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YEAR IN REVIEW 5746 YEAR IN REVIEW
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VICE PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH garnered media
attention with his 10-day visit to the Mideast, including a
well-photographed stop at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
SPY TROUBLES came
to light when Jonathan
Pollard, an American Jew,
was arrested and charged
with providing national
defense secrets to Israel.
He later pleaded guilty. The
case focused attention on
the U.S-Israel relationship,
with disagreement over
whether Israel was being
cooperative with American
investigators.
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ARMS DEALS WITH THE ARABS were
in the news. Congress prevailed and forced
the Administration to abandon its sale of arms
to Jordan, but the Administration won out by
the narrowest of margins in its planned deal
with Saudi Arabia.
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IVAN THE TERRIBLE? John Demjanuk,
the alleged Nazi war criminal, was deported
from the U.S. to stand trial in Israel.
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U.SrISRAEL RELATIONS were warm
between Prime Minister Shimon Peres and
President Reagan, shown here meeting
together at the White House.
brothers to sit together). At that, the
swaying crowd, united with their brother
at last, burst into song with him, a perfect
moment etched in time.
But there were few such moments this
year.
Shcharansky's liberation and homecom-
ing was the emotional highlight of a
Jewish calendar year, 5746, marked by
outrage — over deadly terrorist attacks
around the world, over the election of a
president with a Nazi past in Austria, and
over violence between ultra-religious and
secular Jews in Israel.
Indeed, although the release of Shchar-
ansky was a dramatic gesture by the
USSR, followed by the release this sum-
mer of his mother and other family mem-
bers, there has been no indication of any
easing of restrictions for the thousands of
Soviet Jews seeking to be reunited with
their families in the West. Fewer than 400
Jews left the USSR in the last six months,
a rate of less than a thousand for the year.
In 1984, 896 Jews were allowed to leave,
and in 1985, 1,140, compared with the
peak of 51,000 in 1979.
More horrifying than the number of
Jews held hostage by the Kremlin were
the scores of Jews around the world
targeted and killed by Arab terrorists. In
synagogues, at airports, on cruise ships.
During the year, worshippers at syna-
gogues in Copenhagen, Paris, Buenos
Aires, Johannesburg, Rome, Antwerp,
Vienna and Istanbul were killed or wound-
ed by terrorists because they were Jews.
During the Christmas holiday, terrorists
struck at both the Rome and Vienna air-
ports, hurling grenades and firing bullets
at anyone and everyone in their path.
Perhaps the most shocking incident,
though, occurred aboard an Italian cruise
ship last fall when Arab terrorists shot
and killed an American Jew confined to a
wheelchair. The murder of Leon Klinghof-
fer, followed by the terrorists' denial of the
deed despite proof to the contrary, shocked
and angered Americans and gave new rise
to their sense of frustration.
They were heartened by Washington's
decision to force down the Egyptian plane
carrying the hijackers to freedom, but an
Italian, court later sentenced the murder--
ers to relatively light jail sentences.
Much of America's outrage was focused
on Libyan leader Muammar Kaddafi,
whose sponsorship and training of ter-
rorism and virulent anti-U.S. rhetoric,
finally led to an American bombing raid
on Tripoli. There were civilian casualties,
including Kaddafi's adopted 15-month-old
daughter, and he swore revenge, but by
year's end the American attack was
credited with stilling Libyan-sponsored
violence. At least temporarily.
Fear of reprisals, though, kept interna-
tional tourism at a minimum this summer,
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