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Jewish Journal

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April 5, 2001

Bush Sets a New Course

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Though it is too early to judge the success of an administration, President Bush is headed in the right direction on many fronts. It is hoped that his leadership will have lasting effects in many areas.

Most importantly, he has, as promised, set a new tone of civility in Washington. It was pleasant to watch a presidential news conference the other day that was not focused on foibles but on policies affecting Americans. The simple matter of being on time for meetings and being courteous to others has brought plaudits from both sides of the aisle. Our representatives, though they may have policy disagreements, at least are engaging each other now in a respectful manner.

Bush has aggressively attempted to right an economy that went off course last year. Alan Greenspan’s misguided maneuvers in the monetary policy area have had serious negative effects on our economy. Though the government has less ability to correct economic course than some believe, the Bush Administration is at least making an attempt.

First, it has decided to curb the outrageous increases in governmental domestic spending. When domestic spending exceeds the inflation rate by a factor of two, it denies the right of average citizens to spend those monies in their own manner.

Second, it has attempted to correct a misguided tax code and overtaxation. Bush’s main goal of overall rate reduction is still on course. Congress is looking at three other areas of the tax code that are blatantly unfair. The marriage penalty, estate tax, and phaseout of itemized deductions and personal exemptions have been targeted for elimination. In addition, the onerous and incomprehensible alternative minimum tax has been ticketed for the trash can of history.

President Bush has also moved forward on a proposal that he and Vice-President Gore campaigned on — the so-called faith-based initiative. Though the Jewish left has often anguished over any governmental recognition that religion exists, the reality is beginning to shift for most other Americans. People have begun to realize that a lot of the programs that exist either do not work or espouse their own religion of secularism. We have to make a choice as to whether we want to heal the people who are in need of these programs.

Turning to the foreign front, the Bush Administration has re-established that the United States is no patsy. China has become aware that it cannot make this administration roll over, as it did the last one.

Most important to Jewish Americans, Israel is once again in good hands. After the disaster that occurred during the last administration, Bush has made two clear points. First, he will not intercede in the peace process — he will act only as a catalyst. He will not force down the throat of the Israelis a settlement that jeopardizes their long-term future. Second, the violence is the responsibility of Arafat and the Palestinians, and Arafat must put a stop to it if peace is to be achieved. No longer will the Jewish people’s homeland be at risk because of someone’s seeking a political legacy.

Bush has come under attack for his rejection of two environmental policies that should concern us all, but let us look at the facts. First, no one wants an unacceptable level of arsenic in drinking water. If the policy that was put in place was of such magnitude, why did the Clinton Administration sneak it in without going through the normal channels? Since no one has answered that question for me, the answer becomes clear: The policy needs review, and that is all Bush has said.

Second, regarding the policy on CO2 emissions and the Kyoto agreement, there is no question that this agreement is disproportionately detrimental to the United States. But is it scientifically sound? The answer to that is no. Dr. Peter Huber in his recent book “Hard Green” stated clearly that the United States is not the problem in the area of international CO2 emissions. No one to my knowledge has refuted his analysis of the situation. More important, he identifies the true problem areas — the underdeveloped countries — and the new economies, such as China.

The fact is, Bush stood up to knee-jerk environmentalism that could have cost the citizens of the United States, without the results we all seek. That took leadership.

George W. Bush has begun to accomplish the goals he outlined in his campaign. He has done it in a straightforward and congenial manner. My hope is that he stays the course on his policies, to give them a chance and to let us all see whether our trust in him is warranted. I believe it will be.

Bush Sets a New Course Read More »

Is Demography Destiny?

Leave a Comment / Rob Eshman /

The new U.S. census figures have generated banner headlines this month, though no one seems to have a clue what those numbers portend. The big news, of course, is that America’s Latino population has ballooned almost 60 percent in the past decade, surpassing 35 million. More than 43 percent of Californians younger than 18 are now Hispanic, compared with about 35 percent a decade ago. In both the city and county of Los Angeles, Latinos have replaced whites as the largest ethnic group.

"The Anglo hegemony was only an intermittent phase in California’s arc of identity, extending from the arrival of the Spanish," Kevin Starr, the state librarian, told The New York Times. "The Hispanic nature of California has been there all along, and it was temporarily swamped between the 1880s and the 1960s, but that was an aberration."

Since most Jews are white, we find ourselves being a kind of minority squared, a minority within this new white minority. But Jewish groups have long seen this trend coming. They began their outreach to the Latino community years ago and have stepped up efforts in the recent past. What they have discovered is a community much more complex than the demographers’ numbers would lead us to believe. The word Latino hardly describes the tremendous linguistic, cultural, economic, political and national diversity of the region’s "non-white Hispanics." In Los Angeles, demography is not destiny but a test, perhaps a triumph, of democracy.

