40 Friday, June 15, 1984
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
WHO
SUPPORTS
JEWISH
TERROR?
BY YOSEF GOELL
Special to The Jewish News
i•;
hould we in Gush Emunim
go through a profound
process of soul-searching, a heshbon
nefesh, as a result of the arrest of
several of our leading members in
connection with the revelations con-
cerning the anti-Arab Jewish under-
ground?" Shifra Blass mused.
The self-questioning came at the
end of an interview in Shifra's home
in the Gush settlement of Ophra,
several of whose members are among
the suspects rounded up for question-
ing by the Shabak, the General Secu-
rity Services.
Shifra is the American born
spokeswoman for the Yesha Council.
Yesha is an acronym formed from
Yehuda, Shomron and Aza, and it
means "salvation." The council in-
corporates over 80 Jewish settlemnts
in these territories.
"If there's any need for a heshbon
nefesh," she continued, "it's not on
ideology. There's nothing in the least
reprehensible about the ideology
that crystallized around the group of
Yeshivat Harav rabbinical students.
who were the nucleus of Gush
Emunim. If there's any room for
soul-searching it's at a more super-
ficial, prosaic level.
"We must ask ourselves, 'How
could there have been people in our
midst who were busy doing such
things without our knowing about
it?' For the fact is that this has all
come as a surprise and a profound
shock to nearly all of us.
"Secondly, we must ask our-
selves how a group such as ours,
which from the outset was based on
an ideology of morality and ethics,
YosefGoell is a reporter for the Jerusalem Post,
from which this piece is reprinted.
memtaellelliMMINIONISMigaimmempgamovtg
Wel di 1
,..nr ;KV
Shifra Blass, a Gush Emunim spokesperson, says the arrests came
as a shock.
could have permitted such an ex-
treme deviation from that morality,
and could have been so wrong in
enabling proponents of such devia-
tions to reach top leadership posi-
tions?"
The interview was held the day
it was announced that Rabbi Moshe
Levinger, one of the foremost leaders
of the Gush, had been arrested after
several days of questioning. The
news of Levinger's arrest was even
more of a shock than that of the
rounding up of the original group of
suspects a fortnight earlier.
"I'm still overwhelmed by the
news about Rabbi Levinger. I have no
idea what he's being charged with,
and no one of course has any way of
knowing if any of the suspects are
guilty of what they will be charged
with," Shifra added.
"Maybe I shouldn't have said
what I did about leadership positions.
Maybe I should even ask for Rabbi
Levinger's foregiveness? It has all
come as a real shock."
Shifra, who was born in LaC
rosse, Wis., and grew up in another
small town, Chambersburg Pa.
where her rabbi father was the only
Orthodox Jew, seems to be a perfect
choice for spokesperson.
She majored in English at Bar-
nard College, from which she
graduated before coming on aliyah in
the. early 1970s, and she is soft spo-
ken, articulate and obviously sincere
about such issues as civil rights and
attitudes towards the Arabs. These
qualities contradict the diabolical
image the international press has of
the Gush , and its settlers.
But the views Shifra articulates
so well do not represent the views of
all, or perhaps even most, of the Gush