fbpx
[additional-authors]
December 13, 2001

Walk Raises $500,000 for TerrorVictims

About 12,000 people took to the streets on Dec. 9 for the Israel Solidarity Walk-A-Thon to raise an expected total of $500,000 for Israeli terror victims. The morning 5K walk was the first leg of a nationwide fundraising campaign of citywide walks sponsored by Israel Emergency Solidarity Fund-One Family. Ten percent of the Sunday total has been earmarked for the Sept. 11th Fund. Future walks are in the works for New York, Florida and Chicago. International locations might include London, South Africa and Paris.

The Israel Emergency Solidarity Fund, established by Neil and Susan Thalheim and Jacob Haller in October 2000, following a terrorist attack on 10 Israelis, has already raised about $1.8 million.

Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn denounced terrorism and called for an increase in tolerance during a Dec. 7 meeting with two families of Israeli terror victims, walk organizers, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Abraham Cooper and One Family’s Marc and Michal Belzberg.

Marc and Chantal Belzberg of Jerusalem established the One Family Fund when their 12-year-old daughter, Michal, asked to donate the money that would have been spent on her bat mitzvah celebration to victims of the Sbarro bombing, which happened on her birthday.

She spent the day of her bat mitzvah visiting with survivors in the hospital.

“[Michal Belzberg] is the inspiration for what is now a worldwide movement,” Cooper said.

In September, the Israel Emergency Solidarity Fund merged with Jerusalem-based One Family, which has raised $600,000.

“We had two people with the same vision,” Neil Thalheim said of his new partnership with Marc Belzberg. “It’s really leveraged our capabilities.”

For more information or to make a donation, please visit www.walk4israel.com. — Adam Wills, Associate Editor

Sept. 11 Fallout Miscalculated

The organizers of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks completely miscalculated the international fallout from their acts, according to a leading Israeli expert, speaking at a UCLA conference.

Describing international politics as “the realm of unintended consequences,” Shai Feldman, director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, cited three examples to illustrate the rule.

Major global tensions have actually declined since Sept. 11, with the United States improving its relations with Russia, China and European nations.

The belief that the Arab masses would rise against the United States after the fight against the Taliban began, has been proven wrong. “In the first week there were five demonstrations in the Arab street, the next week three, and then it dwindled to zero,” Feldman said.

Yasser Arafat anticipated a more favorable American policy toward him to attract Arab allies in Washington’s fight against terror. “Quite the opposite has happened, and Arafat now faces the moment of truth,” Feldman said.

Feldman spoke Sunday at a leadership conference on “Terror: From the Holy Land to the Homeland,” which featured “one of the most distinguished groups of experts on the Middle East ever assembled in Los Angeles,” according to UCLA political science professor Steven Spiegel.

The meeting was addressed by more than a dozen experts, drawn from the co-sponsoring UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and the Jaffee Center, a think tank on Middle East and international security affairs at Tel Aviv University.

However at this point, Israel can draw little solace from the other side’s strategic catastrophe, Feldman said, a point emphasized by Itamar Rabinovich, Israel’s former peace negotiator and ambassador to the United States and Tel Aviv University’s current president.

Asked in an interview to preview the Middle East picture a year from now, Rabinovich was certain that “there has to be a change in paths, the present situation simply cannot continue.” Either there is an end to suicide attacks and other terror, he said, or the Palestinian Authority, under Arafat’s leadership, will cease to exist.

He urged a “carrot and stick” approach toward Arafat, with the stick consisting of Washington reimposing the “terrorist” classification borne by the PLO prior to the 1993 White House handshake between the Palestinian leader and Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin.

The “carrot” would be an Israeli-Palestinian interim agreement, of two to three years, after which negotiations for a final status agreement could be undertaken.

In a luncheon address, Spiegel, associate director of the UCLA Burkle Center, proposed a Coalition of Victims of Terrorism, in which affected cities and countries would pool their information and counter measures.

For instance, during his frequent plane trips, Spiegel asked passengers and personnel, “Would you feel safer if there were an Israeli adviser at your airport?” In every case the answer was, “Yes.” — Tom Tugend, Contributing Editor

Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.

Editor's Picks

Latest Articles

Losing One’s True North

Normally we say goodbye to our loved ones, as they fly back to their normal lives, but what is normal about the lives they fly back to at this moment in time?

Peter Beinart’s Rapture

Instead of correcting some of the hyperbolic anti-Israel “reporting” that has so blurred people’s capacity to know what is going on, he pours fuel on the flames of ignorance and perpetuates a rhetoric that lays blame for the whole conflict primarily or solely on Israel.

More news and opinions than at a
Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.