THE JEWISH NEWS .,sps...
Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with the issue of July 20, 1951
Copyright c, The Jewish News Publishing Co
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CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Business Manager
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
ALAN HITSKY
News Editor
HEIDI PRESS
Associate News Editor
DREW LIEBERWITZ
Advertising Manager
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
Th. Sabbath, the 20th day of Elul, 5741, the following scriptural selections will he read in our synagogues:
Pentatezichal portion. Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8. Prophetical portion, Isaiah 60:1-22.
Candle lighting, Friday, September 18, 7:17 p.m.
VOL. LXXX, No. 3
Page Four
Friday, September 18, 1981
THE YEAR OF TENSIONS
Most of the years in Jewish history have been
filled with tensions. The one now concluding,
5741, may be judged among the extremely dis-
tressing. The many experiences that have
hitherto been marked by the sympathetic
friendships in the non-Jewish world were
greatly marred by suspicions and rebukes in
which the media played the leading roles. In
evidence was a lessening of comfort in periods of
sorrow. Enemies emerged where they were
least expected. The battle for justice was a bit
more difficiut.
Those who are critical of Israel and who have
commenced a cry for the U.S. to end its suppor-
tive role of Israel have made it a definitive point
to claim friendship for Israel. They fling their
blows at the head of the state of Israel in the
tongue-in-cheek attitudes, seeking to give the
impression that they love Israel but only hate
one Israeli. It is this form of antagonism that
needs watching because it is much more damag-
ing than outright hatred.
In the process of damning Israel's chief of
state, critics have resorted to the tactic of warn-
ing Jews, "Just because we criticize Israel, don't
you call us anti-Semites." The fact is that Jew
and Israel have become interchangeable.
Therefore, the caution to be on guard lest the
damage that stems from tongue-in-cheek
friendships should backfire into even greater
damage to Israel.
Indeed, it is the prejudice that has developed
in many of the communicative media that is
most damaging to Israel and to the just causes
for which the Jew pleads. This is exposed in an
article prdperly entitled "The Double Standard:
How to Tell the Truth," published in the Near
East Report. Here are the blunders Moshe De-
cter, a responsible news analyst, has outlined:
"Just suppose it were now discovered that,
during the ordeal of America's hostage crisis
with Iran, major Western countries had secretly
sold and shipped substantial military equip-
ment worth millions of dollars to Iran.
"Just imagine that a British firm had
supplied engines for Iran's British-made Scorp-
ion tanks. That an Italian arms dealer had pro-
vided spare parts for Iran's American-made
M-60 tanks. That the equipment was delivered
by a Luxembourg-chartered DC 8. And that the
whole deal was arranged through a bill of lading
falsified with the tacit approval of friends.
"Just conjure up the front-page headline in
the New York Times:
"'British and Italians with the Connivance of
France, Are Said to Have Sold Iran Engines and
Spare Parts for Scorpion and M-60 Tanks.'
"That's the scenario, right? Wrong!
"The secret arms transfers actually happened
as described above, even after the United States
had extracted promises from its European
friends not to supply arms and equipment to
Iran.
"And the Times really published a long
front-page story, replete with damning head-
. lines and sinister conspiratorial implications.
Only it wasn't about those transactions, which
somehow got lost in the shuffle.
"Instead, it was Israel that was placed in the
dock.
"What did, in fact, get the coverage was an-
other, rather less significant, facet of this
bizarre affair: the sale by Israel, last October, of
250 spare tires, worth about $300,000, for Iran's
American-built F-4 planes.
"The headline over the Times story on Aug.
22 read:
" 'Israel is Said to Have Sold Iranians F-4
Tires in '80.'
"As for those other, more important, arms
deals, the Times proceeded to bury that infor-
mation in two brief paragraphs at the end of its
lengthy account of Israel's sale.
"In all fairness, it should be noted that the
Times did report, albeit in a rather murky way,
that Israel consulted with the Carter Adminis-
tration about the sale, and did acceed to the U.S.
government's request that it desist from further
deals with Iran.
The Times also cited two factors that
presumably motivated Israel: 1) It wished to
help Iran defeat Iraq, a mortal foe and dire
threat to Israel; 2) By helping Iran, it sought to
ameliorate the plight of Iran's 60,000 Jews,
whom Israel regards as a hostage community,
and for whose fate it feels a moral responsibil-
ity.