Now consider Israel. There are 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and 300,000 Jews. For Israel to incorporate largely Palestinian areas would mean the certain dissipation of the Jewish character of the state, either through the democratic process or by enforcing an apartheid-like hegemony over a non-Jewish majority. Thus Israeli leaders from Yitzchak Rabin to Benjamin Netanyahu have sought out a compromise with Palestinians that would essentially trade land for security. The United States’ former lead Mideast negotiator, Dennis Ross, has said that demographics makes an eventual rapprochement and agreement inevitable, although Yasser Arafat seems determined to prove him wrong.

On Saturday night we’ll read the Passover story. "Behold," said Pharaoh, "the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us; come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply." If you’ve read the book or seen the movie, you know "dealing wisely" was Pharaoh’s way of saying, "Kill them." So Moses led us away, to multiply elsewhere. Does Arafat see himself as Pharoah, hoping to drive the Children of Israel into the sea? Or does he imagine himself Moses, leading a tribe that will eventually outnumber its enemy? In Israel, demography is destiny.

These refelctions on head-counting come at a time when human genome decoders have determined that at the genetic level, the concept of race is scientifically meaningless. "Race is a social concept, not a scientific one," Dr. J. Craig Venter, head of the Celera Genomics Corporation in Rockville, Md. told The Times. "We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the same small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonized the world." It turns out that .01 percent of our genes is reflected in our external appearance: in other words, in our obvious Black-ness, Caucasian-ness or Latino-ness.

Jews, of course, are not a race, despite Hitler’s best efforts to categorize and exterminate us as one. We belong to a religion and a culture that embraces all races. There are black Jews and Latino Jews, and though the mind boggles, there is nothing other than a century of animosity to prevent there being Palestinian Arab Jews as well. To be a Jew is not, at the end of the day, a question of race, nationality, skin color, genetics or birth. It is a matter of what you believe and how you behave.

In this light, the admonition of the ancient rabbis against counting Jews seems sublime. When all the head-tallying and label-fixing is over, we must remember that quantity is less important than quality. In the end, it is not bodies that matter most, but souls.

Is Demography Destiny? Read More »

Preparing for War

Leave a Comment / Letters From Israel /

A time for peace and a time for war. Most talk, for years, has been about peace, but there’s war talk in Israel now. At least one independent intelligence agency is predicting a regional war this spring, and nobody is offering credible deniability. The Palestinians have been smuggling weapons into the country — mortars, anti-tank weapons, heavy machine guns, who knows what else. The stuff comes into Gaza through tunnels from Egypt or sneaked past Israeli naval patrols along the coast. It’s not Jordan they’re gunning for, at least not to start.

A regional war, it seems clear, is Arafat’s best hope to precipitate international intervention (as in the Balkans) or even, if he’s lucky, to cut Israel down to size. But will the Arabs really fight for Arafat? Saddam might be eager to send arms, armored battalions, and anthrax. But even Egypt and Syria, who have no love for Arafat and a lot to lose, could be forced, by the hatred they have stirred up against Israel, to join the fray. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv has made plans to turn underground parking lots into shelters against nonconventional weapons — probably wise foresight but not a great show of confidence. Preparing for the same eventualities, friends of mine in Gush Etzion, just south of Jerusalem, have redecorated their “safe room” as a bedroom and moved their children into it, just in case. They are surely not the only ones.

One hopes, of course, to avoid a larger war, yet if there is going to be one, maybe it’s better sooner than later, before our “peace partners” get more prepared. Meanwhile, continual acts and threats of terrorism are making people angry, bitter and helpless. Maybe our new prime minister will know what to do — Ariel Sharon, like Nixon when he was running for U.S. president during the Vietnam War, claimed to have a plan whose details he couldn’t reveal. Although Israel has struck back recently, the country feels no less on edge, and we have yet to see signs that there’s an actual plan at work.

Israel’s security services acknowledge that there is no way to seal the border hermetically — and that’s an understatement. Where I live, the Green Line is marked by the huge Yattir Forest. Anybody can walk (and maybe drive) through the forest most of the way to Beer Sheva. There’s virtually nothing to stop anyone, here or, except for checkpoints on major roads, along most of the country’s length. Maybe a fence could keep out the neighbors. But aside from the huge expense, a fence automatically creates a border, and Israel isn’t ready, depending on where the fence goes, to give anything to the Palestinians or outrage the rest of the world.

