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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

March 1, 2001

One on One With Joel Wachs

Leave a Comment / Community /

He says he’s 61, but you wouldn’t know it either to look at him or the paper-shrouded desk in his downtown office. After half a life crusading, his batteries retain their charge even as his office space threatens to succumb to the ever-encroaching mudslide of municipal files. I am told that City Councilman Joel Wachs prefers holding forth from his offices in Studio City. But today is a day for meetings and interviews — it is past 3 p.m. and I am his third griller of the afternoon. He is always this busy, even more so now that he is running for mayor, and his desk is always on the verge of collapse. “I haven’t taken a day off in 20 months,” he confides.

Sheldon Teitelbaum: We keep hearing about the ethnic divisions that rive this town. Why aren’t we seeing them reflected in this race?

Joel Wachs: It’s something that’s been grossly overemphasized. The differences are on the outside. Inside, people are fundamentally the same. They came here for the same reasons my parents or grandparents came to this country 100 years ago. They come to make a better life for themselves and their families. They see a country filled with possibility. So now they’re coming from Latin America or Asia instead of Eastern Europe, but it’s all basically the same thing. So they all want to make a living, raise a family, get a better education, be safe in the neighborhood, move up in the world.

ST: Are you saying that second- and third-generation Americans are largely sympathetic to these successive waves of immigration?

JW: I think they are, and I think it’s important for leaders to remind us that they should be.

ST: Granted. But within this disparate city we also have to recognize that the majority of people are Hispanic. And this community faces the possibility its next mayor will be Jewish. Is something askew with this picture?

JW: I don’t think so. No one person can be everything — black and Latino and Jewish and Asian and Anglo and man and woman and straight and gay. You can only be one person. You just have to be the kind of person who genuinely wants to, and will, embrace the rest. It’s about finding greatness, strength and beauty in the variety, and recognizing that as an asset, something that makes L.A. unique, perhaps even defines it. You have to have a system of government that includes everybody, but you have to be a mayor of everybody. The reason I have been the strongest proponent of neighborhood government is that there is an institutional framework that enables everyone to contribute what they can, to grow as individuals, to feel they are a part of something, that this is their government and their city.

ST: Do you see any downsides at all in this devolution of city government here? Just as a school or a police department can blow it big time, leaving the rest of us to pick up the pieces, so too, I imagine, could a neighborhood council.

JW:: I have this amazing belief in people. It’s not only about responding to the sense of alienation but recognizing that most people are good and care and want to contribute their fair share, and really do want to be a part of the system. If you give people that chance, what the city will get in return is the aggregate benefit of all the many things people here are capable of contributing.

ST: If there’s been any kind of animus manifested among the candidates, it seems to be between you and Steve Soboroff.

JW: That’s more personal than anything. It’s not ideological at all. I don’t want it to be that way, but that’s the way it is.

ST: In many ways you all seem to share a great deal more in common in your approaches than not.

JW: You’ll see an awful lot in common in what we all say. In politics, as in everything, have you done and will you do what you say? It’s very easy to figure out what you think you should say. But will you do it when you’re tested? Where will your allegiances be when you have to make choices? We all say we’re for the environment, but will you be when a project comes along and a real estate developer who is very influential at giving campaign contributions pushes the other way? We all say we’re for historic preservation, but will you have the guts to say no when the cardinal wants to tear down a cathedral? My career has been 30 years of standing up for what I say and believe in. There are times where I stand alone, where I buck all the powerful interests. That’s fine. You make enemies that way, it’s tougher to raise money that way, but you also gain respect and self-respect.

ST: Having stood alone in opposition as often as you have during your career, is it possible now to govern?

JW: It hasn’t been just in opposition. Many times standing alone is the first step in bringing about change. I fought the water and power department for 20 years, saying it was bloated and overstaffed, and it was, and finally we brought in the first outside, independent audit. It took a quarter of a billion out of the budget, streamlined the operation, and now we’re the model utility in the entire state at a time when others could potentially go bankrupt. The initial stand is not just a stand in and of itself but a step toward improvement. Endless changes in city government that have made it more efficient and productive were changes that took that battle at first. I never fight the battles for their own sake. When I fought the $150 million tax subsidy for the sports arena or $100 million subsidy for a hotel downtown, it’s not just because I want to stop that but because I have a different sense of priorities and reflect the priorities of a community that can use that money for other things — to pave streets, fix sidewalks and trim trees, put books in schools and after-school programs for kids and paramedics. I fight chemical contamination of water not just to fight but because I want to clean up the water. I don’t fight air-spraying of malathion just to fight but to find an alternative. Often these fights are politically harmful because you step on interest groups.

ST: How powerful are these various interest groups these days? It’s been a while since the last time I watched “Chinatown.”

JW: They’re very powerful. And not just here. It’s about money. It always goes back to money. You need money to run for office. The forces that get people elected, keep them in office and get them to the next place will always be powerful. The ability to make decisions in secret behind closed doors always makes it possible for people to do things they might not otherwise do if the public were looking. People act a lot differently when someone is looking over their shoulder.

ST: How do you respond to those in this campaign who say you don’t trust the folks who dug the hole to pull you out of it?

JW: Most people reject that. It’s not whether you’ve been in government for 30 years but what kind of job you’ve done. The reason we’re leading in the polls without having spent almost any money is because not only have we been in office but we’ve done a good job. Everyone can talk a good game at election time. But do you have something to prove you’re the real thing? I have my record, my vision, and people will judge me as such. So when someone says you’ve been there so long, I’ll say, yeah, and I’m really proud of my record. If there had been 15 Joel Wachs, things would have been real different.

ST: Each of the candidates paid lip service to how awful the Rampart business is. And then the “buts” come.

JW: It’s not buts. It’s that it shouldn’t be either/or. Reforming the department or protecting the public shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. You can’t have one without the other as far as I’m concerned. We can and should have both.

ST: So why do I get the sense from all of you that the onus is actually on the public to win back the department?

