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- THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
THE JEWISH NEWS
Serving Detroit's Metropolitan Jewish Community
with distinction for four decades.
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LOCAL COLUMNIST: Danny Raskin
Israel's Request For Aid
Is Half The NATO Average
BY ROBERT E. SEGAL
Special to The Jewish News
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Marlene Miller
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Phyllis Tyner
Pauline Weiss
Ellen Wolfe
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,c , 1985 by The Detroit Jewish News (US PS 275-520)
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CANDLELIGHTING AT 6:57 P.M.
OP-ED
VOL. LXXXVII, NO. 8
The Bitburg Travesty
In an about face, President Reagan has announced that he will
visit a concentration camp while in West Germany next month. After
a series of snafus, blunders and just plain dumb things that have been
said and planned for the West German trip, Reagan's announcement is
a relief— of sorts. The President should visit a concentration camp. He
should lay a wreath there and he should stand for several moments in
silence as he meditates upon the persecutions and the terrors and the
murders that occurred there.
But the Presidents decision is belated. It comes as an
afterthought, after considerable political pressure on him to change
his original decision not to visit a concentration camp. And it comes,
most appallingly, after the President had already decided to visit a
Germany military cemetery.
The West German visit has been marked by a disturbing series of
statements. In his March 21 press conference, Mr. Reagan said he
would not visit a concentration camp to avoid "reawakening the
memories and the passions".of the wartime era. In that statement,
Reagan shirked from his responsibility to exert moral leverage on a
world that still lives in the shadow of Buchenwald and Auschwitz.
Reconciliation with the modern German state — the intended purpose
of the trip — is different from being a witness to the unimaginable and
unspeakable legacy of the Nazi era.
Then, the White House announced last weekend that the
President would lay a wreath at the Bitburg German military
cemetery. Among the Germans buried there are members of the SS,
the notorious Nazi elite guard. The SS not only committed some of the
worst crimes of the war against Jews; some of the SS buried there at
Bitburg reportedly massacred 115 American prisoners of war during
the Battle of the Bulge. As Elie Wiesel said of Bitburg, "This is not just
a cemetery of soldiers. This is tombstones of the SS, which is beyond
what we can imagine. These are and were criminals."
The White House was seemingly stunned by the vocal and
negative reaction to its plans to go to Bitburg. But it has not been
contrite. The White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Michael Deaver, who
set up Reagan's tour of Germany, issued no apologies. "In light of the
uproar," said Deaver, the decision to bypass Dachau for Bitburg
seemed like a mistake. Deaver is the man who has carved out the .
President's public image. For this consummate PR man the
wrongheadedness of the Bitburg decision came from its emerging
political liabilities, not from any inherent immorality.
Reconciliation, said the White House, was to have been the theme
of Reagan's trip. Instead, the theme now seems to be one of gross and
overbearing insensitivity. Mr. Reagan has foolishly placed a
presumed virtue — reconciliation with a former enemy — ahead of a
sensitivity to the horrors that the war against the Germans thankfully
ended. And foolishly — and very needlessly — Mr. Reagan and his
staff have demonstrated that they sometimes operate from their
political instincts to the extreme detriment of the gracious
humanitarianism incumbent on any holder of the Oval Office.
What chance do the expanding
Arab-American propaganda groups
have to throw a wrench into Israel's
efforts to obtain more aid from Wash-
ington?
An indication of how the Congres-
sional battle over giving more support
to Israel will heat up is being revealed
by anti-Israel arguments bound to ac-
celerate over the air and in the press as
outfits like the National Association of
Arab-Americans, the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee and
the Association of Arab-American
University Graduates intensify their
campaigns to win support for "the
Arab cause" and to denigrate the State
of Israel.
Adding steam to these efforts will
be such critics of Israel as George Ball,
former Assistant Secretary of State;
Paul Findley, former Illinois con-
gressman; James G. Abourezk, former
U.S. Senator from South Dakota; John
C. West, former U.S. Ambassador to
Saudi Arabia; and perhaps Bill Ful-
bright, former U.S. Senator from Ar-
kansas. These, together with scores of
leaders of Arab student groups on col-
lege campuses and several pro-Arab
American clergymen, no doubt will be
heard from.
All the more reason then for sup-
plying the hard facts regarding Is-
rael's needs in a period of one
percent-a-day inflation increase.
Between the late 1940s, when Is-
rael in the throes of birth was making
herculean efforts to withstand fierce
attacks from Arab neighbors, until the
early 1970s, aid from Washington ran
a little over $60 million a year. In the
1976-1981 period U.S. financial help
averaged about $2 billion a year. Since
that time, Israel has suffered severe
--losses in lives (600 in Lebanon alone)
and the heavy burden of meeting the
high cost of keeping militarily equip-
ped. The loss of oil sustained when Is-
rael, as promised, withdrew from
Sinai, offers an example of new bur-
dens that had to be assumed.
And why should the U.S. be espe-
cially helpful to Israel now?
First, when overall foreign policy
of the U.S. is considered realistically,
it is obvious that Washington gives top
priority to the threat of that carnivor-
ous bear, the USSR. Moscow seeks to
gain power the world over, but espe-
cially in the Warsaw Pact nations and
the Middle East. Which U.S. allies,
then, can be of strongest support in
these areas? The obvious answer is the
The U.S. annually spends
. . . an average of $8 billion
for each of the NATO
nations.
NATO countries and that tried and
proven democratic partner — Israel.
Now to what degree do we support
these partners-in-arms? The U.S. an-
nually spends somewhere between
$122 and $129 billion on NATO, an
average of $8 billion for each of the
NATO nations. This last figure is
much more than Israel has ever asked
for or ever received. Indeed, in recent
years, U.S. military and economic aid
to Israel has averaged about $2 billion
a year. Hence, even those who offer a
bag full of arguments against hiking
financial aid to Israel will need to keep
in mind they are, in effect, strengthen-
ing Soviet chances to burrow into the
Middle East to the delight of Israel's
Arab foes and to the sorrow of U.S.
military strategists.
Secondly, Israel has been tremen-
dously helpful to Washington through
the supply of key intelligence informa-
tion, including advance warning on
terrorist plans affecting the U.S. and
through providing facts about sophis-
it