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Friday, November 15, 1985
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
THE JEWISH NEWS
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©
Ralph Orme
1985 by The Detroit Jewish News (US PS 275-520)
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CANDLELIGHTING AT 4:51 P.M.
VOL. LXXXVII, NO. 12
Summit Sense
What words of wisdom can we offer President Reagan on the eve of
his summit talks in Geneva with Soviet leader Gorbachev? Only the
suggestion that he keep his pledge to make human rights — and
specifically the plight of Soviet Jewry — a priority issue, mindful that
there can be no trust between East and West as long as the Kremlin fails
to honor its commitment to the Helsinki accords on human rights.
Ours is a culture so attuned to sports contests that the build-up for
these summit talks reminds one of the media hype surrounding a Super
Bowl game or heavyweight title fight. We are a nation nurtured on
match-ups and instant resolutions, winners and losers. But world
problems, be they in the Mideast or between East and West, defy
immediate answers. Some of us seem to believe that if two adversaries
can only be brought to the table to reason together, they will undoubtedly
walk away with a compromise agreement. History has proven this belief
naive, and worse.
Even as we offer President Reagan every good wish and prayer, we
owe it to ourselves to remember that no quick solutions will result from
Geneva. At best there is the possibility that the long, tortuous path
towards arms reduction can perhaps begin.
Numbered Memories
These past two weeks have been a time of mixed feelings for
Detroiters with direct ties to the Holocaust. The Holocaust Memorial
Center marked its first anniversary with a major public dinner at the
Renaissance Center. Others recall the anniversary of Kristallnacht in
1938 Germany, a major turning point in Hitler's war against the Jews.
Two events last weekend also reflected on the Holocaust era and its
aftermath. Detroit's Ukrainian community held a memorial mass in
Dearborn for the 3.9 million Ukrainian victims of the Nazis. That total
included 900,000 of the Ukraine's 1.5 million Jews.
But the most powerful response to Hitler's assembly-line slaughter of
11 million innocents — including six million Jews — came in a moving
speech by New Yorker Benjamin Meed. He spoke Sunday at the Jewish
Community Center in West Bloomfield at the first National Executive
Committee Meeting of the American Gathering/Federation of Jewish
Holocaust Survivors.
Meed stressed the importance of education, of remembrance. Yet his
most powerful words, his dedication to organizing the survivors into a
national organization, is predicated on the future. Meed sees the
organized survivors as a mechanism to prevent repetition of the
Holocaust. And he sees them as a powerful example, a strong lobby on
behalf of an Israel "born out of the ashes," and as another chapter in the
Jewish history of renewal and rebirth.
Benjamin Meed's emphasis on the future while remembering the past
is a theme for all of us.
OP-ED
The U.S. Is Greasing
The Mideast Arms Cycle
BY HYMIE CUTLER
Special to The Jewish News
President Reagan says he is
going to sell Jordan almost $2 bil-
lion of advanced weapons — aircraft,
missiles and armored vehicles. The
arms package to that ally of the
PLO includes shoulder-fired Stringer
anti-aircraft missiles, and ideal ter-
rorist weapon for shooting down air-
liners. The Reagan Administration
says Jordan needs all those weapons
to defend themselves again Syria
which has been armed by the
Soviets. They claim those weapons
will allow Jordan to start peace
talks with Israel without being af-
raid of trouble from Syria who op-
poses such talks.
That is what they say. What
they don't say is that Saudi Arabia
pays for the billions of dollars to fi-
nance Syria's military forces being
armed and trained by the Soviets, as
well as financing Jordan and the
terrorist Palestine Liberation Organ-
ization. Not only do the Saudis pay
for the arms purchases by Syria,
Jordan and the PLO, but their own
appetite for weapons is insatiable.
We sell them more than $4 billions
of weapons each year and they will
buy about the same amount this
year from England and France, be-
sides a billion here and a billion
there from other countries.
The Administration is trying to
sell the idea that more weapons in
the Middle East will bring peace.
And England and France also talk
about peace as they make more mili-
tary sales to the Saudis. But the real
name of the game is to get as much
of the Arab oil money as possible.
They don't really care that Saudi
Arabia is wildly squandering its
great wealth to accumulate massive
Hymie Cutler chairman of the Metro
Detroit Chapter of Americans for a Safe
Israel.
stores of the means to commit
large-scale murder and destruction
while they let their own people live
in abject poverty.
Why do the Saudis keep on buy-
ing such huge quantities of
weapons? For peace? No; for war!
Saudi Arabia's ruling family has re-
peatedly declared that they regard
Israel, in order to avoid
destruction ... has been
forced to spend itself close
to ruin.
Israel and Zionism as their foremost
enemy and they have called for a
"jihad," a Moslem religious war,
against the Jewish state.
Supplying military equipment is
good business. The State Depart-
ment tells Israel they can meet the
threat from additional arms being
sold to the Arabs by buying more
F-15 and F-16 fighter aircraft from
the United States. Israel, in order to
avoid destruction by more numerous
and better-equipped adversaries, has
been forced to spend itself close to <
ruin. We are pushing Israel further
and further into debt. It is a war of
economic attrition which Israel can-
not win against the enormous Arab
arms build-up financed by oil
wealth. At present, 40 percent of the /
c
Israeli budget is for debt service.
Most of Israel's debt is from military ="/
sales credits.
And while the massive sale of
weapons to the Arabs goes on
everybody agrees with Jordan's King
Hussein that the heart of the Middle
East conflict is the denial of Palesti-
nian rights to their homeland, which
the King says is the area held by Is-