2 1,Friday, , ,luty .24i 1981
THE DETROIT, IEWISH NEWS
Purely Commentary
The Regrettable Tragedies
on the Borders of Israel
Time is always of the essence in judging Israel's actions
and the pressures that keep emanating in military proce-
dures.
Would that the horrors that accompanied the military
actions in Beirut could have been avoided! The heavy loss of
life is deplorable. Israel's explanations are not fully defen-
sive at the moment, especially in view of the shocks created
within Israel, and the protests not only from Western na-
tions, including the United States, but also from Israelis
and many Jews.
Perhaps the Begin government will be able to justify
the latest actions. Israel must be defended, and the price
exacted for protective actions continues to challenge the
nation. The hope in the human heart is that there will be an
end to the hostilities and that the ultra-militarism will not
react as a mark of shame for Israel.
The U.S. position, while criticizing Israel, of placing
emphasis on the urgency for peace, with all factions par-
ticipating in such planning, is soothing to the anguished
situation.
Israel's Arabs, Their Emerging
Power, the Entanglements
Involving Political Realities
Israel's political status has many aspects. Attention
has primarily been given during the June political compe-
titions to the Labor versus Likud competition, to the West-
ern (Ashkenazi) versus Oriental (Sephardi) internal con-
flicts. Not enough attention was given the role of the Arab
population in Israel.
There is more than one aspect to the Arab citizenry in
Israel. Israeli Arabs have the right to vote. They belong to
the Jewish-organized-and-supervised unions. They have
equality in the state but they can not serve in the army.
This means there is no end to suspicion of a possible Fifth
Column and Israel must be protected, even or especially
against possible internal enemies.
How, then, do Arabs figure in Israel's political sphere?
Do they have an influence? Do they utilize it?
Writing from Tamra, Israel, David K. Shipler, who has
already become sufficiently self-trained to be able to judge
the Israel situation with a good measure of objectivity, gave
an analysis of Arabs in Israel's politics, and here is a por-
tion of what he reported in the NYTimes on July 16:
Israeli Arabs are as divided as Israeli Jews, and
more alienated from the political system. Some of
them have been affected by the anti-Israel
radicalism of fellow Arabs in the occupied Gaza
Strip and the West Bank, and in the larger Arab
world, and they reject the participation in Israeli
situations.
But politicans, both Arab and Jewish, are be-
ginning to recognize the increasing prospect of
Arabs' gaining a pivotal political role.
By the year 2000, about 25 percent of Israel's
population will be Arab, according to projections
based on the Arabs' relatively high birth rate; the
average Jewish family has 2.8 children, the aver-
age Moslem family 6.3, according to 1978 figures.
At the same time, the breakdown of old voting
patterns has meant closer elections, with an in-
flated importance for small parties in making up a
majority in Parliament. Furthermore, although a
slightly lower percentage of Arabs vote than Jews
— the turnout was about 70 percent in this elec-
tion — the rate is considerably higher than the
American rate of about 54 percent.
Until the 1970's, Labor and its affiliated Arab
lists received most of the Arab vote. But as bitter-
ness grew over governmental neglect, economic
inequality and social discrimination, Israel's
Arab citizens drifted into a protest vote for the
small, Moscow-oriented Communist Party, which
runs in a leftist coalition called the Democratic
Front for Peace and Equality. It won four seats on
June 30.
"When I look at the parties," said Abas Hijazi,
the Communist Mayor of Tamra, an Arab village
in the Galilee, "the platforms don't take me into
consideration as a citizen in spite of the fact that I
live in the state of Israel. So I have to support the
front, even if its power is nil."
The Communist Party headquarters in Tamra,
a village of 17,000, is in one of the village's nicest
spots, high on a hill with a balcony overlooking
the stone houses and, beyond, valleys rich with
olive groves.
The Communists first won municipal elections
in 1976, Mayor Hijazi explained, and did well in
Tamra in the parliamentary elections of 1977,
when Begin upset the Labor Party, ending 29
years of Labor rule. Then, about 2,700 Tamra
Hopefully, the Latest Military Actions Will Not Become
Mark of Shame for Israel ... Separation Principle Must
Not Be Denuded . . . Vital Role of Arabs in Israel Election
residents voted Communist and only 136 went for
Labor.