JW: The issue has been framed — and Steve [Soboroff] has partly framed it that way — that reform is okay, but you’re tying the hands of the department to do its job. I’m saying it’s not one or the other — it’s both. I think I have support from so many officers because they realize it’s both. The good officers don’t want to be tainted by the bad ones. But there has been a code of silence. And it is maintained more at the top than the bottom. That’s why I pick on management more than on rank and file. The management is doing the investigating. Who is looking at themselves? We wouldn’t have known there was a Rampart if it wasn’t for Rafael Perez getting caught and stealing drugs. The reason I was the first to call for an outside investigation and take it wherever it went is that I knew it would never come voluntarily. We had to do that and only because the mayor and chief were pig-headed about it that we not have the federal government coming in. So wring it all out, I say. Open this culture up. Look at it in a broad way, reform the department, but always remember that public safety is always the number one priority of a local government.

ST: So what’s the deal with education? I understand the bully pulpit. But if, as you say, it always comes down to money, then let’s understand the next mayor has no budget that says “education” on it.

JW: Okay, you have no legal authority. But if you allow the Belmonts to happen — Belmont is to the school district what Rampart is to the police that some of the MTA cost overruns and boondoggles are to transportation. If you permit the bad things to happen and continue, you not only waste a lot of money but undercut public support for giving the very resources the system needs. We need more money for teachers, not less. There’s something crazy about a society that pays a ball player $10 million but begrudges a teacher $10,000. We need smaller classes and better teachers and more technology. All the things that make it better for rich people in private schools, we need more in the public schools. But when people use the failures as an excuse to cut support? So if a mayor says he can help bring some reform to that, some changes, you have begun to create an environment that creates public support for schools.

I cringe at a Belmont not only because of the wasted money and environmental disaster but because it serves as an excuse not to support the schools. An educated workforce drives the modern economy. So I have to believe that to the extent that you can use your position on something as important as this — people leave the city for other educational systems — the well-being of the city depends on this. Yes, there is a board of education that runs that. But I think the current mayor was right in involving himself in trying to improve the system. That’s different from saying I would do all the things he says he would like to do. But there’s no doubt of the ability of the mayor to effect change by virtue of being the spokesperson of the second largest city in the country — I think that’s true, and the public wants to see that in their mayor.

ST: Rabbi Harold Schulweis recently told congregants that as Jews we are commanded to take an interest in the ills afflicting other parts of this city and to take a hand in resolving them. Given our own propensity to flock either to the West Valley or the Westside or to gated communities and private schools, do you have the sense that this community has heeded the call?

JW: I see enormous numbers of people doing good in every neighborhood. It’s heartwarming to see it. You’d be surprised how good a lot of people really are. If we learned anything from the riots a decade ago, it’s that you can’t build walls around you and divorce yourself from the rest of society. It’s not only not possible, it’s not moral, and certainly not the way Jews are raised. I’m out there every day, and I watch endless examples of people who put their time and energy to help others, to help elderly, to make sure kids have something going for them after school. I think mayors can lead in that way by setting a tone, by how they lead and live by example, by how they focus the attention of others. Mayors ought to be saying the same thing mayors should say. What Rabbi Schulweis said is what I expect of my rabbi. But politicians should be saying similar things. It shouldn’t only be rabbis who say these things. Mayors may reach people that rabbis can’t.

One on One With Joel Wachs Read More »

Letter from Israel:On the Road

Leave a Comment / Letters From Israel /

As you might imagine, living in Israel right now feels schizophrenic. We continue with our regular lives — going to work, eating dinner, shopping, praying, catching a movie — and meanwhile, not far away, our soldiers are at war. The newspapers appear, the soccer games go on, people chat over coffee in the cafes, and the war goes on and threatens to get bigger. The most abnormal thing about it may be that one begins to accept it as normal.

For me, the psychic effect from this low-intensity war expresses itself as a kind of obsession with the matsav, the situation. I wait for the news, talk politics too much or pointedly avoid political conversation. I sometimes feel during the day like someone driving with the emergency brake partly engaged — something is pulling at me all the time.

At the same time, a sign of the insanity is precisely that so many of us are able to compartmentalize that we’re at war. I rationalize that a shooting on the road I never drive has nothing to do with my safety; I lock the threat of violence away in a corner of my mind. But my wife and many others, probably more sanely, are unable to escape the pressure — they’re scared all the time, worried for friends and family, angry at the Palestinians, angry at our own government, gloomy with what the future possibilities are.

During the past month, four Jews have been murdered on the road between Kiryat Arba and Jerusalem. That’s the second half of our regular route from the small village we live in, an hour south of the capital. Now we call that road “the short way,” as opposed to “the long way,” which is inside the Green Line and takes more than two hours. Sometimes we go one way, sometimes the other, depending on whim, how much time we have, how lucky we feel.

A week ago, a motorist was “moderately” wounded in the leg only three miles north of us, near the next Jewish town, on a peaceful stretch of road we believed completely safe. Is it an obvious mistake to drive in the Territories, even in a rural area close to the Green Line? But the same things happen on roads inside the Green Line, so maybe it’s nothing special, just another shiny fact about the situation to file away and hope to forget while going about ordinary life. Schizophrenic, indeed.

The government of Israel suffers its own kind of schizophrenia. My favorite detail in the news today is that the charedi parties, including Shas, are refusing to enter into a government coalition unless the prime minister-elect guarantees that yeshiva students won’t be drafted. Is it crazy or merely very tasteless, while your country is at war, to be wangling military exemptions for your own children at the expense of forming a government to deal with the crisis? I guess they’re compartmentalizing, too.

Last night, my wife invited some friends from Jerusalem to spend Shabbat with us. The other wife refused. She said it wasn’t because of either danger or the long drive around, but — well, she didn’t want to go into it. That means she won’t come because we live a kilometer on the “wrong” side of the Green Line. If, huffily ideological, she’s decided the war is our fault or that she compromises herself by visiting us — well, schizophrenia comes in many forms.

She, who won’t visit us in the Judean hills, lives, like many of our left-wing Jerusalem friends, in Baka, a lovely neighborhood with narrow side-streets and beautiful old Arab houses facing onto gardens. Jews live in those lovely houses now. During the War of Independence, the Jews, albeit for good strategic reasons, drove the Arab residents out. My village, on the other hand, stands on land that wasn’t taken away from anyone.

