2 Friday, December 10, 1982
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Purely Commentary
A Zvi Masliansky Parable to Illustrate Unending
Feuds Which Mar Good Will, with Caricaturing as a
Continuing Symbol of Spreading Human Bitternesses
By Philip
Slomovitz
Many Lessons and Admonitions Mark Observance of Hanuka Festival
Hanuka, symbolized by lights, spells enlightenment. The ideal still obstacled, a
festival utilized for merriment, continues as a struggle to attain the goal.
The blight in humankind occasioned by the fratricidal in Lebanon compels the
unending query: "How long . . . ad motai?"
Born in militarism, in the compelling need for warfare to gain the freedoms for which
the Maccabees fought more than 18 centuries ago, the craving remains for peace — and
the peace is difficult to attain.
Instead of peace, President Amin Gemayel of Lebanon now asks for more protective
troops and armaments from the United States, France and Italy, and the U.S. apparently
is ready to fulfill these requests. Thus the militarism that retains Israelis in unhappy
roles. Instead of an appreciation for Israel having ended — certainly reduced and
interrupted — the terrorist PLO menace that gripped Lebanon and the Lebanese, Israel
is now blamed, by the- very _man who would not have been in power, for fomenting the
Moslem-Christian fratricide.
This is the price paid for the militarism that had peace as its aim and the peaceseek-
ers are paying a miserable price.
Was there, is there, a road to peace? It was proposed, but now Gemayel says it won't
be in or on the outskirts of Jerusalem because the Holy City thus would be recognized as
Israel's capital.
Israel pays a heavy price for peace.
* * *
This commentator is tempted to recollect a parable. It must have been half-a-century
ago when he heard the famous Magid, Zvi Masliansky, describe a feud among neighbors:
In a shtetl, a conflict arose between the shuster and
the shneider, the shoemakers and the tailors. And on the
square facing the synagogue there was a battle royal,
with fisticuffs and name-calling.
A yeshiva bahur, horrified, approached the embat-
tlement and asked for "sholem," pleaded for an end to the
fighting.
Whereupon, both contending forces turned on him,
beat him up, and ordered him to mind his own business. It
was their battle, not his.
This descriptive incident calls to mind the Mas-
liansky tale. It is so applicable! Christians fighting Mos-
lems, massacres ensuing, and the Israeli dares seek peace!
True, that quest for peace is also for Israel. But the
ZVI MASLIANSKY
penalty is so severe that a so-called civilized society can-
not differentiate between the shuster and the shneider and a yeshiva bahur!
* * *
Thus, the battle continues, and peace is remote. Israel's prime minister foresees an
end to the warfare in the entire Middle East and peace for Israel and her neighbors.
Would that this could be treated as a possibility and not as a dream, as a hope for realism
rather than continuing warfare.
The battle is not in the Middle East alone. It is everywhere, and it strikes at the
Western Hemisphere. One of the most distressing developments is not only the failure of
the media in the democratically-administered portions of the world to tell all the facts, to
explain how Israel's position is besmirched, to define the inquiry commission in
Jerusalem in proper style. It is also the resort to the type of humiliating portrayal of Jews
and Israel that is reminiscent of Nazism, Streicher and his anti-Semitic propaganda. It is
the caricaturing that is not only offensive: it stimulates the hatreds one would erase in a
civilized age.
So deep-rooted are the enmities that have arisen, so bitter the factionalism, that
,
caricaturing has become a means of spreading venom even in Israel. Thus, in a bylined
article from Jerusalem, on the front page of the Nov. 30 Wall Street Journal, Frederick
Kempe reported:
A Lebanese Christian Phalangist, with blood dripping from his hands
and boots, tiptoes into the bedroom, inadvertently waking his slumbering
bedmate: Menahem Begin dressed in a woman's nightgown and nightcap.
"You don't ask a gentleman where he spent his evening," the soldier tells
the Israeli prime minister.
e-
A shower of blood falls on an umbrella held over the heads of Begin and
his defense minister, Ariel Sharon. The umbrells keeps them dry but de-
flects the blood onto the insignia of the Israeli army.
A blind Begin, with dark glasses and cane, walks away from a black-
shrouded Palestinian woman standing by a corpse. On his dark glasses are
inscribed the years 1933-1945. The Nazi Holocaust has blinded Begin to the
horror of atrocities abetted by Israel.
Descriptions of these three political cartoons make them sound like the
cruel work of anti-Semites. Actually, however, they represent the output of
prominent Israeli cartoonists during the week after the Beirut massacre in
September.
The slaughter of hundreds of Palestinians by Phalangists prompted a
vitriolic outpouring of cartoonists' ink. Much of Israel was reacting in
strenuous protest against the massacre and against the Israeli govern-
ment's evident complicity — and Israeli cartoonists, as usual, were in the
forefront of the protest. In Israel, political cartoonists appear to enjoy
unique influence. In their attack on the massacre and the Begin govern-
ment's initial refusal to appoint a judicial investigating commission, they
were both shaping and reflecting public opinion.
"I was so angry," recalls Moshik Gir, the cartoonist at the Labor news-
paper, Davar, who put the Phalangist soldier and Begin in the bedroom
together. "I personally feel the pain of the people, the fear. That's why I
shout, why I scream. That's why I want to change theings with my car-
toons."
At 32, Gir is the youngest of the prominent Israeli political cartoonists,
an elite group of only a dozen or so but still a substantial number in so
small a country. They are celebrities, whose drawing styles, politics, names
and faces, too, are known to the Israeli public. They also are significant
opinion makers, who are wooed and feared by the nation's leaders.
"Cartooning in Israel isn't for joking around," explains Kariel Gardosh,
the father of the modern Israeli cartoon. "The cartoon in Israel is an impor-
tant expression of opinion, a political statement, like an editorial."
