2 Friday, October 21, 1983

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Purely Commentary

Betrayal on Agenda:
Sadat's Image Polluted,
Mubarak Tool of Doom

Betrayal is on the Middle East agenda, and the United
States shares distress with Israel.
In a sense, this summarizes the current political situa-
tion involving the Israel-Arab-U.S. problems.
Hosni Mubarak as a visitor in Washington and Amin
Gemayel in Beirut provide proof to such claims.
The latter, in a situation caused by the multiple mur-
ders which continue as a fate for tragically-afflicted Leba-
non, in a moment of being pressed to the wall, even sank to
the low state of stating he was ready to scrap an agreement
with Israel. Mubarak, undoubtedly stifled by the need to
appease his fellow Arabs, while on what could and should
have been a mission of collaborating with President Ronald
Reagan for peace, seemed to relish notoriety of unceasingly
needling Israel with the usual accusations that it is Israel
who is the guilty element in the Middle East crises, ignor-
ing the horror of Christians murdering Moslems, and
Druze and Moslems massacring Christians.
Egypt's President Mubarak has been accused of bet-
raying the agreements with Israel. Judging by the rela-
tionships of the past year, there have been and continue to
be deteriorations that are inexcusable in human relations.
In diplomacy there may be no surprise in such occurrences.
The Camp David agreement reached by the late
President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and former Israel Prime
Minister Menahem Begin, resulted in an exchange of am-
bassadorships. It was a symbol of goodwill and was estab-
lished four years ago. As an excuse for what was happening
in Lebanon, Mubarak recalled his ambassador from Israel
a year ago. A group of members of the U.S. Congress have
issued a call to Mubarak to restore that relationship. If it is
not adhered to it will emphasize betrayal.
While Israelis and their friends have been flocking to
Egypt, enriching that country through tourism, there is
evidence of official discouragement of Egyptians traveling
to Israel, and such an exchange has become a one-sided
matter.
In Egypt, the press has been encouraged to spread
venom against Israel and reports about Israel and the
Jewish people have been tainted with anti-Semitic slogans.
Not only Israel but the Jewish people as a whole has become
a victim of hatred in Egypt.
In United Nations quarters, on a global basis,
Mubarak appears to have condoned repressive actions with
Egyptians resorting to hatemongering in their aims to be
tools of Arab animosities toward Israel.
Trade between Israel and Egypt has been hampered by
such hatefulness.
The Arab boycott of Israel, which is being treated as an
anti-U.S. act, has received the support of Egyptian official-
dom.
The halting of cultural exchanges with Israel adds, to
the guilt that is Egypt's in the failure to adhere to the Camp
David agreements.
This is a mere skeletonizing of betrayals.
The tragedy is that a hampering of good relations
harms the American position in the Middle East, and that's
something to be seriously deplored.

Problems Galore!

That's how Israel's diplomatic problems continue.
They certainly are not reducing, and the struggle is to
prevent their mounting.
In Beirut, the massacres continue and the U.S. role in
the search for peace is as difficult as Israel's on the many
fronts populated by Arabs.
Meanwhile, the economic crisis beckons for solutions,
and if an entire world suffers from depressing economic
conditions, how can Israel be expected to resolve them
overnight?
The internal Israeli matter involving settlements in
the spreading Judea-Samaria region occasionally flare up
as proof of a divisive Jewish public opinion, and in the
process it serves as a reminder to Israel's critics to make it a
major issue with an offset in U.S. positions.
In its totality, Israel is so problem-ridden that the
events could frighten Jews everywhere. Fortunately for the
historically-minded, there is always a resolving that
creates temporary normalcies which soon emerge again
into problems. Yet the will to live is the dominant factor.
With its continuity there may not be total solutions, but
there will surely be an enduring fitting into conditions of
life. It's tough — interesting because it is inevitable.

Is Arafat Finished?