Nonetheless, Ehud Barak announced toward the end of his tenure that a fence was being built, more or less along the Green Line, starting in Maale Gilboa in the north. Soon after, at a bar mitzvah, I met two people from the Gilboa area. Neither of them had seen any signs of fence-building (or even heard of the plan).

“That’s just how things are done in Israel,” one of them laughed. He meant that’s how things aren’t done, I guess: absolute decisions are made and then not implemented. Maybe it’s not only the Arabs who mistake words for deeds.

Since the current mini-war began, the number of reservists seeking exemptions has doubled, another sign of how disquieted the country is. But it’s no wonder. All solutions to Israel’s agony seem either wishful thinking or, at best, very temporary, and in the meantime, men who come to the aid of their country could get killed for no clear national advantage.

Imagine the state of mind that develops from living inside a problem with no solution. The mind rebels against so painful a concept. And yet the Palestinians cannot accept what Israel can give, and Israel cannot give what the Palestinians want. There will be an outcome, but that’s not the same as a solution. Diplomacy didn’t work; now we’ll try war and see where that will get us. But it may be that neither diplomacy nor war will get us out of this mess in any final way. After all, it’s been going on for three millennia — read the Book of Judges. The best peace that the best of the judges managed was 80 years; most of them achieved only temporary relief or a moment of national honor. No wonder the Jews invented the idea of the messiah.

But the messiah hasn’t come, once again, and we’re stuck with real life. It’s too bad the Palestinians don’t seem to know that.

Preparing for War Read More »

Your Letters

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor /

Mayoral Election

The Jewish Journal should be commended for its ongoing coverage of the upcoming Los Angeles mayoral election. The outcome is crucial for the tens of thousands of Jewish residents in this community.One of your recently published interviews gave the impression that one of the candidates has been acknowledged as the recipient of the “Jewish” vote (“One on One With Antonio Villaraigosa,” March 23). There is no doubt that members of our community can be found supporting literally all of the announced candidates. This reflects the diversity of our community and the strength of the democratic process.I would like to strongly urge that The Jewish Journal, as the primary communication device to the half-million Jewish residents of Los Angeles, be careful not to give the impression that the Jewish electorate is monolithic.

Todd M. Morgan,ChairmanThe Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles

Jonathan Kellerman

Thank you for publishing Jonathan Kellerman’s article (“Bizarro World and ‘The Settlers,'” March 23). I hope that this will become a weekly column.

Many of us, Jews and gentiles alike, need to understand more clearly the true meaning of the terminologies repeatedly used by the Palestinian leadership and echoed internationally by friends and foes alike.We need to understand clearly that declaring to be anti-Zionist really means denying the Jews the right to have a homeland.

We need to understand that not every township or enclave in the Arab sector is an illegal and imposed settlement. Many of the Jewish communities in Gaza and the West Bank are, in fact, privately purchased and owned Jewish enclaves which have been in continued existence for decades, or even centuries, before the establishment of the State of Israel.

Name withheld by request

Liana Cohen

I had the privilege of knowing Liana Cohen as her homeroom teacher during the three years prior to her graduation from the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies in 1992. Liana was a bright, talented, caring young woman, looking forward to attending Brandeis University. All who knew her were devastated by her tragic death.

Thank you for publishing the article in which her mother describes how her loving family is honoring Liana’s memory (“Special Night of Music,” March 23). She was a gifted musician, and a celebration of her birthday with young musicians seems a perfect tribute; if I still lived in Los Angeles, I would surely be there. My heart goes out to all the Cohen family as they celebrate Liana’s life with music.

Betty Raskoff Kazmin, Willard, Ohio

Remarkable Woman

By all accounts, my mom [Charlotte Lenga] was a remarkable woman (“Requiem for a Survivor,” Dec. 22). She witnessed more than one person should, yet lived on. From the darkness of the Holocaust to the sunshine of California, my mom experienced the most extreme breadth that God has to offer. It was her perseverance that created such a loving family of three daughters, Helene, Bert and Barbara, and a happy marriage of 55 years. That she survived, that my children and I are here is a miracle. That God has chosen to take her now, in such difficult circumstances, can only mean that her mission here on earth has been completed.

The rest is left to me and my children, and their children. Her legacy left to us of her love, generosity and giving of herself so unselfishly will never be forgotten to those she left behind.

Helene Kohen, via e-mail

Correction

In the March 30 article “Vital Learning,” The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles was not mentioned as a co-sponsor of Yesod. We regret the omission.

Your Letters Read More »

Freedom. Empathy. Pain.

