4 Friday, April 11, 1986 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS THE JEWISH NEWS Serving Detroit's Metropolitan Jewish Community with distinction for four decades. Editorial and Sales offices at 20300 Civic Center Dr., Suite 240, Southfield, Michigan 48076-4138 Telephone (313) 354-6060 PUBLISHER: Charles A. Buerger EDITOR EMERITUS: Philip Slomovitz EDITOR: Gary Rosenblatt CONSULTANT: Carmi M. Slomovitz ART DIRECTOR: Kim Muller-Thym NEWS EDITOR: Alan Hitsky. LOCAL NEWS EDITOR: Heidi Press LOCAL COLUMNIST: Danny Raskin OFFICE STAFF: Lynn Fields Marlene Miller Dharlene Norris Phyllis Tyner Pauline Weiss Ellen Wolfe ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES: Lauri Biafore Allan Craig Rick Nessel Danny Raskin PRODUCTION: Donald Cheshure Cathy Ciccone Curtis Deloye Ralph Orme © 1986 by The Detroit Jewish News (US PS 275-520) Second Class postage paid at Southfield, Michigan and additional mailing offices. Subscriptions: 1 year - $21 — 2 years • $39 — Out of State • $23 — Foreign - $35 CANDLELIGHTING AT 6:50 P.M. VOL. LXXXIX, NO. 7 Every Drop Counts At the gas pumps, it's the best of times. Or at least the best we've had in more than nine years. Average prices are down by 24 cents. At an occasional service station, you can even get service: Attendants will wash your windshield and offer to check your oil. On a good day, they'll even offer to put a tiger in your tank. It's almost like the good old days. The only hitch is that we will never again have the old days, no matter how good they may have been. If there is any lesson that Americans (and the rest of the Western world) should have learned from the energy crises of the last 12 years, it is that petroleum supplies are ultimately finite. Oil prices may waver. Short-term oil supplies may increase one month and decrease the next. But in the long run, oil is an endangered species. No matter what OPEC says or no matter how deep Houston drills, there is only so much oil that can be squeezed out of the ground. ' That is why we should not be persuaded that 79 cents for unleaded gas means we should scoot around the countryside on old-fashioned Sunday afternoon drives or push our air-conditioners to their maximum settings in the sticky months ahead. Energy conservation is still sensible. It is still prudent. With domestic oil companies' recent decrease in oil exploration, the U.S. may eventually be in as vulnerable a position as it was when OPEC shut down westward-bound oil in late 1973. When that occurs, our national security — and our national habits — will be severely compromised. Once again, we may be at the whims — and the mercies — of our major foreign oil producers, the Arab states of the Mideast. And once again, we will feel impotent and helpless. The Eyes Of The Beholder A recent decision by a U.S.. Court of Appeals highlights a peculiar hole in federal laws. About a month ago, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia ruled that Jews were not entitled to protection under a 1966 civil rights act because they do not constitute a race. The law, according to the court, had been passed to assure all races living within the United States of their civil rights and Jews, said the court, are not a race. But lawyers representing Shaare Tefila Congregation in Silver Spring, Maryland insisted that racial bigotry had motivated the vandals who had attacked their synagogue. And that the 1866 law applied to acts motivated by perceptions of race — not only by actual, biological , distinctions of race. Indeed, Jews themselves have never claimed that they are a race. They come ftom too many parts of the globe to warrant that distinction. But it is the enemies of the Jews — Nazis, the Klan and others — who have insisted that they .are a race. The federal court's decision to exclude Jews from protection of the 1866 civil rights law fails to take a broad look at the dynamics of prejudice. But even more troublesome is the fact that the decision reveals that there is currently no remedy in the federal system for racially motivated acts committed against Jews. What is clearly needed is a new statute that fills this legal vacuum. Or a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that overthrows that of the appeals court. ■••■••■■■•■• •■ ••• OP-ED Cheap Or Fair Comment: Reagan, Nicaragua, Jews BY DEBBIE K. SCHLUSSEL Special to The Jewish News As a student, as an American, and as a Jew, I was appalled at the egregious cartoon which appeared on Page Four of the March 28 Jewish News. Perhaps one of the reasons that there is so much anti-Semitism in. the world is the fact that liberal Jewish establishments, such as The Jewish News, repeatedly alienate our allies, such as President Reagan, in such a crass and craven manner, whenever they attempt to help us. President Reagan was doing the Jews a favor by exposing Sandinista anti-Semitism because until re- cently, the media, including The Jewish News, have failed, perhaps deliberately, even to mention it. As a member of the National Jewish Coalition and Citizens For America, I will elaborate on this. The communist Sandinista re- gime abuses the human rights of its own people and threatens the secu- rity of the United States. In addition to the Sandinista shutdown of Radio Catolica (Nicaragua's Catholic radio station), the totalitarian regime of Nicaragua's "elected" president (I use the term "elected" with reserva- tion), Commandante Daniel Ortega, has committed many atrocities in carrying out its strict policy of reli- gious suppression. Any sign of reli- gious expression is not tolerated by the Sandinista dictatorship, and is swiftly obliterated. The Nicaraguan government continues to insist that it practices separation of Church and State. Yet, it continues to sponsor. anti-Pope ral- lies, and employs several token pro- Sandinista Catholic priests as "gov- ernment advisers." The Sandinistas also represent a specific threat to the many Central Debbie Schlussel is a Southfield High School senior and National Teenage Republican Valedictorian. American Jews. That threat is anti-Semitism. Before the Sandinista revolution, anti-Semitism .in Nicaragua was virtually non- existent. However, as the Sandinis- tas gained strength, so too did anti- Semitism. Flagrant anti-Semitic acts — the firebombing and burning down of the Managua Synagogue with its The Sandinistas represent a specific threat to the many Central American Jews. That threat is anti-Semitism. congregants trapped inside by the Sandinista soldiers, the confiscation of Jewish property, the arbitrary al..- rest and detention of Jews — were committed by the Sandinistas as their revolution was at its height and once .they were in power. The Sandinista soldiers, after they set the Managua Synagogue afire, shouted, "Death to the Jews! What Hitler started, we will finish!" How is it that the Anti- Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the President of the United States, the U.S. State Department, and many in the U.S. Congress have documented and proven consistent Sandinista antillSemitism, and yet, one Rabbi Balfour Brickner of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, no proven authority on foreign affairs or anti-Semitism, continues to deny that Sandinista anti-Semitism has ever existed? Couldn't it be that his extreme liberal bias has blinded him from the facts of Sandinista anti- Semitism, and caused him to make Continued on Pdge 20