THE JEWISH NEWS

THIS ISSUE 60P

SERVING DETROIT'S JEWISH COMMUNITY

I

CLOSE-UP

MAY 12, 1989 / 7 IYAR 5749

UJA Leaders Push
Passage To Freedom

ALAN HITSKY

Associate Editor

weeks ago, Federation leaders an-
nounced pledges totaling $1.4 million
during the first three weeks of the
local campaign.
The UJA leaders said $19 million
has been pledged nationally, in-
cluding $3.5 million in cash. Lender,
who chaired the 1984 Operation
Moses campaign to help Ethiopian
Jews resettle in Israel, said, "My
sense is Passage to Freedom is ahead
of Operation Moses both in total and
individual giving at this time."
Journalists participating in the
press conference questioned the corn-
mitment of individual cities. San
Francisco has pledges of $1.1 million,
but plans to keep the funds for local
resettlement of Soviet Jews rather
than send the funds to the UJA.
San Francisco is one of seven "im-
pacted areas" which are expected to
receive up to 80 percent of the 40,000
Soviet Jews projected to emigrate this
year. The other six are

Passage to Freedom national
chairman Marvin Lender of Connec-
ticut and UJA President Stanley
Horowitz of New York this week
downplayed concerns about where
Soviet Jews are settled. During a
telephone press conference with
Jewish editors Monday, the two said
Israel's fundraising concerns have
been met.
Horowitz said an agreement with
the Jewish Agency delegates half the
campaign's $75 million goal to
overseas resettlement and half to
resettlement in the United States.
"More than half of the overseas com-
ponent will go to the Jewish Agency"
in Israel, Horowitz said.
The Jewish Welfare Federation of
Detroit made a commitment of $2.5
million to Passage to Freedom and
sent a $1 million cash advance to the
UJA in March. At a meeting two Continued on Page 18

Andover Debates
A Palestinian State

Solidarity
Forever

Many Detroit area
radicals and activists
in the 1960s were Jewish.
Some are still
trying to change the world.

ELIZABETH KAPLAN

Features Editor

Michael Bernstein offered
nothing but unkind words about
Israel.
Israelis violate Palestinian
human rights, he said. "The abuse,
the beatings, the shootings, the kill-
ings and the neglect are chronic."
But Jews, he said, will always find
justification for such actions. "I, too,
looked for it. But I couldn't find it.
"It's time to say yes to freedom,
yes to dignity, yes to liberty, yes to
justice and yes to an independent
Palestinian state."
He didn't believe his own words.
Bernstein was one of four
students who participated in a debate
Wednesday on "Should the U.S.
government support the creation of a
Palestinian state?" at Andover High
School in Bloomfield Hills.
He was the one of the few students
in the social studies class, which spon-
sored the event, willing to take the
position.
While Bernstein opposes the crea-
tion of a Palestinian state, he was
glad he had the chance to study the

question from a different perspective.
"I think it strengthens our own
views when we understand the other
side:' he said.
Other participants in the debate
included students Paul Yoon, Bryan
Schneider and Mike Dorfman, Rabbi
David Nelson of Congregation Beth
Shalom and Nabeel Abraham, a pro-
fessor at Henry Ford Community
College.
The first speaker, Yoon, said that
when Jews settled in Israel, "the
Palestinians were thrown out of the
land where their mothers and fathers
lived, and where they themselves had
lived." The result of their displace-
ment was violence in a land where
"people had once lived side by side."
Yoon recalled a recent State
Department report that cites Israeli
violations of Palestinian human
rights.
"Unfortunately," he said, "Palesti-
nians do have some rights. They have
the right to be thrown out of their
homes . . . the right to be shot at
without cause . . . they have the right
to be beaten by the Israelis.
"If the United States of America

Continued on Page 18