Leave a Comment / Womans Voice /

My fireplace mantle is stuffed &’9;with get-well cards. They come from people I know and many I’ve never met. One of them might have come from you. In the two months since I started writing about my lung cancer, the cards have been flowing in, plus an equal number or more of e-mails. They touch me deeply.

As I prepare for Passover, I think about putting the cards away. There are so many, they slip and fall off the mantle onto the floor. I’m having 25 for dinner; surely it’s time to pile the cards into a box. The surgery was a while ago, and even my scars are healing.

But no, the get-well cards are coming with me, with my family and our guests, on the tribal journey we take this weekend from slavery to freedom.

How could it be otherwise? When we sit down to the seder, we are told to remember that this matzah and that karpas, these bitter herbs and that charoset, are because of what God did for me when I went forth from Egypt. I’m still not sure that my cancer is "my Egypt," but the cards tell me what God is.

God is empathy. God is the two-sided conversation between the one in pain and the ones who comfort the suffering. When the Children of Israel cried, God found a way out. Without that call and response, we are all slaves.

The question is one of willingness.

In the final plague, the Torah presents an interesting conundrum: God has told the Israelites to paint both the lintels and the insides of their homes with blood, so to be spared the slaying of the first born. Yet the Torah says that on that dreaded night Pharaoh was roused by the crying, "for there was no house where there was not someone dead" (Exodus 12:30)

Well, which is it? Were Jews protected or not? Did the Israelite children die or didn’t they?

My own experience tells me that empathy knows no such divisions. The world of the slave is divided between "haves" and "have nots"; there is a plantation, a water fountain, a wall of stucco and mesh between those who deserve blessings and those who are scorned or damned.

But for those who live in freedom, fate is fluid. It is the great unknown. All that buffers us from life’s hardships is our ability to care; the burdens and responsibilities for each other that we choose to take on with an open, unbounded heart. This is community, and it is our only sane choice. There are no hard divisions between cancer and not-cancer, or as Levi-Strauss said in another regard, between "raw" and "cooked." In freedom, the death of one’s neighbor’s child is tantamount to our own.

I learned that lesson again this week, in a newly horrific way.

Among the 18 dead in last week’s fatal crash of the Aspen-bound private Gulfstream III jet was Ori Greenberg, 23-year-old son of George and Victoria Greenberg. George is president of the Malibu Jewish Center & Synagogue (MJC&S). Since Thursday, every Malibu family has held its children close, for it seems that there is no house where there was not some child dead.

I’ve sat on the temple board with George, who heads Vanguard Media Corp., in Westlake. I know his dignity and class, and how community lives in him. Victoria is a mainstay of MJC&S, part of every committee and mastermind of our High Holiday tent service, which attracts 1,000 worshippers. Their daughter, Rosalia, 11, is one of our stars, with a brilliant glow.

Ori Greenberg was bar mitzvah in our temple, played soccer in the local AYSO, and went to the local public high school. I’ve seen his 15-minute short film, "Havoc," which told the story of a drug bust from the point of view of a young homeless woman. It justifiably earned him the Best Director award at the Santa Monica Film Festival and feature work at the Independent Film Channel.

With young Greenberg were his fiancée Elizabeth Ann Smith, 21, and his Chapman College roommate, Mirweis "Mir" Tukhi, 26, assignment editor at KTTV. At the funeral, Ori’s grieving parents addressed a crowd of more than 350. George and Victoria rose in praise: of community that had restored them in the hours since the plane careened into the Rockies; in praise of the love of Liz and Ori, cast forever in a Gatsby-like glow.

But that was not all. The Greenbergs praised Tukhi and their son. Tukhi’s younger and older brothers, Faheed and Jawad, both spoke at the funeral, praising the friendship between Muslim and Jew that began with a love of Tukhi’s mother’s rice.

"You want to know how to help me?" Victoria Greenberg told the crowd. "Be kinder to those who disagree with you. Love each other more."

The question is one of willingness.

Freedom. Empathy. Pain. Read More »

The Perception Gap

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Who is the most distrusted and despised Israeli politician in the Arab world? The answer is not to be found among the usual suspects — current and former Likud prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Binyamin Netanyahu. Rather, it is the dove incarnate: Shimon Peres.

Amid the welter of anti-Israel rhetoric that emanates from the Arab political and intellectual elites, a special measure of vitriol is reserved for Israel’s foreign minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

"He is falsely and deceitfully described as a peace dove," wrote Galal Duweider, editor of Egypt’s influential state-controlled daily al-Akhbar on March 16. "In reality, he is nothing but a bird of prey, masterful in killing the innocent… this professional murderer, who is no different from the rest of the gang which rules Israel."