The cartoon is more powerful than the editorial. The Chinese are always quoted with
"a picture (substitute) speaks more loudly than a thousand words."
How unfortunate that this powerful instrument should be used to spread hatred
rather than to illuminate?
That's how the hopes for good will are shadowed by the prejudices. It's the democratic
legacy, therefore the need for enlightenment, for erasing misunderstandings, for aban-
donment of the bitterness that stems from the factionalism in an age in which suspicion
breeds hate, and peace is never more than on the brink.
Nevertheless, the quest forpea—
ceis as endless as the lighting of the Hanuka candles.
They remain inextinguishable. And the craving for peace is endless. Both are equally
symbolic in a militarized age when Jews assemble to perpetuate a happy occasion. It is as
such that Hanuka will be observed this year, as through the ages: in a spirit of thankful-
ness and in a happy mood. All with a craving for peace.
Sister Carol's Article in the Michigan Catholic
Defends Israel's Record in Administered Areas
Taking exception to
only reinforced the innuen-
statements villifying Israel,
does in Schoenher's article."
in an article in the Michi-
Defending Israel's
gan Catholic Oct. 15 by
humanitarian treatment of
Veronica Schoenherr, Sis-
the Arabs in territories ad-
ter (Dr.) Carol Rittner,
ministered since the 1967
R.S.M., calls the newspaper
Six-Day War, Sister Carol
to task for not providing an
stated:
answer to villifications and
"Since 1967, it has been
for accompanying the ac-
the declared policy of the
cusatory article with a
state of Israel that both the
questionable photo.
military and the civilian
Sister Carol, in her reply,
administrators of those ter-
published in the Michigan
ritories must abide by the
Catholic Nov. 26 under the
- humanitarian provisions of
title "Criticism of Israel
the Hague Declaration and
`Spurious,' " presents mas-
the 1949 Geneva Conven-
sive facts in refutation of ac-
tion.
DR. CAROL RITTNER
cusations often heard in at-
"Likewise, since 1967, all
tacks on Israel.
when it decided to publish the norms and principles of
The article in question Schoenherr's article. First, natural justice observed as
was written by Veronica it should have provided an a matter of course in Israel -
Schoenherr, a Chicago pub- opportunity in the same itself are observed in the
lic school teacher, and was issue for another point of occupied areas adminis-
headlined "Palestinians See view.
tered by the Israelis."
Selves as Israel's Blacks." It
Turning to accusations
"Second, it should have
appeared in the Michigan
captioned accurately the reagarding suppression of
Catholic on Oct. 15.
photo placed with the arti- academic rights for Arabs,
In her criticism of the cle. Failing to mention in Sister Carol wrote in her
editorial judgment of the the photo caption that the Michigan Catholic article:
Michigan Catholic, Sister Palestinians 'killed during
"In regard to education,
Carol stated:
the massacre at the two Schoenherr implies that the
qin my opinion there are Palestinian refugee camps Israelis 'closed the univer-
two things the Michigan near Beirut' were murdered sity' (Berzeit, sic) Palesti-
Catholic should have done by Christian Phalangists nians can attend, limit 'the
subjects (Palestinians) can
take at the university,'
`fired the best and most
qualified teachers' in Pales-
tinian schools, and lowered
`the budget' for (a West
Bank) city 'so that the
schools have fallen into dis-
repair.'
"The fact is that there are
three universities on the
West Bank (Bir Zeit, Al
Najah National University,
Bethlehem University), one
college (the Center for Is-
lamic Studies), and three
other post-secondary educa-
tional institutions (Al
Arubah Agricultural
School, Hebron; Kadouri
Agricultural School, Tul-
karem; and Hebron
Polytechnic Institution).
"All of these schools were
established after 1967,
some of them are supported
financially by the Israeli
government, and all of them
operate under the same
principles of academic free-
dom as apply to institutions
within the state of Israel it-
self.
"The entire educational
network, kindergarten
through university, oper-
ates in line with the pre-
1967 versions of the tradi-
tional Arab (Jordanian and
Egyptian) system.
Neither the military nor
the civilian administrators
of the territories have inter-
fered with the prevailing
organization or cur-
riculum, except in one re-
spect: anti-Semitic racism
and anti-Israeli slanders
have been eliminated from
the textbooks.
"Since 1967, the total
number of classrooms in the
territories has grown 72
percent — from 6,148 in
1967-1968 to more than
10,600 in 1981-1982. The
total number of teachers,
fewer than two dozen of
whom are Israelis, has
grown 82 percent, to more
than 12,000 in 1981-1982.
"More females are edu-
cated, and more modern
educational facilities and
services than ever before
are available to the people
on the West Bank and in the
Gaza district."
Sister Carol also disputed
censorship accusations:
"Schoenherr writes that
`all publications' are cen-
sored, 'thereby stifling a
really free press.' The only
restriction placed on news-
papers, including the Israeli
Hebrew press, is to submit
military news to censorship
and to refrain from lan-
guage which clearly incites
to hatred and violence.
"According to James M.
Wall, editor of The Chris-
tian Century (Oct. 6, 1982,
p. 971), 'Eat* week the Cen-
tury office receives an
English language news-
paper published in
Jerusalem by Palestinians
and sent through Israel's
postal system. It contains
harsh and sometimes vio-
lent attacks on Israeli
policies. I know of no com-
parable newspaper in any
Arab state in the Middle
East.' "
Last week's Purely Com-
mentary item on "The
Luther Commemorative
Stamp" identified Dr.
William Brickman, profes-
sor emeritus at the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, as a
non-Jew. Dr. Brickman is
an Orthodox Jew, with
family ties in Detroit.