It’s hard to put all the pieces together. Some Jews in Jerusalem won’t go beyond the Green Line. Some Jews in Tel Aviv don’t want to go to Jerusalem. And a lot of Jews in America won’t go to Israel at all.

When there’s violence or threat in Israel, the tour guides tell me, American Jews cancel their trips, while American Christians keep coming. It’s not so surprising, perhaps. To many Christians, after all, Israel is much more important than it is to a lot of Jews, and their support is unwavering.

Of course, a percentage of them have their own agenda — hurrying the Second Coming and, for some, the conversion of the Jews. I don’t mind that, really. The Jews won’t convert, and the Messiah, when he comes, will turn out to be the Messiah of everyone. Meanwhile, they care deeply about Israel; they want it to prosper and be strong. And they see that biblical prophecies about the ingathering of the exiles and the restoration of the Jewish commonwealth are, after all, coming true.

Maybe not enough Jews believe that any more to keep them coming to the Jewish homeland or keep them committed to strengthening it. In the 1980s (according to an article in Israel Studies, a journal put out by the Ben-Gurion Research Center in the Negev), the United Jewish Appeal in America refused to allocate funds for projects outside the Green Line; around the same time, Christian Friends of Israeli Communities in Denver paired 40 churches with “settlements,” for both fundraising and moral support.

If the war doesn’t do it, that’s the kind of detail that can drive a person nuts.

David Margolis, a novelist and journalist, made aliyah
from Los Angeles in 1994. He can be reached at dm@davidmargolis.com.

Letter from Israel:On the Road Read More »

Reality-Based Schooling

Leave a Comment / Womans Voice /

One of the most engrossing reality-based television shows is the thrice-weekly KLCS public broadcasting program, “Conversation with Roy Romer.” Unlike “Survivor” and “Temptation Island,” where contestants wearing cruise and safari garb compete against each other and the weather, “Conversation” features little more than a white-haired man in a black suit talking to off-camera live callers wearing who knows what. Nevertheless, the sharks are out. Romer is superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), and what is at stake on the show is the education of some 700,000 Los Angeles children.

Romer is cool. Monday night, the former governor of Colorado handled questions about completing the mid-city Belmont High School, the newly passed 15 percent pay increase for teachers and where the money will come from, the problems of new teacher accreditation, and whether giving teachers PalmPilots would help automate classroom grading. These, of course, are the high-visibility problems that preoccupy the district, along with an (unmentioned that night) embarrassing accounts payable meltdown, which renders LAUSD unable to buy desks from Office Depot because of unpaid bills. Romer took it all in stride, referring obliquely to the efforts of an unnamed Valley newspaper to exploit LAUSD problems to build a city-secession movement.

Moments before the show ended, however, Romer’s passion showed when he spontaneously unfurled what he saw as the top priorities of the district, ones that supersede even the important problems that callers were raising. Incredibly, the top three of four were aimed at improving teaching.

“We need to improve reading and to give teachers skills to teach math,” he said. “We need to improve our teachers’ professional development.” It was a rare reality-based moment in which what happened in the classroom, to children, was made of paramount importance.

As it happened, I’d spent much of the past week considering this very issue, the politics of education and what is happening to our students. My friend Marlene Canter is running for the LAUSD school board in the Westside/Valley district. She’s got an uphill battle against incumbent Valerie Fields, who has the support of Jewish machers and the teachers union. Real estate developer Matthew S. Rodman is endorsed by Mayor Richard Riordan (who deserted Fields at the last minute). Rodman’s claim to this support is that, presumably, he can help the crowded school district pick new construction sites. New school development was the fourth and last of Roy Romer’s agenda items on KLCS.

Nevertheless, Canter, a Jewish community activist (on such boards as the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College) deserves your attention for the same reason that Roy Romer had a fix on mine: she alone in this race is focused on educating children and improving teacher skills. Moreover, she alone is an educator with business skills and a parent, and she is beholden to no one. With eight years as a classroom special-education teacher, she became CEO of an educational training company built with her former husband that specialized in classroom conduct problems (at which she employed her mom and dad). The company was recently sold to Sylvan Learning Systems.

“We’ve got archaic teacher training,” she told me over tuna salad last Thursday. “We’re going down the wrong track. Just look at all the students who are now being tested for ‘special education,’ as if they can’t learn. We’re creating a stigma that is unnecessary, and we’re creating an incentive for schools to create costly new programs that drain the budget.

“The truth is we could teach almost all these students if teachers were taught about students’ differing learning styles.”

The system does parents and children no favors when it imposes exit testing on students whose education was doomed to begin with. A better option, as Canter said, would be to test for reading and math skills at third grade, the age when they can quickly and easily catch up.

The lunch with Canter was entirely reality based. Her own two children are recent high school graduates, like my daughter, and we know the practical and philosophical limitations of a two-tiered educational system that breaks the heart. We know the pressures on students for prestigious colleges and to go an academic route for lack of respected alternatives, about the biases in our own upward-striving Jewish community toward “gifted” programs because the rest of the system is so inadequate. We talked tachlis, the way parents all over this community are doing.

Canter discussed LAUSD successes, including the charter-school movement. “We’re riding on a wave of hope and opportunity,” she said. “The problems are fixable. I believe that we should set our sights on proving what excellence can do.”

The LAUSD 4th district, in which Canter is running, has 100,000 students. The problems of our educating our children are nothing but real.

Reality-Based Schooling Read More »

Mideast Menace

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

A decade after he rained Scud missiles on Tel Aviv during the Persian Gulf War, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein again poses a threat to Israel, analysts say.

A series of steps Hussein has taken in recent months, including moving army units in the direction of Israel while issuing threats, has heightened anxiety levels in Israel. When Hussein blamed Israel for the bombing of Iraqi radar sites by American and British forces earlier this month, some Israelis again began to purchase gas masks.

