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THE JEWISH NEWS

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The West Must Emulate
Israel's War On Terror

CHRIS GERSTEN

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CANDLELIGHTING AT 5:10 P.M.

VOL. XC, NO. 10

4IeId Hostage

A disquieting series of events has taken place during the last two
weeks. France has led the charge away from Britain's position on
breaking relations with Syria over international terrorism. Most of
Europe has balanced its moral outrage over Syria's attempt to bomb an
El Al plane in Britain against their own financial dealings with
President Hafez Assad.
France's potential arms and anti-terrorism deals with Assad are only
the most blatant of European attitudes. No other European nation has
had the courage to break relations with Syria, or take the relatively mild
step of calling home their ambassadors from Syria for consultations."
Possibly the Europeans, closer to the firing line of terrorism than the
United States, are forced to take the more pragmatic approach. That
argument crumbles, however, in the history of "deals" negotiated by
France, Italy and Greece with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Those efforts to stern terrorism within their borders have ultimately gone
up in smoke — literally.

Bedsheet Battle

An informed electorate is the bastion of democracy. We've all been
taught that ideal and others which lead to the conclusion that freedom
demands participation. So we salute those citizens who exercised their
franchise this week and voted in Tuesday's elections.
We also worry about those who didn't, or those who voted for "name"
candidates but ignored the extensive non-partisan portion of the
Michigan ballot. After examining the number of votes cast in each race,
one can only conclude that far fewer than 50 percent of those eligible to
vote cast ballots for the Michigan Supreme Court, Oakland County
Circuit Court, and various district court races, as well as the governing
boards of Michigan's three largest universities. Quite frankly, most
citizens voted party line in these obscure races, or simply looked at the
list of 24 candidates who vied for two Supreme Court seats and walked
away, shaking their heads.
It's time Michigan officials and voters faced reality. Fewer and fewer
of those eligible are using their privilege to vote. Of those who do, only a
handful are truly aware and knowledgeable of candidates' qualifications
for court seats and county-wide or state-wide education posts. Isn't it time
we changed the selection process for these positions?
Taking the decision-making out of the hands of the people and giving
it to the governor or the political party in power has its own risks. And it
removes another bit of democracy from the people. But a process in which
an appointment is recommended by peers, with merit hopefully weighing
more than political favoritism, should mean a better selection process and
better public servants.
This system has worked for our federal courts, and should be used for
many state offices that are currently placed before a confused electorate.

fter the several months of
relative peace that followed
the American raid on Libya,
the world has again focused its at-
tention on the terrorist threat. In
Karachi, terrorists who hijacked a
Pan Am jet, panicked and indis-
criminately sprayed the passengers
with gunfire. In Istanbul, another
group of terrorists burst into a
synagogue where they killed
twenty-three congregants. And now
Parisians are discovering the horrors
of terrorism, as a series of bombings
have left the French capital in
shock.
This spate of attacks has again
raised the question: "What can be
done to combat terrorism?" For Is-
rael, terrorism and the fight against
it are a way of life. ,For decades, Is-
raelis have lived under constant
threat of bombings, hijackings and
hostage crises. The Israeli govern-
ment has responded with a hard-line
approach, forbidding negotiations
with terrorists and launching pre-
emptive or retaliatory strikes
against them.
Now, faced with a rising level of
terrorist attacks on their own soil,
other Western nations must do the
same. The United States, as leader
of the free world, must take the lead.
A commitment to vigilance and
the prevention of terror — like that
in Israel — must be adopted by the
U.S. government. Security measures
must be upgraded, even at the cost
of delays in entering public build-
ings or in boarding planes. U.S. al-
lies must be persuaded to cooperate
more closely in the effort to root out
terrorist organizations and to
penalize the nations that support

Chris Gersten is executive director of the
National Jewish Coalition.

them
In addition, the United States
must learn'israel's lesson of devoting
adequate,' military resources to its
anti-terrorism effort. When the
gunmen on the Pan Am jet opened
fire OA the passengers, the men of
Delt4 Force — the American anti-
terrbrist commando unit — were re-
portedly in the air, on their way to

.

The U.S. must realize that
difficult operations must
`sometimes be mounted.

help prevent the carnage that oc-
curred. Pakistan's force, the only one
present, proved pitifully inadequate
to perform its task.
To be prepared to avoid a re-
currence of the Karachi fiasco, Delta
Force must overcome two major obs-
tacles. The first is distance: The
force's base in North Carolina is a
long way from the locations where
anti-American hijackings and hos-
tage crises occur. The second is the
reluctance of many pro-American
governments, such as the Pakistani,
to permit U.S. forces to conduct
anti-terrorist operations on their
soil.
To reduce the obstacle that dis-
tance presents, the air force should
acquire supersonic transport planes
(SSTs) to carry Delta Force members
to any destination. To reduce flying
time further, three separate units of
Delta Force could be stationed at lo-
cations around the globe — say in
North Carolina, in Europe and in
Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean —
ready to be flown by SST to any
crisis spot.
Overcoming the second obstacle
— obtaining permission for Delta
Force to operate on foreign soil — is