This time it was a bit different, according to
figures provided by the 27-year-old Deputy
Mayor, Mohammed Kanan. The Communists lest
ground, getting 2,011 votes to Labor's 625. An
Arab slate called the Arab Brotherhood won
about 700 because the second man on the list, Mr.
Diab, is a well-known Tamra resident.
This basic pattern of Labor gains at the Com-
munists' expense could be seen throughout the
Arab population, which gave about 59,000 votes
to the leftist front and about 48,000 to Labor. Arab
politicans cite two reasons: a disenchantment
with the Communists' lengthening record of
words 'without action, and a desire to stop Begin's
re-election by supporting Labor as the only party
that had a chance to do so. Some said Labor would
have done even better if it had campaigned more
vigorously in Arab villages, instead of writing off
the Arab vote as basically Communist.
The Arab parties did not do well. A United Arab
List, which had won one seat last time in affilia-
tion with Labor, polled only 11,500 votes, less than
the 1 percent of the total required to get a repre-
sentative in Parliament. A Bedouin party won
about 2,500 votes, and the Arab Brotherhood, for
which Mr. Diab was a candidate, received 8,300
votes.
Parties in power used patronage and economic
promises, to the point where even in Tamra, Be-
gin's Likud bloc received 108 votes, and the Na-
tional Religious Party, an Orthodox Jewish
group, got about 50, according to Deputy Mayor
Kanan.
"People got money as a kind of 'expenses' for
making election propaganda for these parties,"
and delivered themselves and members of their
extended families as payment, he explained. In
addition, others hoped for some other kind of
gratitude.
One of these was a village man whose 147 goats
were confiscated about 10 days before the elec-
tion by the "green patrol," an Agriculture Minis-
try police force that chases Bedouins and other
Arabs off land designated as state-owned. The
goats were grazing on either state or village land,
depending on one's viewpoint, and although they
were returned to him, he was fined about $7,000
for transportation and other costs.
While this might seem a good way to have made
a Labor or a Communist voter out of him, the
villager, whose name town officials asked to be
kept confidential, took another course. He helped
organize a campaign visit to Tamra by Agricul-
ture Minister Ariel Sharon, who is widely feared
and despised by Arabs. He asked for a reduced
fine, and "Sharon kind of hinted to him that if he
brings in some votes, maybe something can be
arranged," Deputy Mayor Kanan said.
So the villager asked for help from some of his
family and friends, including a Labor member of
the village council named Ali Abu Heja. "I have a
big family of 200 to 300 voters," Abu Heja de-
clared, "and I helped get some of them to vote for
the Likud, and I don't have a very clean con-
science about it."
Mayor Hijazi reacted disapprovingly. "This is
why I say that the Arab population is not edu-
cated enough," he declared in fluent Hebrew.
"Despite 33 years of experience, the Arab voter
has not reached an adequate political level."
These facts offer a course of study both in Israel's poli-
tics as well as in Arab-Jewish relations. Shipler's figures
are a challenge to the Arab sense of judgment. It is in some
measure a frustration for the Labor Israel parties and for
Histadrut.
During all the 33 years of Israel's existence, Histadrut,
the Labor parties, their affiliates, flirted and fraternized
with Arabs. They gave them equality in the unions. The
wages for Jews were equal for Arabs. Yet, whatever bitter-
ness there existed was not obviated, there is not too much
softening of the dislike for Jews and the constant referral to
Zionism as if it were a poison even for those who gain so
much Zionistically.
The quoted report on the Arab attitudes and their
status in Israel is interesting as fact, important as admoni-
tion. There is much to be learned from it. All efforts must be
made by Israel to solve the so-called Palestinian problem,
and Diaspora Jewry must urge such efforts.
The best minds in Jewry must join with Israelis in
search for a solution. The negotiations with Egypt will
compel it. The urgency of adhering to a self-defense policy
will always demand caution on Israel's part. Perhaps there
will be enough rational and peace-minded Arabs to share in
a realistic solution of the problem, with autonomy as an
acceptable solvent.