Such bitterness is not new, and when the negotiators, facilitators and arbitrators pick their way through the wreckage of the peace process to determine where and when it all went wrong, they will find ample evidence of anger at Israel expressed in terms of Peres-loathing.

Not that Peres is deserving of this naked hatred. He was indeed the midwife of the Oslo accords and has remained a consistent, persistent advocate of the diplomatic path, even in the midst of the most bloody Palestinian convulsions.

But the lesson to be learnt from the Arab vilification of Peres is that a huge gulf in perceptions has bedeviled almost every aspect of relations between Israel and its Arab interlocutors.

When, for example, in the euphoric aftermath of the Oslo accords, Peres suggested that Israel join the Arab League — intended as a sign of Israel’s willingness to integrate into the region and identify with its aspirations — his proposal was met with horror. However carefully calculated, however meticulously calibrated, nothing could have aroused greater anger.

Peres, they believed, was seeking no less than to transform the Jewish state into the mothership on which unsuspecting Arab states would be induced to rely for their prosperity; a narcotic on which Arab leaders would become dependent.

The Peres prescription for a "New Middle East" was intended to boost regional development, kick-start economies, deliver the benefits of sophisticated technology to a new generation, while integrating Israel into the region and the region into the global economy.

Peres saw only benefits for the region, but it was the realization of a nightmare for the Arab elites, who perceived it as a cunning plan to harness Israel’s industrial, economic and technological strength in order to humiliate and, ultimately, dominate the Arab world.

Beyond the humiliation and shame, however, the greatest danger to the Arab world — whose collective failures in modernization have been compounded by chronic unemployment, social inequality, population explosion, corruption and simmering Islamic extremism — was perceived at the very heart of the Peres vision: Israel’s integration into the region.

Arab leaders feared that such close encounters by their own people with Israeli concepts of political democracy and economic accountability would shake the ground on which they stood and directly threaten their regimes.

In a world driven by the engine of conspiracy theories, the idea of normalizing relations with Israel, blurring national borders, allowing the free exchange of goods and people must be a devious ploy by a duplicitous Peres to frog-march the region remorselessly toward Israeli hegemony.

Nor are the misperceptions all on the Arab side. While Arabs tend to demonize Israel, Israelis tend to project their own values and aspirations onto the Arab world, however unrealistic they might be.

There has been an overwhelming impulse among Israelis — weary of conflict, desperate for a normal life — to ascribe their own concept of peace to their Arab interlocutors.

Peace failed to materialize not because Israel offered too little but because it demanded too much — normal relations.

Peres never learned the lesson. Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos last year, he again mounted his hobbyhorse, pointing out the potential value of Israel’s contribution to the region if only the Arab leaders would see the light.

This time the response came directly from Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Mousa, whose rebuke carried him beyond the bounds of diplomatic courtesy.

Israel, he told the leading Arabic daily al-Hayat, must accept that it is "just another state in the region."

"It cannot continue to be, as Peres said, an island of prosperity in a sea of poverty, or an island of cleanliness in a sea of pollution. That is absolutely wrong," he declared.

Analysts warn that it is a mistake for Israelis to continue ignoring reality and misreading the signs, insisting on seeing what they want to see and hearing what they want to hear.

If concepts such as peace and normalization are indivisible in the Israeli mind, they are infinitely divisible in the Arab world.

Arab leaders might make peace with Israel, but that does not necessarily translate into warm relations. Peace treaties might acknowledge the fact of Israel’s existence, but they do not necessarily confer legitimacy on the existence of the Jewish state.

"You might be able to force us to go to bed with you," a senior Jordanian academic told his Israeli counterpart soon after the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty was signed. "But please, don’t expect us to enjoy it."

"Strictly speaking, what Peres says is true," concedes Lebanese academic Hussein Agha at Britain’s Oxford University. "But given the psychological context of the region, he is perceived to be talking down to the Arabs.

"He is also perceived to be attempting to continue the conflict by other means, to spread Israel’s influence and control by means other than military power. It impacts right across the region."

To Agha, it is entirely unrealistic to equate peace treaties with normalization, to conjure up images of Israelis and Arabs walking hand-in-hand into the warm glow of an harmonious future.

That, he says, could take generations to happen — and then only after Israel has achieved a genuine, comprehensive peace with all of its neighbors. Many Arabs, particularly among the elites and the chattering classes, still do not believe peace is genuine, he says. They have been in the vanguard of articulating the conflict, and they are deeply suspicious of Israeli overtures.