Defeated by America and its allies during Operation Desert Storm in the winter of 1991, Hussein has hunkered down through a decade of sanctions and emerged with his leadership intact. In recent years, he has quietly regained his standing among the Arab nations, who now flout U.N. sanctions on flights to and trade with Iraq.

Experts believe Hussein may try to increase his power in the Arab world by demonstrating his military strength. Aiding the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel — especially with the fate of Jerusalem hanging in the balance for a billion Muslims — may be the opportunity Hussein is looking for, several analysts said.

"The threat to Israel is that Saddam Hussein thinks his role in the Arab world will be advanced if he plays a role in the military aggression against Israel," said Patrick Clawson, research director for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

While several Arab countries joined the American coalition fighting Hussein in the Gulf War, the leaders’ strategic choices never filtered down to the street. There, Hussein’s bombing of Israel and his decade-long defiance of America won him support.

"He gets in touch with the people on the street and represents the feelings of radicalization," said Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Report. "And the rest of the Arab leaders are left to pick up the pieces."

Hussein in recent years has been reembraced by the Arab League and has developed relationships with new Middle East leaders such as Syrian President Bashar Assad and Jordan’s King Abdullah. Those alliances have led to the loosening of sanctions against Iraq.

Imposed at the end of the Gulf War, the U.N. sanctions rely on neighboring Arab states to block military components from reaching Iraq. With Iraq’s neighbors less willing to play along in recent years, Hussein has been able to partially rebuild his forces.

The federal German intelligence agency published a report in recent days stating the Iraqi armament capabilities have improved considerably in the past two years. According to the German agency, the Iraqis have greatly stepped up efforts to produce chemical weapons and could have nuclear weapons within three years.

Now, experts say, Hussein may use his military strength to establish himself as the staunchest ally of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and insert himself into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"They need each other," Pipes said of Arafat and Hussein. "Arafat strengthens Hussein’s case as a leader of the Arabic cause," while the Palestinians need the financial and military resources Iraq can provide.

If Hussein takes on Israel, it will be nearly impossible for his Arab neighbors to support the United Nations’ sanctions, Clawson said. In such a situation, the United States may be forced to negotiate for lesser sanctions that can be enforced more easily.

David Wurmser, director of Middle East studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said it is inevitable that Iraq will take action against Israel in the next year or two. Any American behavior could provoke this, Wurmser said — either a feeling that Iraq must retaliate for increased U.S. engagement in the region, or that a lack of U.S. engagement has created a vacuum Hussein can exploit.

"The current situation leaves the United States at a strategic watershed," Wurmser said. With sanctions having failed, the Bush administration will have to choose whether to go into the region and attempt to oust Hussein, or whether leave the situation alone.

Either way, Wurmser said, Iraq is likely to attack Israel.

"Israel will not be able to resolve this without some sort of conflict," he said. "Hopefully, it will happen while Saddam is going down."

But other experts say this scenario is far too dire. While Hussein may want to attack Israel, he’s rational enough to realize that the disadvantages for him far outweigh any advantages, according to Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland.

Former President Bush was criticized for not taking down Hussein during the Gulf War. Any attack against Israel would lead to U.S. intervention against Iraq and give President George W. Bush the excuse to overthrow Hussein, Telhami said.

Hussein is not suicidal enough to take the bait, Telhami predicted.

"If he were to take on any adversary at this time, it would be the perfect opportunity for the United States and others who want to finish the job," Telhami said.

Hussein would like to see the current Middle East violence persist because it helps create a linkage in Arab minds between the Israeli-Palestinian situation and the Iraqi one and builds sympathy for Iraq, Telhami said. The linkage has grown as many Arabs blame America for the failure of the peace process, and it has created a wave of anti-Americanism in the region that Iraq exploits, Telhami said.

Wurmser believes the United States will step up its enforcement role in the region and pursue a more aggressive policy against Iraq. The mid-February attacks against Iraqi radar sites may be a sign that what is left of the Gulf War alliance is ready to enforce the sanctions.

"I think the bombing shows that we will not, in the process of looking at whether we should modify the sanctions regime, overlook his bad behavior, and we will use military force where we think it is necessary," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said last Friday en route to the Middle East.

But Hussein may not allow the new White House the luxury of choosing its own timetable. Iraq’s campaign for legitimacy has reached a plateau, and Hussein may be eager to press forward.

During the past decade, Hussein has won the public relations war in the Arab community, shifting the blame for the plight of the Iraqi people onto the United States.

With the Arab world behind him, Hussein once again may set his sights on confronting the United States.

"He would like to use a combination of his geographical place next to the largest oil reserve and his weapons of mass destruction," Pipes said. "Global ambition tinged with a hardened bitter desire for revenge. Not a pleasant combination.”

But while Israelis are keeping a wary eye on Hussein and his return to the Arab fold, they do not fear an imminent attack.

Ron Ben-Yishai, military analyst for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, said Israeli experts are most concerned by the possibility that Iraq will be able to manufacture chemical and bacteriological weapons in the immediate future.

Israel shares Western intelligence services’ analysis about Iraq’s potential for weapons of mass destruction, but there is no immediate concern of Iraqi missile attacks like those during the Gulf War.

In fact, according to Ephraim Sneh, Israel’s deputy minister of defense, the greater danger to Israel comes from Hussein’s neighbor, Iran, which also is embarked on a project for weapons of mass destruction, without the inconveniences posed by U.N. sanctions.

JTA correspondent Gil Sedan in Jerusalem contributed to this story.

Mideast Menace Read More »

Tragedy or Exploitation?

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

The photograph of the Palestinian father cradling his terrified son moments before the boy was killed in Gaza this fall was viewed live on television and reproduced on the front pages of newspapers around the globe. Like the photograph of the boy with hands raised standing in the Warsaw Ghetto, nobody who saw desperate Jamal Al-Durrah vainly trying to shield 12-year-old Mohammed can ever forget the terror in their eyes.

From the day that the French television photographer snapped the pictures, the image has mesmerized the world. For Arabs, Mohammed became an icon for all victims of the intifada; his image plastered on countess posters. In Egypt, even tissue boxes were manufactured bearing his likeness.

