4 Friday, December 21, 1984

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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1984 by The Detroit Jewish News (US PS 275-520)
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CANDLELIGHTING AT 4:45 P.M.

VOL. LXXXVI, NO. 17

On the brink

There are times when a nation's leaders must act as statesmen more than
politicians and such a time in Israel is now.
As we go to press, the unity government in Israel is in danger of toppling
over a relatively minor religious party crisis. The matter is a complicated one
in which Minister Without Portfolio Rabbi Yitzchak Peretz, leader of the
religious Sephardic party Shas, resigned this week. Though Shas has only
four seats in the Knesset, it is linked with the Likud bloc and may cause
Likud to quit as well. Shas and another religious party, the NRP, each hold
four seats and were to share control of religious affairs but Peretz claimed his
party was shortchanged. Surely the matter can be resolved without bringing
down the government.
At a time when Israel is asking the United States for greater economic
assistance, attempting to remove her troops from Lebanon, and making
stronger efforts to control her economy, it would be selfish and immature for
Israel's leaders to allow petty politics to take over national emergencies.
More than ever, the current crisis points up the need for electoral reform
in Israel where even the smallest parties have the clout to bring down a
government.

Shunted negotiations

Israel Prime Minister Shimon Peres earned diplomatic respect on a high
level for the calmness and self-restraint with which he treated a new Arab
alliance which undertook to speak of peace while reiterating every aspect of
animosity toward the Jewish state.
Both in Amman and in Cairo, the atmosphere that was inspired by an
Arafat-oriented ideology uttered platitudes, such as unifying the forces for
Arab unity, while the dissidents, nurtured by Syria, absented from the
sessions by retaining an anti-Arafat position and attempting to further color
the tainted Arafat image.
The new Mubarak-Hussein-Arafat combine emerges at once as so unholy
an alliance that it could not possibly be treated with the minutest form of
confidence, especially on three counts: the endorsement of an Arafat role in
peace negotiations at a time when the erstwhile PLO leader is totally rejected
by Syria and its allied Arab political cohorts; the renewed demand for a
return of Hussein's rule over Jerusalem; and the proposal to grant the USSR a
role in negotiations.
All of these proposals have been ruled out by Israel and from time to time
by the Arabs themselves.
Prime Minister Peres, nevertheless, treated the new developments by
adhering to the realism of calling for direct negotiations, with an emphasis on
eliminating pre-conditions. If the revived Arab alliance, eliminating the
dangerously-sensationalized Arafat, were to concede this major need in order
to assure genuine peace negotiations, the much-abused amity could be
obtained.
It is in the Hosni Mubarak realm that guilt predominates. The Egyptian
ruler keeps insisting the Camp David decisions and agreements remain in
force, yet he flatters Arafat and keeps currying PLO favors.
It is hardly an attitude to be treated as conducive to peace negotiations
with Israel.

OP-ED

`Jewish' and 'general' issues
in lobbying the U.S. Congress

BY SENATOR CARL LEVIN
Special to The Jewish News

I and my Capitol Hill colleagues
welcome being educated by our con-
stituents, for the better we are edu-
cated — it's called lobbying, but it's
kosher -- the better we can educate
each other.
In this context, may I — without, I
hope, appearing presumptuous — offer
a judgment on the Jewish education of
Congress, the lobbying of me and my
colleagues by Jelvish organizations
and individuals. I get (and welcome)
lots of visits, calls and mail from
Jewish groups and individuals about
Israel, about Soviet Jewry and about
Ethiopian Jews. I am not, in my judg-
ment, lobbied enough by many of these
groups or individuals about concerns
that are not, strictly speaking, Jewish:
apartheid in South Africa; oppression
of non-Jewish dissidents in the Soviet
Union and other countries; hunger,
unemployment and other misery in
America. And I presume that my col-
leagues also are not being lobbied by
Jewish groups and individuals on
these issues as much as they are on
so-called Jewish issues.
I know that the vast majority of
American Jews share these universal
concerns: Time after time, with rare
exceptions, they send to Congress as
their representatives persons who
manifest these concerns. And they are
extremely active and supportive of
"non-Jewish" organizations that fight
to relieve all sorts of hunran misery.
Why, then, do they not carry more
fully their concerns to Congress as
Jews?
I and other members of Congress

This article is excerpted from the
"Reconstructionist" (July-August 1984),
which is published at 270 W. 89th Street,
New York 10024. Sen. Levin is a long-time
member of the Reconstructionist
movement and a founder of Cong.
T'chiyah.

Sen. Carl Levin: Advocating grass-roots
lobbying.

do hear more from a number of other
religious groups with greater fre-
quency on matters that affect not only
their own religionists. And their ac-
tivity makes conspicuous the lesser
presence of Jewish groups in the lobby-
ing for universal concerns, for the con-
cerns of other racial and ethnic groups,
and even for life itself (above which
nothing in Judaism is more important)
as demonstrated, for example, in the
demands for a nuclear freeze and other
actions to avert the ultimate
holocaust.
I am well aware of, and ap-
preciate, public statements by Jewish
groups and individuals on these is-
sues, as well as — even more signifi-
cantly — Jewish organizational par-
ticipation in demonstrations and other
public shows of sentiment. There is
certainly no absence of Jewish in-
volvement. But, with some notable ex-
ceptions, involvement in the direct
lobbying of Congress on these univer-
sal concerns is less than that man-

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