THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Friday, June 22, 1984 25 COMMENT Jewish terrorism is a moral dilemma for Israel BY RABBI IRVING GREENBERG Special to The Jewish News The arrest of a ring of Jews planning a terror bombing of Arab buses in Jerusalem; Interior Minis- ter Yosef Burg's reaction condemning the planned ac- tions but stating that he understood how Jews could be led to counter terror with terror; the evidence that the Jewish underground, TNT, is a significant organized group — point to another unfolding chapter in the ethics of Jewish power. TNT stands for the He- brew words Terror Neged Terror — Terror Against Terror. The bilingual title pun which depends on knowledge of Hebrew and English disturbingly suggests that the group originates in a circle where Americans are participat- ing or are close by. The West Bank settlements and religious/nationalist circles where Gush Emunim flourishes have an extraor- dinary number of Ameri- cans. They are mostly Or- thodox olim — drawn by religious fervor. The values of settlement and pioneering appeal to the idealism that led to aliyah in the first place. When one adds the post- Holocaust disillusion with "all goyim" and the feeling that the Arab terrorists will only be stopped by counter- force on the Arab popula- tion in which they — like all guerillas — operate, you have the ingredients for ter- rorist actions — by idealists. These tendencies have been compounded by a weakening of the univer- salist impulses in modern Orthodoxy — which leads to denial of ethical obligation to gentiles. Some dismiss ethical restraints vis-a-vis gentiles as soft-headed liberalism, reflecting inau- thentic assimilationist val- ues. So wrote Meir. Kahane in a column published — in a grievous lapse of editorial judgement — by Sh'ma magazine in the summer of 1983. Even more radical statements of these views are circulating in Hebrew language internal publica- To insist on absolutely normal. procedures is to hand .the aggressor advantages which could lead to more innocent dead. tions appearing far from the unsympathetic eyes of lib- eral Jews and non-Jews. Although they reveal dis- turbing phenomena, the ar- rests are actually good news. Neither the June 1980 bombing of West Bank mayors' cars nor the attack on the Hebron College led to arrests. Last year, an assis- tant attorney general's re- port charged that higher- ups were not prosecuting Jewish West Bank settlers' vigilante actions — and ac- tion on the report itself was initially blocked. Everyone who cares for Israel's moral health had to be concerned. The arrests make clear that the gov- ernment Was not prepared initially for the emergence of Jewish terror groups. Ob- viously, the government was weak in the counter- intelligence needed to stop such rings — but it promptly set in motion cor- rective action. It is like the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, which overconcentrated on the dangers on the left and was weak in coverage of the KKK and neo-Nazi threat. The FBI did some shifting •but not without failures, in- cluding agents and infor- mers so socialized to the right that they stood by or may have conspired in as- saults on liberal whites and blacks. Initial American press coverage also stressed the government's use of harsh anti-terrorist techniques, including extended interro- gations, denial of sleep, poor living conditins, hooding the head and holding pris- oners without a lawyer. While truly regrettable, such actions may be un- avoidable in dealing with small violent groups which are not bound by democratic and legal norms. As long as the police actions are kept to a minimum and not generalized, they are legitimately deemed "necessary evils." The arrests prove not that anti-democratic tendencies are spreading cancerously, but that the government is willing to use the same tac- tics against Jewish ter- rorists as against Arab ter- rorists. This is a good sign. It means that Arab blood is not cheap in Israel — an im- portant moral response to the memory that Jewish blood was held cheap. It is painful that Israeli civil liberties are curtailed but terrorists are, by defini- tion, not bound by legalities or reason and typically do not work in situations where full legal corrobora- tion of the crimes is possi- ble. When determined minorities set out to over- throw or endanger a legal system, democracies cannot always fight back cleanly. To insist on absolutely nor- mal procedures is to hand the aggressor advantages which could lead to more innocent dead. It has been argued that were Israel not holding the West Bank none of this would have happened. The oft-repeated argument is that Israel must choose be- tween the West Bank and democracy. But this is a simplification. I. write as one who favors giving up West Bank territory for a true peace. There is not yet an Arab leadership that is reliably able to offer peace in return for the West Bank entity. So the need to hold down Arab terrorism will be with Israel for some time. There have been bad inci- dents of West Bank terrorist murders of Jewish settlers and road "accidents" in which Arab trucks Yosef Burg Meir Kahane endangered or killed settlers. But in a democracy only the government can be permitted to take "unor- thodox" measures as cur- tailing civil liberties or blowing up homes of families to counter ter- rorism. It is not morally neat to offer such distinctions. It is like carrying a controlled infection to cure A disease. But these moral distinc- tions are unavoidable right now. To allow any group of settlers to pursue their pri- vate