"They perceive peace as an Israeli ploy to expand in nonmilitary ways." And from that perspective, he adds, "we are exactly where we have been for the past 50 years."

The Perception Gap Read More »

Shalhevet’s Funeral

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Have you ever been to the funeral of a 10-month-old? It has to be one of the most unnatural of human experiences. The burial of an infant who was deliberately murdered by terrorists is all the more tragic for the baseless hate it represents.

On Sunday, in the ancient cemetery of Hebron, Shalhevet Techiya Pass was laid to rest beside other Jews who were victims of earlier Arab hatred.

Shalhevet’s grieving family sat under the hot midday sun in the forecourt. Parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, they braced themselves for the difficult hours to come. Almost a week had passed since the murder of their baby, but on the advice of their rabbi, they had postponed the burial with the demand that the IDF retake the Abu Sneinah hills that harbored the terrorist who took Shalhevet’s life.

Yitzchak Pass, Shalhevet’s father, sat ashen-faced. Released from the hospital just before Shabbat, he was unable to walk due to the leg wounds he sustained as he tried to protect his daughter. He wore a yellow baseball cap emblazoned with the slogan "We are here."

As the psalms began, many mourners quietly sobbed. Pass, clutching tissues in his hand, grabbed the arm of his father-in-law for support. Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba gave the first eulogy, a fiery speech calling for the government to avenge the murder of Shalhevet.

A simple gray car carried the tiny body, draped in a dark-blue velvet cover adorned with a gold Star of David, through the streets of Hebron where Shalhevet spent the brief days of her life. Many of the mourners wore pictures of Shalhevet around their necks.

All the stores were shuttered and the streets empty of their Arab residents — a strict curfew had been imposed to ensure safety. Dozens of IDF soldiers lined the route and were three deep at Gross Square in front of the closed road leading to Abu Sneinah.

In the crowd of quiet marchers, the only public figures visible were former MKs Geula Cohen and Elyakim Haetzni, MK Yuri Shtern and former refusenik Rabbi Yosef Mendelevich.

The procession wended its way under the harsh sun, up the short, steep hill of Tarpat Street and past the cemetery gates. At some point, Pass, immobilized in his wheelchair, held the body of Shalhevet on his knees. At her graveside, there were more eulogies given by Mendelevich and Hebron pioneer Rabbi Moshe Levinger.

As teenagers hugged each other trying to contain their grief and men closed their eyes deep in prayer, the mournful prayer for mercy was sobbed out again before Pass barely managed to intone the mourner’s kaddish for his only child.

Another brutal act of hatred entered the annals of Jewish consciousness as the unnatural act of burying a murdered baby was completed.

Shalhevet’s Funeral Read More »

Taking off the Gloves

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Six months into the Palestinian uprising, Israeli doves and hawks are displaying a rare unity in the face of repeated Palestinian onslaughts.

Palestinian attacks in recent days on two settlement enclaves left two Israeli babies among the victims — one, a 10-month-old girl, dead; the other, a 15-month-old boy, gravely wounded — but the attacks did not produce the once-familiar calls from the Israeli left to dismantle the settlements.

The first attack took place March 26, when a Palestinian sniper killed Shalhevet Pass, picking her off as her father wheeled her in a stroller by a Jewish playground in the West Bank city of Hebron.

On Tuesday, in the Atzmona community in the Gaza Strip, a 15-month-old boy was seriously injured after being hit by shrapnel in a Palestinian mortar attack on the settlement. The mother also was hurt, though less seriously than her child.

On Wednesday, Israeli doctors reported an "impressive" improvement following surgery in the condition of Ariel Yered, who had arrived at a local hospital without a discernible pulse.

In times gone by, the attacks would have left Israeli doves demanding the dismantlement of isolated settlements — to avoid "provoking" Palestinian anger — and hawks urging that they be strengthened to show Palestinians that violence is futile.

Such debate now seems anachronistic.

Both groups now roundly blame Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian leadership for the lack of a peaceful solution or of progress toward one, and for the spiraling violence that has claimed 72 Jewish lives since late September.

This unity appears to be stiffening the public’s resolve in the face of daily Palestinian suicide bombings, ambushes, stonings and firefights. Sharon’s decisions on how to strike back at Palestinian violence — which in recent days have involved a marked military escalation on Israel’s part — have encountered little resistance in the political center, though the right is clamoring for a sterner response.

On Sunday, the IDF crossed into an area under Palestinian Authority control and abducted six members of Arafat’s Force 17 presidential guard, charging them with cooperating with Palestinian militants in planning terror attacks against Israelis.