His father, himself wounded, was interviewed by the world’s leading journalists, appearing on prime-time television in the United States. There was a media pilgrimage to Amman to conduct interviews by Al-Durrah’s hospital bedside. Israeli journalists joined in; Al-Durrah appeared in the Israeli press, on radio and on television.

Israel was well aware of the extremely negative propaganda effect of this incident. Although shortly afterwards the Israel Defense Forces accepted responsibility for Mohammed’s death, some insiders felt this admission was rash and premature. Among them was Maj. Gen. Yom Tov Samia, the army’s southern commander. Samia conducted an investigation and an abortive campaign to reenact the shooting in an effort to prove that it was Palestinian shooters who had felled the boy. But the Israeli army had already demolished the wall against which the pair had leaned. Samia’s efforts came to naught. The picture had done its damage, or its work, depending on one’s point of view. Even if it could be scientifically proven that Israelis hadn’t fired the lethal shots, it didn’t really matter to the world any more.

Now, more than four months later, the photo is once again in the spotlight.

MSNBC is currently conducting a public poll on its Web site to choose the photograph of the year 2000. To date, 480,000 votes have been cast for 49 entries. The shot of Al-Durrah and his son, titled “A Death in Gaza,” has garnered more than 39,000 votes and is currently in sixth place. The five ahead of it are all sentimental images of animals.

A callous propaganda war is raging to exploit this personal tragedy. In recent days, Jews have received e-mails informing them of the poll and urging them to vote for other photos, trying to calculate which has the best chance of overtaking “A Death in Gaza.” “Obviously,” they write, “we have to try to stop it from winning.” Forward the message on to “everyone you know as well!” instructs the e-mail. Instead of taking the lesson of the picture to heart, people who ought most to be disturbed by its implications are implored to try to minimize it.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians are busy disseminating e-mails, too, instructing exactly where to click in order to vote for “A Death in Gaza.” They stress the importance of casting a ballot, since winning may get it renewed exposure, and caution that “once the opposition sees this they will also begin to vote heavily.” Apparently this tactic is not a new one, for the Palestinian e-mail continues: “In the past, we have generally managed to outvote them!”

As bloody as our days have become, it has been said that the real war is the war of the media. Unlike claims that horrific scenes are often staged by cameramen anxious for a scoop, no one dreams of impugning the integrity of the photograph of Al-Durrah and his late son. Yet there seems no limit to the lengths taken to hit home one’s point of view.

The wrong conclusion to reach after reading about the MSNBC poll is to race to one’s computer and to vote either for or against “A Death in Gaza.” An ideological vote either way compromises the voter’s integrity and demeans the dignity of the subjects.

If one picture is worth a thousand words, this one may well be worth a million. Its real lesson is to put all parents in the Middle East on notice. If the perverted hatred which fuels some on both sides overtakes us all, every parent — Arab or Jew — is in jeopardy. Even the parent who tries to keep his children safely inside, out of harm’s way, may some day find himself crouching in front of a stone wall trying to shield a son or daughter, both of them caught in the crossfire. And chances are, no one will be around to take their picture.

Tragedy or Exploitation? Read More »

Letters

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor /

Holocaust Payments

James D. Besser’s article (“Dear Bill: Thanks a Lot,” Feb. 16) contained a very valuable lesson to the effect that donations of big money need to be looked at carefully. The same applies to the news that suddenly, 55 years after the end of World War II, the Dutch government, banks, insurance companies and stock exchange want to give many Dutch Jewish survivors money (“Dutch Settlement,” Feb. 16).

Those eligible will indeed receive a considerable sum of money [from the Maror Fund]. To be eligible, a Dutch Jew would need to have lived under Nazi occupation in Holland. Some people who may have claims to these monies are completely disenfranchised; all others have some inheritance rights taken away. There is no question in my mind that the Dutch government wished to do well by those who suffered so much. Others who may have suffered as well are left out.

Personally, I am not eligible even though my grandmother would have been; she was gassed at Sobibor. If she could have made a last wish, I think she would have agreed with the Dutch government that I, born after the war, should not be given any money. Instead, she would have wanted to purchase perpetual care for the graveside of her husband who had the good fortune to die before May 1940, but that was not in the cards with the Nazis. As it is, my grandfather’s grave marker is in the small Jewish section of the general cemetery of a small town. The Jewish markers can easily be found: they are the only ones covered with bird droppings. So much for Maror.

Name withheld by request

Marlene Adler Marks

Thank you, Marlene, for an incredible column (“Back From the Dead,” Feb. 23). As I complete my seemingly long, extensive treatment for breast cancer, I welcome your words, for they so succinctly capture how I feel.

Although I recognize the importance of learning all I can about my disease and its treatment to alleviate side effects and prevent recurrence; although I cannot say enough for maintaining a positive outlook; and although I could not have emotionally survived these past seven months without the unwavering support of my husband, children, family, friends and synagogue community, I do not want to learn from my cancer. I have availed myself of what I believe is the best medical care possible. I have been a compliant patient and will continue to be so for the rest of what I anticipate to be a long life.

I wish you refuah shleymah, Marlene. I hope these next few months are not too difficult.

Debra Frieden Perlo, Hidden Hills

Scott Svonkin

I very much enjoyed Michael Aushenker’s interview with Scott Svonkin (“Scott Svonkin: Pulling Together,” Feb. 16). It was right on the money.

I must say that Svonkin made some excellent points. As a young man in the Jewish community, I often felt like a second-class citizen because of limited financial resources. Svonkin is absolutely correct; it’s all about money.

After reading the article, I hope the powers that be in the Jewish community will stand up and realize the importance of leadership development in addition to simply raising funds. Being Jewish is not simply about making annual donations to causes that help Jews. It involves a lifelong commitment to live Jewishly and perpetuate Jewish values. Many of our community organizations do a wonderful job of raising money for much-needed causes, and for this I applaud them. But they also need to do more to raise our Jewish collective consciousness. I hope the other leaders of the Jewish community will follow Svonkin’s lead and put some of their efforts into better developing the leaders of tomorrow.

