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Call 354-6060 o 00 13740 W. 9 Mile FOOTSTEPS PODIATRY CLINIC Next to Oak Park Post Office Medicare and most insurance plans accepted as payment in full. • 52 Friday, December 5, 1986 • • THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS • erusalem — It doesn't happen very often that journalists themselves, or rather the articles that they write, become news. The series on the Jewish Agency, "Where Do All Our Dollars Go?" published this spring in the Baltimore Jewish Times and The Jewish News, raised quite a row when it appeared in booklet form in June at the Jewish Agency Assembly in Jerusalem. In addition, the series was the subject of arti- cles and commentaries in the American Jewish press as well as i _ n the Israeli media. Now that the dust has cleared a bit, it is time to react to the commentaries, or comment on the reactions — whichever you prefer. Personally speaking, this notoriety has been a mixed blessing. Certainly every j our- nalist wants his work to be recognized. It's definitely satisfying to see one's name in the papers or to see that what one writes has an im- pact. But in this case, along with recognition came brick- bats thrown by a few Israeli politicians who accused me of being part of an "anti- Zionist" conspiracy led by certain American Jewish philanthropists. As a former American who has lived in Israel for the past 16 years, part of that time as a journalist, I have had a good vantage point from which to view recent develop- ments in Israel - Diaspora rela- tions. Over the past few years, I have realized that many American Jews want to become more involved in Israel through their com- munity's Jewish federation. But they are no longer as will- ing to give their contributions to the United Jewish Appeal, which in turn hands the money over to the Agency, without asking questions about where it ends up. Such people have become increasingly frustrated be- cause they don't understand how the Agency functions or how it relates to the World Zionist Organization — which runs the Agency together with the Diaspora fund- raising bodies. And they have become increasingly annoyed because they can't always get straight answers to their questions from Agency or WZO officials. I felt that a series of articles focusing on some of the major issues now being discussed in these bodies would help Diaspora Jewry understand how the Charles Hoffman is a jour- nalist based in Jerusalem who has written widely on Israel- Diaspora relations. system works. I believe that this aim has been vindicated by the fact that thousands of copies of the series have been circulated in Jewish com- munities all across North America and even by national organizations like the UJA. I fail to understand why providing this information, which is otherwise not available, to the American Jewish community — a com- munity that poured over $8 billion into Israel through the Agency/WZO over the years — should be denounced as "anti-Zionist." The act of "heresy" for which I have been accused was apparently in revealing information damaging to the interests of "Many delegates were astounded by some of the revelations in the articles. And I was astouned that they were astounded." the political establishment that feeds off the Agency and WZO. Likewise, some leaders of the philanthropic establish- ment were upset that I had ungraciously stripped away some of the myths that they had carefully woven around the Agency through years of fund-raising campaigns. The series was never in- tended to encompass the en- tire scope of operations of the Agency and WZO, which spend about $500 million a year on a wide variety of ac- tivities such as summer pro- grams in Israel for Diaspora youth, the establishment of new rural settlements and the care of new immigrants. Those who have criticized the series on this score fail to distinguish between jour- nalism, which points a spotlight at distinct segments of our problematic world, and public relations, which, if it admits the ex- istence of problems at all, always obscures them in the warm and hazy glow of past glories and achievements. Even though I expected the series to raise some eyebrows — at least among those with the stamina to plow through the long and complex articles — the magnitude of the con- troversy it aroused surprised me as well as others. Why did this happen? The first rule of survival for any political establishment under attack is to ignore or downplay controversy stirred up by the media and carry on as before once it blows over. For some reason, the heads of