Political and media speculators are debating whether
Yasir Arafat is finished. A New York Times analyst makes
interesting comment, indicating the progress made by the
chief Arab terrorist's enemies to eliminate him from power,
and the following are the meat of the pursued study:
"We have won the first round, and the major-
ity of the civilian and military cadres in Al Fatah

Skeletonizing of Betrayals Points Accusatory
Fingers at Arab Leaders Who Fail to Live Up to
Agreements With Israel, With Mubarak the Guilty

are now on our side," the leader of the rebels, Col.
Saed Mousa, said at a news conference.
"We are now able to direct the battle, and
Yasir Arafat can only make statements
detrimental to the Palestinian cause," Mousa
said. "Arafat and a few weak followers are now
hiding in densely populated areas in Tripoli
(Lebanon), making the same mistakes they made
in south Lebanon, Beirut and Jordan."
Spurred by the Syrians and aided by Arafat's
inability to rally any significant popular backing
or Arab government support for him, the rebels
now seem to be preparing to drive Arafat out of
his last major stronghold in Lebanon — around
Tripoli — and then replace him as leader of the
Palestinian movement .. .
Almost every day for the last two weeks, a
spokesman for the rebels in Damascus, Syria, has
been announcing new defections by Al Fatah
guerrillas in the Bekaa who were once loyal to
Arafat.
These declarations reached a crescendo last
Thursday when the new rebel spokesman,
Mahmoud Labadi, a man who for the last seven
years was Arafat's personal press representative,
said the rebels now constituted a "majority" of Al
Fatah and may soon vote Arafat out.
Arafat suffered another blow Sunday with
the defection of the Damascus bureau of the
Palestinian news agency WAFA. The agency has
been one of the major pro-Arafat institutions left
in Syria.
"The rebels appear to be led by three indi-
viduals. On the military side there are Mousa and
Col. Khalid Imleh, both former Jordanian army
officers and senior PLO commanders. According
to Western diplomatic sources, Mousa has re-
cently been involved in arguments with his Syrian
superiors over tactics and was briefly locked up
in a Damascus prison.
On the political side, the rebels are led from
their Damascus headquarters by Nimr Saleh, a
former member of the Al Fatah central committee
and a longtime critic of what the rebels regard as

By Philip
Slomovitz

Arafat's moderate policies.
In the historical perspective, how much realism is
there in the hopes of some of Arafat's enemies that his
elimination will be an improvement in Arab-Israel rela-
tions and in hopes for a more normal approach to peace?
The realist is sure to say: "Don't gloat too soon; it can
even be worse." The fact is that the enemy is now centered
in Damascus and Assad is the most venomous, that Habash
is worse, that the main issues are not resolved by an end to
Arafatism.
There is an applicable recollection from Czarist times.
When Russian Jews would refer to Czar Nicholas II with a
"Yemakh shmo — may his name be eradicated," they would
be advised with a "Sh . . . sh," that a successor could be
worse.
How true about Arafat as it was about Nikolay Vtoroy!

Fanatically-Imbued
Give Israel a Bad Image

The fanatically-imbued added to their irrational ac-
tions by attacking Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek physi-
cally last Saturday.
It matters little to such
people when they resort to
violence. They claim to be I,
protecting tradition and the
Sabbath and in the process
they violate the Sabbath.
They speak about ethics and
meanwhile pollute
humanism. They demand
whatever they can obtain
for themselves and while
shouting for it would deny a
swimming pool for children
as well as adults, the right
TEDDY KOLLEK
to study in universal ways
because they would only tolerate their own selfishness.
They are referred to as the ultra-Orthodox and in their
way they insult the Orthodox more even than the secular. It
is the Orthodox who should do battle to prevent them from
abusing the most decent principles in Jewish life and tradi-
tion.