"Nevertheless, the focus of the story is all
askew. Its grossly disproportionate emphasis on
Israel's culpability is accentuated by an even
more disturbing aspect of the report — the fre-
quent citation of anonymous sources described
as former high officials in the Carter Adminis-
tration, who are reportedly quoted in such a way
as to cast Israel in the role of an irritating bur-
den upon an Administration weighed down by
the hostage crisis.
"The journalistic imbalance is thus aggra-
vated by the self-serving self-righteousness of
officials who bungled their responsibilities.
"How has this story advanced our under-
standing of the recent past? What wisdom has
been gained from disgruntled former power-
wielders, who would have been better advised to
reply 'No comment' to queries?
"To dignify such reportage wtih the name of
truth-seeking investigative journalism is as
much a self-serving device, as is the politican's
constant self-justification.
"Clearly, there is a distortion of news values
here. The bias is unmistakable. The certain ef-
fect, if not the intention, of such reportage is to
put Israel in a bad light, again — while far
worse offenders get off the hook, again."
The prejudices that have infiltrated many
areas are the causes for the great concern over
the attitudes influencing commentaries and,
unfortunately, also reporting. When the UN
forces in Lebanon are in conflict with the Chris-
tian element that is battling the PLO-
dominated opposition, invariably the reporters
and radio broadcasters speak of the "Israel-
backed Christians." There is never the descrip-
tion "the Russian-backed PLO." There are simi-
lar searches of Israeli links in which may well
be the unconscious, yet it could be charged with
being the subconscious. -
There is need for the reiterated admonition to
Jews that they be the last to fall prey to misrep-
resentations. Then they will be able properly to
confront the issues and to demand concern with
the media on "telling the truth."
Singer Reminisces About
Being `Lost in America'
Isaac Bashevis Singer doesn't intend to write an autobiography.
Yet, his works in many facets have already reached that stage.
"Shosha," for example, was surely a portion of his life's serf-
studies and revelations. His other works reflect his background and
experiences. When he writes about Poland he writes about his own
and his family's background.
In "Lost in America" he actually traces his early years and while
he leaves the reader in a state of anxiety, as he shivers in his rented
room in a filthy building on New York's 19th Street, he opens a door to
his life and created an anxiety for the continuity of what he had begun
in "Lost in America" (Doubleday).
"Lost in America'' is filled with fascination. It combines the
recollections about the author's self and it portrays the agonies of the
shtetl with the newly
uired miseries of the New World.
Of course, he has risen to the highest
levels of recognition, and the America
in which he became lost stretched a
hand-that led him not only to glory, as
winner of the Nobel Prize in Litera-
ture, but also as provider of the most
dignified in America's opportunities
rooted in the forest standards. Yet, it is
good that one should know what the
lower strata are like, how an immig-
rant struggles and the environment
that is the testing ground.
The New York portrayed in the land
tempting a writer to be lost in,
emerges in all its lights and shadows.
"Lost in America" depicts the oppres-
siveness of the shtetl. It is the struggl-
ing of a young writer and the hint of
I.B. SINGER
his ambitions. The New York that be-
comes the home is a place with many deprecations. At 30, the hero of
this story, humbly self-depicted, tells of experiences which many of
his readers will surely be able to match in their own struggles to
survive the tests and to rise to great heights.
It was his older brother, Joshua, author of "The Brothers
Ashkenazi," just republished by Atheneum, who introduced him to
the Jewish Daily Forward. It was on the Forward that both brothers
became famous.
Singer is only one portion of "Lost in America," which gains
greatness in the sketches, drawings, and descriptive paintings by
Raphael Soyer. There are 25 of Soyer's art works and these add
marvelously to a noteworthy book.
Born in Radzymin, Poland, in 1904, Isaac Bashevis Singer came
to the United States in 1935. He is the author of such bestselling
works as "Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories," "A Crown of Feathers,"
"Shosha," "Old Love," "A Little Boy in Search of God" and "A Young
Man in Search of Love."
In 1978, Singer won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He has also
received two National Book Awardi, two Jewish Book Awards, the
Louis Lamed Prize, and a grant from the Academy and Institute of
Arts and Letters, of which he is a member.
Soyer, a major American artist whose work is in the collections of
the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the
Smithsonian, was awarded a gold medal for painting by the American
Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in May. In 1979, the
Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. held a major retrospective of
the artist's work on his 80th birthday.
IL