THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Friday, September 13, 1985
YEAR IN REVIEW 5745 YEAR IN REVIEW
Religious News Service
Continued from Page 39
SHARON VS. 'TIME' had both sides claiming victory. The magazine was not guilty
of libeling the Israeli general (above) but its report was found to be false and defamatory.
KAHANE'S ALTERNATIVE to the Arab
'crisis is to expel all Arabs from Israel. Once
consideted a "lunatic," the rabbi gained
ISRAEL'S ECONOMY, seemingly' alwayS " support and respectability from his Knesset
on the brink, reached new lows this year before
victory and the violence in Israel. Hesappeals
steps were taken to meet the crisis.
to the young and the Sephardim and predicts
major gains in the next election.
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cause there was no consensus within the
cabinet.
Filling this political and emotional
vacuum, Rabbi Meir Kahane gained
strength and respectability for his Kach
party, which advocates ousting all Arabs
from Israel. Kahane was condemned by
American Jewish organizations but his ap-
peal to the "new" Israelis — the young, the
Sephardim and the militant — was re-
flected in his dramatic showings in current
Israeli public opinion polls.
Kahane's success speaks to the growing
sense of frustration in Israel, heightened by
the steady casualty rate of Israeli troops in
southern Lebanon, the dramatic increase in
Shiite terrorism — the capture of the TWA
flight in Athens was the most sensational
example — and, most of all, the alarming
number of Israeli civilians murdered by
Arabs.
At year's end there were no easy solu-
tions in sight, other than Kahane's strident
call to remove the Arab problem by remov-
ing the Arabs — a call that the majority of
Israeli's reject as a threat to their nation's
democratic ideals.
Another ideological threat to Jewish
democracy emerged from within the various
branches of Judaism and seemed aimed at
its very roots. Though the controversial
"Who Is A Jew" amendment „was defeated
in the Knesset, it is certain to be raised
again with the potential to split perma-
nently traditional and non-traditional Jews.
The Orthodox rabbinate says it must main-
tain the religious and historical tradition
in determining one's Jewishness; opponents
argue that the issue is one of religious poli-
tics and power with the result that non-
Orthodox converts are not recognized as
Jews.
The split is also growing in America,
where Rabbi Yitz Greenberg's essay (Aug.
15 Jewish News cover story, "We Are Two")
so divided over issues of conversion and
patrilineal descent that within decades they
would divide into two peoples, with neither
side recognizing the other. ,
If there was an issue that did unify the
Jewish people around the world this year it
was to express anger, disappointment and
disbelief over President Reagan's decision to
lay a wreath at the Bitburg cemetery dur-
ing his visit to Germany in May Even after
Reagan succumbed to intense pressure and
announced that he would visit' a Nazi con-
centration Camp ds well, the outcry contin-
ued' unabated. Elie Wiesel, the writer and
survivor, spoke for millions when, in a
dramatic nationally-televised Holocaust
Continued on Page 43
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