in

'Cannibal Galaxy' by No Ordinary Teacher

By JOSEPH COHEN

Cynthia Ozick's new
novel, "The Cannibal
Galaxy" (Alfred A. Knopf),
is so rich in its tapestries it
can be read variously as an
incisive though ironic
evaluation of the American
private school system, as a
commentary on the prob-
lems of assimilation in-
creasingly faced by Jewish
day schools, as a wry report
on the aggressiveness of
Jewish mothers asserting
the educational preroga-
tives of their children; or as
a book dealing with Jewish
marginality, power and
powerlessness, and genera-
tional conflict; or as a study
in the "second lives" of
Holocaust survivors, who
have lost one family,
created another, and
breathe always the tragedy
of the past with the hope of
the future in the
monomania of the present.
To drive her point home
about the dangers of allow-
ing Western culture to
supplant Covenant and
Commandment, Ozick has
borrowed from the world of
physics the concept of larger
"cannibal" galaxies swal-
lowing smaller ones whole.
This concept she turns into
a metaphor for the threat
facing the survival of Dias-
pora Judaism, and develops
from the metaphor an il-
luminating and entertain-
ing parable which will
likely be one of the best
books of the year.
It's a small tome, but it
packs a terrific wallop.

CYNTHIA OZICK

Ozick gives us the life-
story of an almost nebbish
pedagogue named Joseph
Brill, a French Jew who
survived the Holocaust by
being hidden in a convent
during the German occupa-
tion of Paris, a failed
would-be astronomer, liv-
ing obscurely in Milwaukee
teaching Hebrew in a run-
down synagogue. There he
is discovered and chosen,
because of his elegant
French accent, to become
the headmaster of an up-
to-date private primary
grade school, endowed by an
eccentric benefactress.
Taking his cues from the
work of the francophilic
born-again Jew, Edmond
Fleg, Brill names the school
for the now largely forgot-
ten French-Jewish writer
and creates an idol he will
worship for the rest of his
life, a dual curriculum
blending religious and secu-
lar studies: "Chumash,
Gemara, Social Studies,
French: the waters of Shiloh
springing from the head of
Western Civilization!"

A bachelor, Brill lives in a
renovated hayloft — though
his motto is "ad astra" this
is as close as he will ever
come to heaven — on the
property of the converted
factory turned school. The
irony of turning out
mediocre goods is not lost on
the reader.
The venture prospers. It
is so successful that we are
two-thirds of the way
through the story before
anyone gets around to tel-
ling Brill the truth about
himself, that having never
been a parent, he knows
zilch about kids.
Principal Brill extols the
virtues of his dual cur-
riculum, turning as much
into a monomaniac about
this white elephant as Cap-
tain Ahab was a
monomaniac about his
white whale. Curiously,
Brill has another literary
relation besides Ahab. He is
cousin also to Humbert
Humbert, Nabokov's pro-
tagonist in "Lolita."
How so? Both Brill and
Humbert are similarly im-
aged as middle-aged, nar-
cissistic European intellec-
tuals, each bent upon the
exploitation of an underage
American girl. In Hum-
bert's case, the exploitation
was sexual, and the appear-
ance of "Lolita" in 1955 oc-
casioned a success d'scan-
dale of major proportions.
Brill's exploitation is in-
tellectual, but no less scan-
dalous for the emotional
violence it engenders. Child
molestation remains child

molestation whatever form
it takes. Ironically, in both
books the victim in time vic-
timizes her assailant.
In order to justify his
pedagogical theory, Brill
tries in vain to create a
genius out of little Beulah
Lilt, a silent, withdrawn
child whose mother is a
philosopher with a narrow
but deep reputation in
academe, the foil to Brill's
failed ambitions for himself. (-'1
He brow-beats the child
and harangues the mother,
brutalizing himself, mak-
ing a mockery of the educa-
tional process. When after
eight years Beulah fails him
and graduates without dis-
tinguishing herself, Brill
marries a woman 30 year's
his junior and, together,
they produce his long-
sought prepubescent
genius. But in adolescence
his son turns out to be no
Einstein and what he
studies is not astro-physics
at MIT but business at the
University of Miami. Oh,
how are the mighty fallen! "7 -
By then, Brill has grown
old, been forced into retire-
ment at 76, seen the name of
the school changed, and his
beloved curriculum junked.
Worst of all, Beulah Lilt,
condemned as a child for ci
doodling on a note-pad,
emerges as the leading ar- j
tist of her time.
As the beleagured idol-
worshipping schoolmaster,
Brill fades in our esteem,
his place is taken by the real
teacher in this work. That
instructor is Ozick herself.

