10 Friday, July 12, 1985
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
PURELY COMMENTARY
Pride and Dignity
Continued from Page 2
sportsmanship on the highest
level, matching the most dignified
in mankind.
The longevity of the significant
Maccabiah Games, which typify
Jewish Olympics, receives em-*
phasis in the localized experi-
ences. The Detroit Jewish com-
munity has a long record of shar-
ing in the events, and the guiding
spirit for such encouragement
was provided by Max Sheldon.
Sports for Israel had numerous
supporters here and the leader-
ship of Max Sheldon was always
in evidence.
The Max Sheldon story in the
U.S. Committee Sports for Israel
and the world Maccabiah Games
counted him among the pioneers.
From the - earliest days of the
movement in this century he was
among the athletes and later
among the supporters as well as
among those who encouraged
enrollment in the games. The
Max Sheldon story reads like Max
Sheldon's life is inseparable from
the Maccabiah history and as this
community shares in acclaiming
the 12th Maccabiah in Israel this
month it retains the interest in
sports for Israel that has become
an obligation for Jewish com-
munities everywhere and pays
honbr to the pioneers in the
movement.
Blaming Israel, With
Media Among Guilty:
Expose Of Errors
"Blaming Israel" has become a
crusade, and the guilt has been
sanctified.
How sad that the journalistic
aims should have been polluted by
failure to call a spade a spade, in
the refusal to call a halt to malign-
ing when facts are more precious
than the fiction mixed with
hatred which became means of
blaming Israel for everything!
Fortunately, officialdom in the
U.S. government has exercised a
great measure of caution and had
put into action much fairness dur-
ing the recent TWA hijacking
outrage.
Fortunately also, some of the
hostages refuse to go along with
the "self-brainwashed" who con-
sidered themselves lucky to be
served food and not to have been
subjected to the same cruelties as
were suffered by the murdered fel-
low traveler in their midst.
Fortunately also there isn't
total silence in the matter of mak-
ing Israel the goat for all the hor-
rors that have been perpetrated.
Ze'ev Chafets, the native De-
troiter who held an important
post in the Menachem Begin gov-
ernment and is the author ofDou-
ble Vision: How the Press Distorts
America's View of the Middle
East, in a New York Times Op-Ed
Page article, "Why the U.S. Was a
Target," (July 2), took up the im-
portant points in the embittered
issues and commented:
In the specialized lexicon of
the Arab lobby, "underlying
cause" has become a code
phrase, like "even-handed"
(which means pro-Arab) and
"moderate" (the term for ex-
tremists friendly to the United
States). In this context, the
"underlying cause" of Arab
terrorism is always Israel. The
basic premise is simple — that
it is Israel's policies that force
otherwise reasonable and
peace-loving people into acts
of violetit desperation. The
reasoning echoes what the
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AmelwwwpariM7'...
Sharks once told Officer
Krupke in West Side Story,
"We're depraved on account of
we're deprived."
That was precisely the
argument made last week in
defense of the hijacking of
TWA Flight 847. The event
posed a thorny problem for
Arab apologists in the United
States, who were under-
standably reluctant to actually
applaud kidnapping,
blackmail and murder. That is
where "underlying causes"
came to the rescue. The hijac-
kers, so the story went, were
Shiite militiamen roused into
action by Israel's policies in
southern Lebanon. Motivated
by patriotism and grievance,
they staged a kind of Lebanese
Boston Tea Party — and if do-
zens of American civilians
were terrorized, a Marine
murdered and Jewish
passengers separated from the
others Auschwitz-style, it was
the regrettable but justifiable
reaction to Israeli provoca-
tion.
The "underlying cause"
theory is not new — it has been
used to blame Israel for virtu-
ally every Arab outrage, from
the assassination of President
Anwar el-Sadat to Palestine
Liberation Organization at-
tacks on innocent civilians —
and its corollary is equally
well-known. If Israel is the
cause of Arab terror, then
support for Israel puts
America on the wrong side of
the terrorists. After all, the old
Arab proverb states that "The
friend of my enemy is my
enemy."
This argument would make
sense if it weren't for the fact
that terrorism is the hallmark
of many of the Islamic Middle
East's most prestigious gov-
ernments and organizations:
They routinely use mindless
violence as an instrument of
policy, without reference to Is-
rael, in international conflicts,
domestic politics and disputes
with other Islamic countries
and groups. In recent years,
Iran has seized and tortured
American citizens; Iraq has
used poison gas against Iran;
Colonel Muammar el-
Qaddafi's gunmen have shot
British passersby in the center
of London; the Syrian govern-
ment has carried out political
mass murders against its own
people; rival factions of the
PLO have massacred each
other in Tripoli; and a wild and
uncontrolled civil war has
turned Lebanon into perhaps
the most violent, irrational and
uncivilized place on earth.
Israel is not even remotely
responsible for any of these
developments. They flow
naturally out of the fanaticism
and despotism that char-
acterizes regimes led by the
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,
Colonel Qaddafi, the Iraqi
President, Saddam Hussein,
the Syrian President, Hafez
el-Assad, Yassir Arafat and the
heads of the various factions in
Lebanon. No one with any
dealings in the region, includ-
ing America, can be immune
from violent, often irrational,
outbreaks for the simple rea-
son that they are so wide-
spread (not to say applauded)
in the Islamic Middle East.
And if America is a special
target, a "great Satan" in the
Ayatollah Khomeini's words, it
is not because the United
States has an alliance with Is-
rael but because it represents
values — liberalism, personal
freedom, secular government,
Western democracy — that
seem threatening and abhor-
rent to many Middle Eastern
radicals and religious fanatics.
Israel was right to do what-
ever it could to cooperate with
the United States in achieving
the release of American hos-
tages. Having done so, the two
countries, along with other
civilized nations, ought to look
for ways to fight back against
terrorists and their ac-
complices. This will require
patience, steadfastness and
the capacity to recognize what
the "underlying causes" of the
problem really are. The ter-
rorists and their supporters
notwithstanding, Israel and
the United States will remain
targets (and allies) in the Mid-
dle East not because of what
they do but because of what
they are — good countries in a
bad neighborhood.
The recollections thus assem-
bled speak for themselves. They
should, as they must, assist in
enlightening public opinion and
will, hopefully, lead to amends in
the media.
NEWS
Boycott Suit
New York (JTA) — The Anti-
Defamation League of B'nai
B'rith (ADL) has asked the Fed-
eral Court of Appeals in Houston
to affirm a District Court ruling
recognizing the right of individu-
als to sue for injuries caused by
violations of the anti-boycott pro-
visions of the Export Administra-
tion Act.
In an Amicus Curiae (friend-
of-the-court) brief, the human re-
lations agency declared that two
doctors — Lawrence Abrams and
Stuart Linde — who charge that
the Baylor College of Medicine re-
jected them for employment in a
hospital in Saudia Arabia because
they are Jewish "are clearly
members of the class Congress in-
tended to benefit when enacting
the provisions."
El A, Forms
Travel Club
El Al Israel Airlines has
formed MATMID, a frequent
traveler club for people who fly
to Israel. The club offers bonus
points that can add up to ticket
discounts on round trip flights
to Israel.