Svonkin is to be commended for his honest and refreshing approach and for his continued support of the Jewish community in our area.

Gary Hartstein, Tarzana

Correction

In the Feb. 23 letters, David Novak arrived in Los Angeles from Boston in 1989, not 1998. Also, he received his loan 12 years ago, not two. We regret the error.

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Different Tactics

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

If U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made anything clear during his visit this week to Israel and the Palestinian-controlled city of Ramallah, it was that things have changed since President Clinton left office.

First, there was the duration of his visit — one day — with Powell’s meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders wedged in between stop-offs in Egypt and Jordan.

Second, there was the absence of U.S. proposals — a hallmark of the Clinton era — aimed at ending the more than five months of Israeli-Palestinian violence and forging a final peace accord.

While Powell called on both sides to end the violence and return to negotiations — and pointedly told Israel to lift the economic sanctions it has imposed on the Palestinian Authority — he had little else to suggest to the two sides in his public comments other than that it is up to them to make the "hard decisions" that will enable them to return to the road of peace.

Since President Bush took office in late January, U.S. officials have said that while they will continue to pursue Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, it is but one facet of their overall Middle East policy.

Indeed, Powell’s trip to the Middle East — his first since becoming the top U.S. diplomat — appeared to be less about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than getting Arab support for U.S. policies aimed at containing Iraq.

Powell’s regional tour included a stop in Kuwait to attend celebrations marking the 10th anniversary of the end of the Persian Gulf War.

During meetings with Arab leaders this week, Powell discussed the need to keep sanctions against Iraq in place — first imposed in the wake of the war — in order to deal with the threat posed by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

In fact, during a joint news conference with Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon on Sunday, Powell stressed that Saddam had to be restrained.

Citing German intelligence reports that Baghdad might have nuclear weapons in three years, Powell said, "We have to make sure that we do everything we can to contain" Saddam.

As Powell arrived in Syria for talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad, a state-run Syrian newspaper sharply criticized the emphasis on Iraq.

A front-page editorial accused Powell of ignoring the killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces.

During their meeting, Powell and Assad discussed the peace process, sanctions against Iraq and the oil it imports from Iraq through a pipeline to the Mediterranean.

The United States believes that Syria, which is seeking a seat on the U.N. Security Council next year, will halt the imports, thereby complying with U.N. sanctions against Iraq, a senior U.S. official told Reuters.

The difficulty of putting an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was underscored by several incidents that took place during Powell’s visit.

As Powell was urging the two sides to take steps to stop the cycle of violence, two Israeli settlers were wounded in separate shooting attacks in the West Bank. The commander of Israeli forces in the area said it is possible the two attacks were linked.

He noted that Powell’s visit could have given Palestinian groups greater motivation to carry out such attacks.

After meeting Sunday in Ramallah with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, Powell called on Israel to lift the economic "siege" it had imposed on the areas under Palestinian control since violence erupted last September.

Later Sunday, Israel announced that it was taking a step aimed at implementing at least part of Powell’s requests: The Israeli army lifted roadblocks it had set up last week that had divided the Gaza Strip into two.

For his part, Arafat used his joint news conference with Powell to call on the United States to ensure that Israel pick up negotiations from where they left off under outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Barak’s purported willingness to give the Palestinians control over parts of eastern Jerusalem during last July’s failed Camp David summit led to the defections of several coalition partners and was a major factor in his defeat at the hands of Sharon in the nation’s Feb. 6 elections for prime minister.

Barak, seconded by Clinton, has said the proposals aired at Camp David were no longer on the table.

But Arafat maintained Sunday that "no government can write off what the previous government did."

Earlier in the day, after meeting with Powell, Sharon outlined his own demand.

"One thing should be clear: Israel will not negotiate under pressure of terror and violence," Sharon said at his joint news conference with the U.S. secretary of state.

Sharon denied that any negotiations were under way with the Palestinians. But he acknowledged that there existed "channels of communication" for conveying messages to the Palestinians.

During Powell’s meetings Sunday, more than 2,000 Palestinians protested in Gaza against his visit. The protesters burned pictures of Powell and called on him to go home.

Throughout the West Bank, Palestinian shopkeepers heeded demands by militant groups to protest Powell’s visit and closed their shops early.

Meanwhile, a Jewish settler sustained serious head wounds following a shooting attack near Ramallah as Powell was holding talks with Arafat in the West Bank city. In that incident, Palestinian gunmen opened fire from a passing car, hitting the Israeli’s car with dozens of bullets.

A short time later, an Israeli woman was lightly wounded in the hand and legs when shots were fired at the car she was traveling in near the settlement of Ofra.

Based on the proximity of the two attacks and the type of weapons apparently used, it was possible the two attacks were linked, the Israeli army said.

In another development, a Palestinian woman accused of using the Internet to lure Israeli teenager Ofir Rahum to his death admitted to planning to kidnap him but said she did not intend to kill him.

The prime minister’s office issued a statement indicating that Amana Mona told investigators she had communicated with several Israelis who had expressed anti-Palestinian sentiments. As a result, she said, she decided to kidnap one of them to send a message to the world about the deaths of young Palestinians in the ongoing violence.

On Sunday, the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot published a photograph of Rahum’s headstone, in the shape of a computer terminal, which his family said symbolized the importance it played in the teen’s life.

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Shrinking Confidence

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The public bloodletting that the Labor Party presented to the Israeli public this week has exposed the depth of disarray and confusion on the Israeli left following Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s massive defeat at the polls.

Labor’s Central Committee ultimately voted by a 2-1 margin Monday to join Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon’s proposed national unity government.

But the margin masks the magnitude of division within Labor about the proper course of action for a party that, until the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada five months ago, was convinced that its path as the standard-bearer of Israel’s peace camp was the correct one.

Farther to the left, the Meretz Party also is in disarray.

Barak, the man who sought to lead Labor into a unity government until he realized the extent of his colleagues’ loathing, didn’t even bother to attend Monday’s raucous Central Committee meeting.