agenda would release terrorism not accountable to democratic electorates or governmental checks and balances. The best proof of this distinction is what has already happened. The government agencies focus on guilty Arab ter- rorists and their associates as best they can identify them. The aborted bomb plot revealed a truly ter- rorist intention to re- cklessly kill innocent people. After the arrests, the key is that strong groups of opinion leaders — espe- cially in West Bank and Or- thodox circles — dissociate themselves from Jewish terrorism. Orthodox leader- ship must make crystal clear that indifference to the value of innocent "goyim" life will not become a norm in Orthodox circles. This past year, there was a most disappointing re- sponse by a number of lead- ing rabbis to the shooting death of an Arab girl in the Nablus area. The moral re- sources are there in Or- thodoxy to make the right response. The judgements must be made unequivoc- ally and now. The whole - situation is further proof that the exer- cise of power is testing Jew- ry's and Judaism's moral capacity to the limit. In the forge of history; Jewish re- sponse will strengthen — or break — the moral tradi- tion. The outcome is in our, hands. Copyright 1984, the National Jewish Resource Cen- Egypt is now playing both sides of the foreign policy street BY VICTOR M. BIENSTOCK Special to The Jewish News Hosni President Mubarak's regime is at- tempting to build a com- munications bridge be- tween Egypt and leaders of Israel's political opposition in the apparent conviction that the Labor Alignment will be returned to power in Israds parliamentary elec- tions in July. The new Egyptian tactic is described as not so much evidence of a desire for a closer relationship with the State of Israel as it is an ef- fort to convince the United States that the Egyptians want to adhere fully to the conditions of the Camp David accords and serve as a catalyst for peace in the Middle East. The Egyptian strategy is almost Byzantine in its complexity. At one and the same time, Egypt seeks to demonstrate to Washington by these overtures to Israel that it is firmly committed to the United States and the cause of peace while it seeks to prove to the Arab states to whose collective bosom Egypt is so anxious to re- turn, that its aloofness to Is- rael, as revealed in the state of "cold peace" — a descrip- tion coined by a leading Egyptian diplomat — is evidence that Egypt is not under the American thumb. Basically, Egypt is trying to distance itself from the onus in Arab eyes of being a handmaiden of Washington and, by its agreement to re- sume diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, estblish for itself some sort of neutral position in which it can play off one super- power against the other, re- tain the enormous benefits of American aid and make itself available for wahtever crumbs the men in the considered Mubarak's top Kremlin are prepared to priority. Dr. Boutros Ghali, the strew about. Egyptian Minister of State Because of Arab hostility for Foreign Affairs and one to the United States, of Cairo's most able and ef- President Mubarak is un- fective diplomats, is the comfortable with his close point-man in the new ap- identification with Wash- proach to the Israelis. He ington although American has stressed to his guests military and economic aid and to Israeli journalists has been a mainstay of his who have been given a very regime. He seeks to position friendly reception in Cairo himself among the non- official circles when they aligned naions of the Third came in May to write about World, thus reaping the the fifth anniversary of the benefits of all possible Egyptian-Israeli peace worlds. treaty, that Egypt wants to The current Egyptian move from a "cold peace" to reaching out to prominent a genuine peace burthat personalities identifed with this can happen only when opposition to the Likud gov- Israeli troops are with- ernment in Israel paradoxi- drawn from Lebanon and cally is a move primarily progress is made on a set- designed to expedite tlement of the Palestine Egypt's return to the center Arab question. of the Arab family of na- President Mubarak him- tions. That objective can be 4 self appsrefttly places the emphasis on the latter since the Arab world is more con- cerned about the Israeli- held territories than about the fate of the Lebanese. Yosef Goell, another Jerusalem Post correspon- dent, spent a week in Cairo — his first visit there since 1978 — to appraise the ef- fect of peace on the Egyp- A significant and reveal- ing aspect of these tians. He was delighted with the friendliness dis- Egyptian-Israeli encounters was the evident played by the Egyptian desire of the Egyptians to man-in-the-street and see them widely publicized shocked by the treatment of in Israel and abroad al- Israel in the government- though news abut them was controlled media which carry anti-Israel carefully kept out of the regularly attacks. Egyptian press. Goell, who had access to Jerusalem Post reporter Mark Segal pointed out that most Egyptian leaders dur- the Egyptian public did not ing. his stay, asked Boutros even know that former Is- Ghali bluntly why the gov- raeli Foreign Minister Abba ernment permitted violent Eban was in Cairo and that anti-Israeli attacks to ap- although Egyptian report- pear in the press. The Egyp- ers were present when Eban. tian official replied that the spoke before the assembly of charge of anti-Semitic ex- Foreign Ministry officials, cesses by the Egyptian "not a word appeared in the media was "very much exaggerated." , papers."