents and elixirs that promise to rub the age out of our skins and preserve our energy. There are more than tho usual products to cover gray hair and fill in the face lines. There are more than tho usual admonitions to leg-lift a path to eternally youthful thighs. Add to the list, Minoxidil for the bald, Rctin-A for the wrinkled and liposuction for the middle-aged spread. Those of us who once had two scant choices aging gracefully or foolishly arc now offered a much larger arsenal of weapons for the battle against looking our age.

Men who could accept their baldness or risk the ridicule of a toupee now have the chance of growing hair again. Women and men who had to accept their crow's feet or risk the knife to retrieve their younger, tauter skin can now chemically iron their wrinkles. In modest ways, aging has begun to look like a personal choice. How far are you willing to go to stay the same? When women over 40 get together these days, there is often some bashful conversation about Retin-A. Would you use it? Would you? Among my friends, one has had a vial of this potion for months now, unused.

It's a security vial in some running internal debate she has about wrinkles versus side effects. And about aging gracefully. Women of a certain ago wonder. Is Rctin-A, like eye-liner, a cosmetic chemical that merely makes you look your best? Or is it a first seductive step in some unappealing chase after youth that conjures up the image of an octogenarian with platinum hair and scarlet nail polish and her third face-lift? What of the other choices? Are they the acceptable tools of self-improvement, or are they proof of self-hate? If you don't color your hair and firm your thighs, are you letting yourself go? If you do, are you "You were right. You can run faster with shaved legs." PUNCH.