•
28 Friday, July 20, 1984 ,
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
ANALYSIS
Never again? Who now
remembers Afghanistan?
BY RABBI IRVING GREENBERG
Special to The Jewish News
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Those who study the
Holocaust are continually
tormented by the record of
apathy in the rest of the
world during this debauch
of evil. Recently there was
great turmoil when the
Goldberg Commission
sought to assess responsibil-
ity for American Jewish
failures to respond. But re-
membering the past is not
an end in itself. And re-
membering in order to
scapegoat the past is a form
of pathology. In the Biblical
tradition, we remember in
order that behavior be
changed. "You shall not
torment_ the stranger for
you know the life of a
stranger; you were stran-
gers in the land of Egypt."
(Exodus 23, 9)
In June, the press carried
reports that the boycott and
suspension of cultural
offices and exchanges be-
tween the United States
and Ruhia initiated by
President Carter in protest
of the Soviet invasion of Af-
ghanistan are about to be
removed by President Re-
agan. In an election year,
the Reagan administration
wishes to soften its image of
being excessively hardline
on Russia. There is constant
media criticism of the poor
state of U.S.-Russian rela-
tions. There is no profit —
indeed, there is real politi-
cal cost — in maintaining
pressure on the USSR on
the Afghan issue.
- But is the situation in Af-
ghanistan better? On the
contrary, in an attempt to
crush the stubborn guerilla
resistance, the USSR is
waging a ruthless war
against civilians. Two Rus-
sian deserters testified in
London last month that
Russian soldiers are or-
dered to kill Afghan vil-
lagers in cold blood. At a
press conference, they said:
"An officer decides to have a
village, searched ... What
usually happend is we found
a cartridge or a bullet. The
officers said: 'This is a ban-
dit village. It must be de-
stroyed' . . . The men and
the young men are usually
shot right where they are.
And the women, what they
do is try to kill them with
grenades ..." (The New
York Times, June 28, 1984).
Dr. Claude Malurec, di-
rector of Medecins sans
Frontieres (Doctors With-
out Borders), an organiza-
tion sending medical teams
to conflict areas all over the
world, spoke at Harvard.
His organization has equip-
ped and operated twelve
hospitals in Afghanistan,
four of which have been
bombed and destroyed by
the Soviets. According to
Malurec, rather than gain-
ing control by seeking na-
tive support in villages and
towns, the Soviets are at-
temping to take over Af-
ghanistan by terrorizing its
people. Tactics include: pil-
laging and buying villages,
executing inhabitants and,
increasingly, heavy air
strikes. About 2.5 million
Afghans have fled to Pakis-
tan and several hundred
thousand to Iran.
Dr. Malurec stressed that
the lack of news reports is
the key to Soviet strategy:
"International public opin-
ion would never accept such
enormities if it were kept in-
formed daily on develop-
ments," said Malurec.
The American public
should be rallying to the Af-
ghan cause. Instead, the
exhaustion of media inter-
est (the story is almost five
years old), the pressure for
good news with Russia and
the dovish tendencies of the
public are leading to an
abandonment of the Af-
ghans. Of what significance
can some increased cultural
contacts with Russia be
when bought at the price of
indifference to quasi-
genocide in Afghanistan?
When Hitler was consid-
ering his destruction of the
Jews, some underlings ob-
jected that the Nazis could
not get away with it. Hitler
• argued that once the assault
was made, people would
soon tire of the subject and
accept the deed. He is repu-
ted to have backed his
argument by referring to
the Turkish massacre of the
Armenians in World War I
which had long since been
overlooked. He is reputed to
have said: "Who now re-
, members the Armenians?"
The silence and short mem-
ory of the world about that
massacre encouraged the
U.S. lecture
circuit profitable
for Israelis
.
Jerusalem (ZINS) — Is-
raeli luminaries are com-
manding large fees on the
American lecture circuit,
according to a report by
Marc Segal in the
Jerusalem Post.
Prominent Israelis such
as former Defense Minister
Ariel Sharon and former
President Yitzhak Navon
are receiving $10,000 for
each appearance, Segal re-
ports. Knesset member and
former Foreign Minister
Abba Eban commands a fee
of about $8,000, while
Simcha Dinitz, who has
served as Israel's, ambas-
sador to the U.S., gets about
$1,500
.44* for each appearance.
,
murderous plot to destroy
Jewry.
In light of its memory, of
the Holocaust, the Jewish
community should be dou-
bly sensitive to any brush-
ing of the Afghanistan story
under the rug for the sake of
'politics as usual.' Jews are
known to be more suppor-
tive of detente than the av-
erage American voter. Even
if other Americans forget,
Jews should signal the Re-
agan Administration that
detente attitudes should not
lead to moral apathy to the
fate of the Afghans. A criti-
cal test of Jewish morality
in our time is that our suf-
fering sensitize us more to
the oppression of others.
Jews should know that
just as upholding constitu-
tional rights for minorities
is good for Jewish rights too,
so does taking moral re-
sponsibility for others in-
crease protection for Jews.
Hillel's summary of the
Torah should be updated as
a good moral guide for those
who preserve the memory of
the Holocaust: "What was
hateful to you, do not allow
to be done to others."
Copyright 1984, the National
Jewish Resource Center.
Strikes hit
Israel media
Tel Aviv (JTA) — Israeli
printers ended a 24-hour
strike at noon Monday after
newspaper publishers
agreed to resume negotia-
tions on their wage de-
mands. The strike pre-
vented most dailies from
publishing.
The workers are asking
for pay increases similar to
those recently granted to
journalists and office em-
ployees. They also fear the
loss of jobs from the intro-
duction of new technology
that will eliminate typeset-
ters and replace them with
unskilled or semi-skilled
workers. •
A wildcat strike by televi-
sion technicians last week
cast doubt over coverage of
the 1984 Olympic Games
which begin in Los Angeles
at the end of this month.
The strikers say they
acted on a secret report that
the state-owned Broadcast
Authority was back-
tracking on an earlier
agreement for special over-
time pay to technicians in-
volved in the Olympic
coverage. The time dif-
ference b etween California
and Israel will require them
to work all night to receive
the satellite transmissions
and prepare the material for
daytime. showing.