In any event, the issue cannot be shelved. There is a
By Philip
Slomovitz
government in Israel that must be judged as by-the-
people-for-the-people. With peace as a destination, the
craving is for a cooperative commitment for a solution. The
lessons are at hand. The action must be pragmatic.
Judith Lerner Obituary Has
Important Message From USSR
Obituaries always reveal the human factors of the
departed and often reveals important data about the era in
which the mourned lived. In many instances, obituaries
become notable data for historic records.
Such an obituary appeared in the New York Times on
July 14. The matriarch Judith Lerner's burial is desc
in a cabled report to the NYTimes by John F. Burns _
Judith Lerner was buried today in a pleasantly
shaded glade at a suburban cemetery, her funeral
attended by dozens of men and women to whom
she had become a symbol of hope and courage in
the difficult world of the Soviet Jew.
Mourners, Jews and non-Jews stood shoulder
to shoulder beneath the thick overhang, many in
sportshirts and cotton blouses, while an aging
rabbi intoned in Yiddish over the grave.
Speeches at graveside and at an open-air fun-
eral earlier near the cemetery gate were filled
with the affection Mrs. Lerner earned as a kind of
matriarch to Moscow's troubled Jews. But almost
everyone knew that it was not the funeral Mrs.
Lerner or her family wanted, and that the cemet-
ery, at Vostryakovo, was thousands of-miles from
the burial place she had sought. -
That place was Israel. For 10 years Mrs. Lerner
and her husband, Aleksandr Y. Lerner, had
sought emigration. Dr. Lerner is a noted specialist
in automatic control systems, a field considered
sensitive in the Soviet Union, and the emigration
petitions were declined on the ground that his
departure would be "contrary to the state's inter-
ests."
When his wife died last week at the age of 65, the
authorities declined permission for her body to
leave the country for burial in Israel.
Instead, the authorities allowed the Lerners'
31-year-old daughter, Sonya Levin, who emi-
grated with her husband and child in 1973, to
return for the funeral. In case exit visas are ulti-
mately granted to Dr. Lerner and his 35-year-old
son, Vladimir, the family arranged for the body to
be placed in a sealed metal coffin inside a wooden
box, an arrangement that would allow for exhu-
mation and reburial in Israel.
Dr. Lerner today recounted his visit last week to
the police where he was told that his wife's body
must remain in the Soviet Union. The 68-year-old
scientist, smiling wryly, said the decision had
been announced by Col. Konstantin Zotov, who
frequently had been delegated in the past to reject
the Lerners' emigration petitions.
When I said, 'Tell me why,' he just sat there at
the desk, cast down his eyes and said nothing,"
Dr. Lerner said.
This accounts for many things: for the determined
will of Soviet Jews to go to Israel and to establish a Jewish
identity, a courageous resistance to tyranny, the revelation
of the form of persecution that marks a refusnik attitude
by Jews who do not bow to Communist oppression.
Even more than that: this sense of unity by a single
Jewish family in the Soviet Union is the symbol of the will
to live as Jews that defies the attempt to crush a people's
legacy. It lends status to the dignity with which the faithful
in Russia acclaim their unity with Jews everywhere, Israel
emphasizing their rallying call.
The Separation Principle
and Recurring Threats to It
If it should ever occur that a United States Supreme
e
Court will reverse earlier rulings and will approv
teaching of religion in public schools, it will be a ca
for the American ideal of Separation of Church and to
and the established American policy of protecting religious
freedom by barring divisions in the population affecting the
freedoms of all faiths.
Repetitive efforts to destroy that basic American ideal
is not new. It recurs again and again, and again and again
the high court ruled such efforts to be unconstitutional.
Now the issue is up 'again for public discussion, and
legislative bills are under discussion to introduce a policy
that is repugnant to the American way of life.
There is encouragement in the protests leveled at such
efforts. They must be continued and should be encouraged.
The attempts to introduce religion in public institu-
tions are marked by much noise, with acclaim indicative of
a loss of understanding of the ideals which marked the era
of Presidents Madison and Jefferson. They had the ap-
proval of the high court for a century. Surely there must not
be a return to the Middle Ages in our decade.
, <