Much as the septuagenarian Sharon stepped in to resuscitate the ailing Likud after Benjamin Netanyahu’s defeat in 1999, it was left to party elder Shimon Peres, 78, to swing Laborites to his vision of the party’s role.

In arguing passionately for a unity government, Peres faced down Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg, Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and Knesset faction chair Ofir Pines-Paz, all of whom argued that Labor was in effect selling its soul to join Sharon.

Peres castigated the doves for being "out of touch" with the people and assured the party that the great majority of the public wants a unity government.

"The time has come to listen to the nation for once," Peres said in a plea for unity, as supporters clapped and hecklers booed. "For once, listen to the will of the nation."

Labor would emerge strengthened from a period in the unity government, Peres argued; in opposition, it would do little but make speeches during a period of national crisis.

Beilin, Peres’s political protege and one of the main opponents of a unity government, said Labor’s only purpose would be to extend the life of an ill-fated coalition under Sharon.

"Shimon, I love you, but listening to your remarks, I want to cry," Beilin said.

As the dust settled on Tuesday, Beilin warned that Sharon could not count on unified support from Labor members in important Knesset votes.

"Sharon has to know that there will be Knesset members who won’t be able to support him," Beilin told Israel’s Army Radio. "He is getting only a part of the Labor Party."

Yet what the opponents of unitydidn’t say at Monday’s meeting was as telling as what they did.

More important than the abuse and recrimination hurled around the hall was the fact that the losers in the struggle made no threat to split the party.

Immediately after Sharon’s huge election victory on Feb. 6, Beilin began an open flirtation with Meretz leader Sarid, with his eye on fashioning a new social democratic party from the bulk of Meretz’s membership and Labor breakaways.

The assumption was that Labor’s accession to a unity government — presumably, at that time, under the defeated Barak — would trigger a sizable breakaway movement. But on Monday, it was painfully clear to the doves that any split would be of discouragingly modest proportions.

Indeed, Meretz also seems in no shape for new political adventures. Sarid has been strongly criticized within the party for his decision a month before the election not to support Peres’ bid to run for premier.

With polls at the time showing Peres giving Sharon a neck-and-neck race, Peres had sought the support of Meretz’s 10 Knesset members — the minimum number required to back a candidacy — to present his own, alternative candidacy from the left.

Sarid’s decision effectively enshrined Barak — who was trailing massively in the polls — as the peace camp’s candidate.

Now there are some in Meretz who believe Sarid, too, should resign as party leader.

There even are a few voices in Meretz that favor joining Sharon’s unity coalition, if the prime minister-elect agrees to leave out the far-right party led by politicians Avigdor Lieberman and Rehavam Ze’evi.

To some on the left, these currents in Labor and Meretz reflect how severely the Israeli peace camp has lost its sense of confidence — and, some would say, its direction.

This is due not only to Barak’s massive electoral defeat. Rather, it is the bleak realization that Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority rejected a peace package presented by Barak and President Clinton that represented Israel’s ultimate red line.

While many suggest the package could have been presented more sensitively and gracefully, Israeli peaceniks don’t see what more of substance could have been offered.

In any case, Arafat’s response was a low-level war that exploded the world view the peace camp has carefully nurtured since the famous 1993 handshake on the White House lawn that set the peace process in motion.

The left in Israel is now so discomfited that it doesn’t have the strength to split, regroup and launch a new and more homogenous peace party.

While some aspirants for Labor’s leadership are competing for the party’s eight ministerial slots in the unity government, Labor doves are refusing to serve in Sharon’s Cabinet.

They can now devote all their energies to the looming battle for party leadership.

One of those doves, Burg, hopes to turn the widespread dismay in the party to his advantage in the leadership primaries.

Others, including, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, outgoing communications minister, hopes a ministerial position in Sharon’s Cabinet will help his bid to become Labor leader.

If Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh is nominated for defense minister by Labor’s Central Committee, that will certainly whet his appetite for a leadership bid.

Other possible candidates for party leader are Ben-Ami — who still insists that a peace agreement with the Palestinians was just around the corner — and Haim Ramon, who favors a unity government but has taken himself out of the running for Sharon’s Cabinet.

Both will be watching reaction to the unwieldy and heterogeneous unity government before deciding whether to compete for Labor leader.

Peres, who on Monday ridiculed Ben-Ami’s contention that a peace deal was at hand, is likely to become interim party leader, but has said he does not want the job on a permanent basis.

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Messianic Experience

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For Dawn Short and Jennifer Willis, the wait tovisit a newly opened "messianic Jewish" theme park was worth it.

Ticket sellers bluntly told Short and her friend Willis when they arrived on Saturday that the Holy Land Experience park was too crowded to accept more guests.

But instead of heading home, Short, a Methodist, and Willis, a Pentecostal, spent some time in Orlando and returned to the park in the afternoon.

"We were determined to get in," said Short, who made the two-hour drive from her home to Orlando after reading about the religious theme park in a local newspaper.

The two women eventually got in. Short says she learned more about the Bible in just two hours in the park than she did in years of Bible school.

Josephine Alford, a Christian visiting from northern Florida, also enjoyed the park. Her only regret was that she couldn’t spend all day in Orlando’s newest attraction.

These aren’t the only tourists who have headed to Orlando this month, hoping to find not Disney but the Deity.

Since the newest addition to Orlando’s theme park row opened Feb. 5, some 30,000 visitors have bypassed the world’s most famous mouse to visit the Holy Land Experience, a controversial park that tries to recreate biblical times through stage productions and a Middle Eastern marketplace.

The $16 million theme park, which mixes Jewish and Christian symbols, has sparked heated attacks from some Jewish leaders. They assert that the park’s founder — a former Jew who embraced Jesus — has created a giant proselytizing tool.

But a protest, planned on the park’s opening day by the Jewish Defense League, fizzled. Many local leaders say the best action Jewish groups can take against the Holy Land Experience may be no action at all.

"We have to understand that in a democracy, we have to tolerate all situations," said Rabbi Joel Levine, spiritual leader of Temple Judea of West Palm Beach and chairman of the Cults and Messianics Task Force of the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County.

"Everyone has a right to practice their religion. We can’t picket" the park, he said. "We could have a Jewish Israel park, and we wouldn’t want them to picket it."

