ANN ARBOR
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Competing for attention on the Diag are an Arab Student League display and Tagar's burning "school bus."
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98 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1988
SUSAN LUDMER-GLIEBE
Special to The Jewish News
ORCHARD
LIGHTING
CENTER
0 °L •
Tensions In The Middle East
Add Heat To U-M's Diag
hen tensions rise
in the Middle East
they seem to heat
up as well in the Midwest,
especially at the University of
Michigan. "I think that on
this campus, which is fairly
political, politics aren't han-
dled productively, especially
on this (the Arab-Israeli)
issue," said Libby Adler, 21, a
political science major from
Rochester, N.Y.
"There are tensions on cam-
pus. Some things are threat-
ening to Jewish students and
at the same time other things
are offensive to Arab stu-
dents," said Adler. .
In the past month alone,
U-M has been the scene of a
demonstration where the
Israeli government has been
compared to the Nazis;
charges and counter-charges
of anti-Semitism and racism
have been traded; acerbic
written exchanges have ap-
peared in the Michigan Dai-
ly; and name calling has
become common. "Things are
dichotomized," said Adler.
The most recent incident
reflecting the charged cam-
pus climate occurred Nov. 14,
when the right-of-center
Israeli student group Tagar
("The Spirit of the
Challenge") erected a wooden
school bus on the U-M Diag
commemorating the Oct. 30
bus attack that killed an
Israeli woman and her three
children. Tagar had original-
ly painted a slogan on the bus
that read: "Stop Arab Ter-
rorism."
"The reason we used the
word (Arab) was for political
reasons. It's not just Palesti-
nians who oppose Israel," ex-
plained Tagar president
Keith Hope. "It's like the
term Arab-Israeli conflict."
But the phrase became a
rallying point. It was con-
sidered offensive and racist by
a number of students and two
. formal complaints against
Tagar were filed with the
university, charging
discriminatory harassment
against Arab and Arab-
American students.
The slogan was subsequent-
ly painted over. It now says
"Stop All Terrorism," and the
suits have been ruled moot
because the Diag is a free
speech area. "I have no jurid-
siction over the Diag," ex-
plains Cynthia Straub, in-
terim student policy ad-
ministrator who handles the
student discriminatory
harassment policy. "But I
spoke to the president of
Tagar and the words were
changed and an apology was
issued in The Daily."
That was not the end of the
affair. Several student groups
asked the Michigan Student
Assembly to pass a resolution
condemning Tagar and to
withdraw MSA recognition. It
would mean, among other
things, a loss of funding and
campus privileges. Tagar is
one of several formally-
recognized Jewish student
organizations involved with
issues affecting Israel.
On Nov. 22, the MSA made
four requests of Tagar. "We
want them to show that
they're sincere about their
apologies," said Michael
Phillips, MSA president. Ac-
cording to Phillips, Tagar
members were asked to at-
tend a racism workshop by an
Arab MSA representative; to
take down the bus; to
apologize officially in writing
in The Daily, The Record and
the Ann Arbor News; and to
participate in a bucket drive
to collect funds that would go
to the minority affairs office
on campus.
"We're not doing it," said
Laura Cibul, who's been with
Tagar for the past three years.
"We apologized in The Daily;
we submitted a formal
apology to the MSA before
they asked for it. And the bus
isn't coming down; the bus
isn't moving."
Keith Hope added that
whatever Tagar does will not
be sufficient. "We're still
called racist," he said. "I
think that the Arab students
hate the pro-Israel students.
You can feel it; you can see it
in their eyes."
A number of faculty and
students felt that the MSA,
acutely attuned to racism pro-
blems, was caught in the mid-