EDITORIAL Jail House. Blues The American public has great expectations from its prison systems. They must be secure, keeping convicted persons safely away from society, and they must be rehabilitative, returning model citizens to the general population. This sounds good in theory, but falls far short in reality, especially in the area of rehabilitation. Our Close-Up story this week on Page 24 gives a brief glimpse of life behind bars for some of the estimated 100 Jewish prisoners in Michigan correctional facilities. Activists are pushing a 1986 lawsuit through the U.S. Court of Appeals in an effort to guarantee religious rights for Michigan prisoners. The state has argued, suc- cessfully so far, that security concerns prevent the mixing of Jewish prisoners from Jackson's various complexes to form a minyan. We are not in a position to decide for the courts who is right. We agree with prison officials that security concerns must be para- mount, but we know there are gray areas between the rules and the reality in our prison facilities. We also agree with prisoner rights activists that religious ser- vices can be an important rehabilitation measure for those who even- tually will be released into the general society and for those who will spend the remainder of their days behind bars. The courts and the prisons must find a way to ac Complish - both goals. inger's 1975 pledge to Israel not to negotiate with the PLO until it recognized Israel's right to exist. There was no breach of this pledge because there were no political discussions. The content of the meetings was reportedly devoted to the security of the American em- bassy in Beirut and to the release of the U.S. hostages in Iran. Perhaps, but it is apparent that the United States used a loophole in the Kissinger pledge to its full advantage. It would seem that the Carter and Reagan administrations were not enthusiastic about the Kissinger pledge. They thought it restricted their room to maneuver in the Middle East. So they conducted hushed backstairs talks with the PLO. There may have been no negotiations per se, but the talks, especially since they were approved by the highest level of the State Department, did confer a certain legitimacy on the PLO. What is most disturbing about the 1978-81 PLO/U.S. talks is that they now undermine Israeli confidence in Washington. At a moment when Israel should know it can fully rely on the word of its strongest ally comes revelations that American officials broke the spirit, if not the actual letter, of an American pledge. As one Israeli official said, "The value of American commitments is rather low." Unfor- tunately, that is a train of thought that has followed American foreign policy since the Vietnam debacle. It is high time that the conduct of American foreign policy began to match the high-sounding principles upon which it is ostensibly based. Foggy Hypocrisy Things are not always what they seem to be, especially in the shadowy world of diplomacy and intrigue. A remarkable report in the Washington Post illuminates not only that these corners of human conduct are inherently suspect, but also one of the reasons why Israel does not fully trust the United States regarding the Palestine Libera- tion Organization. According to the Post, the American ambassador to Lebanon met with senior officials of the PLO 35 times between October 1978 and June 1981. These meetings were officially sanctioned by then- Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who confirmed them to the Post. They occurred at a time when the United States maintained an official policy of refusing to recognize or cooperate with the guerrilla organization. Vance has argued that the meetings did not violate Henry Kiss- LETTERS 'Protestant' Meeting Was Jews For Jesus The recent conference of evangelical Christians in Ber- muda received considerable notice in the secular and Jewish press and rather im- passioned responses from Jewish leaders. It was represented as a gathering of Protestant theologians con- cerned with the growing trend in mainstream denominations to abandon ef- forts to convert Jews to Christianity. In fact, however, the Willowbank Consultation on the Gospel and the Jewish People was instigated by the Jews For Jesus missionary group and related organiza- tions for the purpose of pro- moting their missionary 6 FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 1989 agenda. At least three of the 16 'theologians' who signed the "Willowbank Declara- tion" are either on the board of directors or council of Jews For Jesus: Dr. Vernon Grounds, Rev. Murdo MacLeod and Tuvya Zaretsky. When contacted at the Denver Seminary, Dr. Grounds, the conference chairman, stated that Jews For Jesus "together with other such organizations has been under pressure [because of] a movement within Protes- tant denominations to deny the necessity and legitimacy of any kind of evangelization of Jews." Dr. Grounds said that Jews For Jesus was one of a "number of organizations that decided it would be good to call this kind of conference" to respond to this movement. In contacts with the media Dr. Grounds never revealed the fact that he was a direc- tor of Jews For Jesus. Harry Genet, speaking for the World Evangelical Fellowship, the formal spon- sors of the conference, acknowledged that it was Jews For Jesus and Christian Witness to Israel (a British af- filiate of Jews For Jesus) who "encouraged" the W.E.F. to sponsor the conference. It doesn't surprise me that Jews for Jesus was behind the staging of this conference. Many Christian leaders have condemned their deceptive activities and, as Dr. Grounds said, they are feeling the pressure. I am also not sur- prised that what was, in fact, a conference of missionaries and their supporters who pro- selytize Jews would be pass- ed off as a meeting of Protes- tant theologians. Jews For Jesus and similar groups routinely engage in misrepresentation. For exam- ple, Tuvya Zaretsky changed his given name, Lloyd Carson, to his current one in order to sound more authentically Jewish. As for the conference declaration, I am disturbed by its approval of so-called "Hebrew-Christians" using Jewish religious rituals and giving these rituals Christo- logical symbolism. This is not just offensive to Jews, for the use of non-Christian religious worship practices is also con- sidered heresy by many believing Christians. I doubt that evangelicals would encourage "Moselm- Christians" or "Hindu- Christians" to incorporate the religious practices of Islam or Hinduism into their form of Christianity. Also, though the statement distances itself from historical Christian anti- Semitism, it nonetheless Continued on Page 10 Let Us Know Letters must be concise, typewritten and double- spaced. Correspondence must include the signa- ture, home address and daytime phone number of the writer.