On Tuesday, Israel released three of the men, but the point had been made. As the IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz said, Israel would no longer take lines on the map into account "in our strikes against the terrorists."

Sharon and Ben-Eliezer also have ordered the use of helicopter gunships, despite an earlier pledge from Ben-Eliezer not to deploy them.

Following a wave of bombings in Israeli cities, helicopters were used March 28 to rocket Force 17 targets in Gaza and the West Bank city Ramallah. On Monday, their rockets were used again to kill a leading Islamic Jihad militant in southern Gaza.

On Tuesday, helicopters rocketed a Palestinian naval police base, a Force 17 facility and a compound shared by several Palestinian security services, all in Gaza.

The same day, Sharon rejected an Egyptian-Jordanian proposal for resuming Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak presented the proposal Monday during a meeting with President Bush at the White House, but Sharon, who received it through unofficial channels, sees it as an attempt to renew negotiations while Palestinian violence continues — something he has repeatedly vowed not to do.

As with his other recent actions, Sharon’s rejection met with broad public support.

His basic position — that shooting must stop before talks can resume — appears to jibe with the public mood, which is determined not to reward Palestinian violence.

Taking off the Gloves Read More »

Changes in Attitude

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

There were more police than customers in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market last Friday morning, when Jewish families would normally stock up for the weekend. Downtown, the strolling, shopping and coffee-bar crowds had deserted the Ben-Yehuda pedestrian mall for the fashionable German Colony.

Six months after the outbreak of the intifada, Israelis are quietly making adjustments. Palestinian suicide bombers have targeted the market and the mall before and could target them again. People ask themselves, why take the risk? If they can afford to use private cars or taxis, they avoid traveling by bus, another prime target.

There is no hysteria, but the same prudence shows elsewhere. The highway from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is jammed as never before during the morning and evening rush hours. Drivers have stopped using the alternative route that runs from Modi’in, south of Ben-Gurion International Airport, and enters the capital through the northeastern suburb of Ramot.

This road strays into Israeli-controlled areas of the West Bank, though it was built to bypass the few Arab villages along its way. The army maintains checkpoints and patrols, but there have been isolated shootings. Motorists have been killed or wounded. Again, why take the chance?

Despite an air of business as usual, the intifada has changed the way Israelis live and the way Israelis think. The only difference between doves and hawks now is that the doves mourn the death of the Oslo peace process, while the hawks dance on its grave. Even if Ariel Sharon eventually tempts Yasser Arafat back to the negotiating table, it will take years to rebuild the minimum public confidence necessary to make a deal work.

An opinion poll published last weekend in the daily Yediot Aharonot logged the depth and the range of the disenchantment. Half the sample said the uprising had reduced their belief in the chances of making peace. As many as 58 percent of Israelis said their opinion of the Palestinians had changed for the worse during the intifada. Even more, 66 percent, had lost faith in Arafat.

Asked whether their political positions had changed, 37 percent said they were more hawkish. In reply to separate questions, more than 70 percent supported the assassination of Palestinian leaders who were linked to terrorism and the imposition of economic sanctions on the Palestinian population.

The left, which hoped for more, is in despair. The same Yediot poll found 36 percent of left-liberal Meretz party voters taking a worse view of the Palestinians and 59 percent disappointed in Arafat. Assassinations and sanctions drew 31 percent and 28 percent respectively among Meretz voters, who would have taken to the streets against such policies six months ago.

The Meretz leader, Yossi Sarid, a pillar of the peace camp, has publicly warned Arafat that he is playing with fire. "He would do well," Sarid said, "to stop flitting from country to country and to stay in Gaza and Ramallah to begin making order. This anarchy is bringing both his people and ours to a terrible disaster. Arafat should beware of arousing the suspicion that he is more interested in an armed struggle to establish the Palestinian state than he is in the Palestinian state itself."

Disabusing the Palestinian leader of any illusion that Meretz would buck the consensus and champion his cause, Sarid added, "As a group that has displayed understanding and solidarity for the Palestinian people and that has demanded an end to the oppressive occupation, it is important for us to make clear to Arafat that we live among our people, that our people’s suffering is our suffering, and that we do not intend to accept this blind terror."

So far, all the signs are that Arafat is not impressed. After a brief interlude of "peaceful" marches on Israeli army checkpoints, the Palestinians have reverted to shooting and bombing. Snipers have become more lethal and more accurate, killing not only a 10-month-old baby in Hebron, but soldiers near Nablus and Bethlehem.

The sharpshooters are not "rogue elements." They acquired their weapons and learned their skills in the mainstream militias, or in Arafat’s security services. Some are still in uniform.