Instead, Levine said, Jewish groups should focus their efforts on education.

"I think the Jewish community is doing a good thing by letting people know what Holy Land is: a Christian amusement park," Levine said.

Park founder Marvin Rosenthal says he never intended to hide that fact.

"Every piece of literature created by the park states its evangelical purpose," said Rosenthal, who directs an Orlando-based Christian ministry, Zion’s Hope.

But Jewish leaders say the Jewish themes that dominate the Holy Land Experience are misleading and will deceive people into believing that Jews support the park’s message.

Critics point to the Holy Land Experiences gift shop, for example, which sells jewelry that contains Jewish stars but does not sell crosses.

Some Jewish leaders also say Rosenthal’s background raises warning flags.

Rosenthal, an ordained Baptist minister, was born into a Conservative Jewish family and says he never formally converted to Christianity.

"I think the word that comes to mind immediately is ‘deceit,’ " said William Rothschild, assistant regional director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Palm Beach office.

"The organization is entitled to build a theme park, but our problem is the way it’s being presented," Rothschild said. It’s part of Rosenthal’s "ministry to entice as many Jews as he can, to expose them to a mixture of Christian and Jewish values. We’re concerned about it. We feel that what they’re presenting is the philosophy that you can be both — and if you’re not both, you’re not complete — and that invalidates Judaism."

For $17 a ticket — $12 for children — Rosenthal aims to transport guests 7,000 miles away and 3,000 years back in time. The journey starts when Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and ends just before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in the first century.

There’s a 45-foot by 25-foot model of first-century Jerusalem. Guests also may wander through Calvary’s Garden Tomb, a recreation of Jesus’ resting place, where actors portray his death, burial and resurrection.

A high-tech production of Israel’s ancient priestly system — replete with lightning bolts and fog — awaits visitors within a model of the Wilderness Tabernacle. Replicas of the Qumran caves let guests peek at the place where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the 20th century.

Costumed actors sing and perform scenes from the Bible in the marketplace, near a replica of Herod’s Temple and alongside a recreation of the Via Dolorosa.

The biblical theme is evident even in the smallest details. Recorded sounds of camels, goats and sheep bray from loudspeakers along the ancient-style paths as street vendors peddle milk and honey-flavored ice cream.

The theme park was designed by Orlando-based ITEC Entertainment Corp., which also has created rides for Walt Disney World and Universal Studios.

Each exhibit at the Holy Land Experience will provide dramatic and factual insights that will teach the message of the Bible, Rosenthal said.

Rosenthal said he toyed with the idea of building a religious theme park for nearly 20 years, inspired by his extensive tours of Israel. He wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to visit the Holy Land, even if they couldn’t travel overseas, he said.

The answer to his prayers came in 1989, when Rosenthal heard about a densely wooded, 19-acre site in Orlando that was tangled up in a bankruptcy proceeding.

With the backing of some wealthy investors — including Robert and Judith Van Kampen, whose collection of rare Bibles will be part of a museum slated to open at the park next year — Rosenthal offered $1.2 million for the site, a fraction of its worth.

His offer was accepted and, a few years later, state officials offered to pay $1.4 million to build a highway interchange on four acres of Rosenthal’s land. To Rosenthal, it was a sign that God was smiling on his plan.

"The Bible is God’s word, and there’s no better place to share that than one of the most major tourist locations in the world," he said.

The idea that the park targets Jews for conversion is fallacious, Rosenthal said. So far, fewer than 1 percent of the park’s visitors have been Jewish, he added.

But, he added, "I do believe Jesus is the Messiah, and to believe in him is the most Jewish thing a Jewish person can do."

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Shocked, Shocked

Leave a Comment / Rob Eshman /

This Marc Rich story has legs and then some. Bill Clinton’s last-moment pardon of the indicted billionaire commodities trader has, like so many of the former president’s actions, created a cottage industry in sleazy revelation.

The scandals change, but their essential elements remain constant: the morally if not criminally questionable act, a media feeding frenzy, blood-lust among the president’s enemies and hand-wringing and some attrition among his friends.

The Rich case has the added twist of featuring more Jews than a Neil Simon stage memoir. Last week, Jewish groups lambasted their friend, the ex-president, for saying that in pardoning Rich he was in part following the advice of close friends in the Jewish community and Israel. The list of those who wrote letters or made phone calls on Rich’s behalf is long and varied: Ehud Barak, the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman, Rabbi Irving Greenberg, and Israelis from left-wing Shulamit Aloni to right-wing Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert. One way of ensuring Jewish unity, Rich found, is to pay for it.

That brings us to the one other inevitable feature of a Clinton scandal: hypocrisy. In the Lewinsky debacle there were Clinton’s inquisitors, whose defiantly crossed arms obscured their own scarlet A’s. In the Rich mess, there are Jewish leaders who stood up for the billionaire after he had made substantial contributions to their causes. There is good to be found in almost every one, I suppose, especially when they make it worth your while.

On the other side are those Jewish leaders who are crying shame at Barak and Foxman and company. But had Rich dropped tens of thousands of dollars on their own organizations, would they have acted any differently? More to the point, would they have rejected Rich’s money up front as tainted, so as not even to place themselves in a moral tight spot to begin with?

For centuries Jews have practiced the art of whispering into the ear of the powerful, a necessary outgrowth of anti-Semitic policies that kept Jews themselves from holding positions of civil power. On Fri., March 9, we celebrate Purim, when the Jews Mordechai and Esther used their proximity to the throne to intervene on behalf of their oppressed and threatened brethren.

What Clinton did might qualify as sleazy, but he was president, and presidents get to pardon whom they want. If his enemies made half as big a deal out of George Bush’s pardon of Caspar Weinberger, their outrage now would be easier to take seriously.

As for our moral leaders who are shocked, shocked to find that some Jewish leaders gave a man the benefit of the doubt because he provided them money or other favors, they’ll have to convince us that they have always turned away a donor’s money if they suspected it was tainted.

If they have, I’d like to hear about it. Now that’s a story with legs.

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