In response, Sharon’s national unity government is abandoning its policy of relative restraint (which is not, of course, how it looked to the Palestinians) and renewing the rocket attacks and assassinations pursued by Ehud Barak before the February election. Monday’s helicopter liquidation of an Islamic Jihad bomber in the Gaza Strip was the 15th in the series. Israel is no longer putting up a smoke screen of deniability.

Gloomy commentators are predicting a long, uncertain haul. Escalation is the watchword, a war of attrition the prospect on both sides. It looks as if it will be a while before the shoppers go back to the Mahane Yehuda market.

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Where’s the Outrage?

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For those who believed President George W. Bush would chart a moderate course, the administration’s first two months must come as a rude awakening. Those who were lulled into believing that Bush was a compassionate conservative have now discovered that only the latter half of this otherwise vacuous campaign slogan is true.

A virtually giddy George Feulner, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, recently described the Bush White House as “more Reaganite than the Reagan Administration.” And as Grover Norquist, a leading right-wing strategist, ungrammatically confessed: “There isn’t an us and them with this administration. They is us. We is them.”

Why is the far right rejoicing? Consider just a few examples:

The deeply divisive appointment of ultraconservative Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The reinstatement of an abortion gag order on international organizations providing family planning counseling.

The promulgation of so-called faith-based initiatives that are already stirring anti-Semitic rumblings, pitting service providers of various religious denominations against each other and calling into question the very definition and legitimacy of various faith communities.

The retraction of a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, coupled with a refusal even to acknowledge — much less react to — the phenomenon of global warming.

The withdrawal of new regulations that would have substantially reduced the permissible level of arsenic, a known carcinogen, in drinking water.

The willingness to open the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling while simultaneously refusing to ask automobile manufacturers to improve fuel efficiency.

The refusal to impose any federal constraints upon hyper-profiteering electricity providers, as California citizens and businesses suffered through rolling blackouts and girded themselves for 50 percent-plus-aggregate utility-rate increases.

The repeal of workplace ergonomic safety rules designed to protect tens of millions of Americans.

The proposals to dramatically cut already modest funding of child care for low-income families, for programs designed to combat child abuse, and all trust-fund money earmarked for early learning.

The readiness to promote the interests of the ultra-rich by repealing the estate tax and providing them with the lion’s share of federal income-tax relief.

The passage of a bankruptcy-reform bill that will harm consumers while pandering to a credit-card industry that seduced those very consumers into amassing irresponsible levels of debt.

The ongoing push for a destabilizing, untested and unworkable Star Wars missile-defense shield.

The implementation of a sometimes schizophrenic foreign policy that seems destined to reignite Cold War-era hostilities.

The abandonment of a meaningful role (including the refusal to appoint a Middle East envoy with a specific portfolio) in helping to resolve the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The precipitous termination of the American Bar Association’s 47-year-old advisory role in the selection of federal judges, thus raising the specter of temperamentally and professionally unqualified candidates being nominated and appointed for federal court judgeships.

Though many of these actions may well be examples of the reward-your-friends-and-punish-your-enemies game of politics, there is something missing — outrage. Having crafted the first Judenrein Cabinet since the Eisenhower administration, Bush is sucker-punching the Jewish community. Amazingly, mainstream American Jewry has reacted only with profound silence to the White House’s wholesale sell-out to the religious right, to fanatic ideological conservatives, to big business, and to every imaginable segment of the energy industry.

Only with respect to the administration’s misguided faith-based initiative has the mainstream Jewish community spoken up in any serious way. And even then, the criticism proffered by traditional Jewish organizations has too often been divisively targeted toward contesting the bona fides of putative non-Jewish service providers. While battling Bush’s desire to dismantle the wall of church-state separation is obviously necessary, it cannot be the beginning and end of Jewish activism.

In an era when coalition politics has become increasingly important to a vibrant Jewish community, we must engage and activate ourselves on many more fronts than those where we have been traditionally heard.

Our tradition commands us to work for tikkun olam, the healing or repair of the world. We cannot remain silent in the face of this assault on our community’s values by a right-wing administration with no mandate to impose its agenda upon the rest of us.

Though the Bush inaugural (with its multiple invocations of Jesus Christ) occurred less than three months ago, it is long past time for American Jewry to heed a serious wake-up call to conscience.

Douglas Mirell,
president of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, can be reached at dmirell@pjalliance.org. Daniel Sokatch,
executive director of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, can be reached via e-mail
at dsokatch@pjalliance.org. The
organization’s Web site can be found at www.pjalliance.org.

Where’s the Outrage? Read More »