UP FRONT

Egypt And Syria Reconcile,
Leaving Israel In A Muddle

GIL SEDAN

Special to The Jewish News

H

osni Mubarak's 24-
hour visit to
Damascus last week
seems to have achieved its
primary goal: a reconcilia-
tion with Syrian President
Hafez Assad, who never
forgave Egypt for signing a
peace treaty with Israel in
1979.
But the Egyptian presi-
dent apparently failed to
make immediate progress on
two secondary objectives:
drawing Syria into the Mid-
dle East peace process and
easing the enmity between
Syria and Iraq, each ruled by
a rival faction of the So-
cialist Ba'ath party.
Rather than blame Syria,
however, Mubarak lashed
out instead at Israel's acting
prime minister, Yitzhak
Shamir, during a news con-
ference in Damascus.
"Ever since Shamir came
to power, there is no hope for
a peaceful solution," the
Egyptian president com-
plained to foreign jour-
nalists.
Such tactics do not for long
divert attention from Muba-

rak's several agendas, which
could profoundly affect
Israel for good or ill. Much
depends on how his inten-
tions are read in Jerusalem.
Right-wing politicians,
such as Eliahu Ben-Elissar
of Likud, rushed to express
"deep concern" over Muba-
rak's reunion with Assad
after 12 years of estrange-
ment between their two
countries.
"We are facing a new
axis," warned Ben-Elissar,

If Israel fails,
Mubarak will move
toward the Syrian
option, with dire
consequences for
Israel, Rabin said.

who chairs the Knesset For-
eign Affairs and Defense
Committee and was Israel's
first ambassador to Cairo 10
years ago.
He was referring to the
possibility that Egypt and
Syria would get together
with Iraq, Jordan and the
Palestine Liberation Organ-
ization to revive "the east-
ern front against Israel."

But Ben-Elissar tempered
his warning. "I am not say-
ing that we should rush to
draw conclusions. But one
thing is sure: This is no time
to cut the defense budget,"
he said.
Former Defense Minister
Yitzhak Rabin sees the
situation somewhat diff-
erently. While he did not
want to minimize the poten-
tial hazard, the Labor Party
official suggested Mubarak
was signaling Israel to seize
the opportunity to bring
Syria into the peace process
within the framework of the
Camp David accords.
If Israel fails, Mubarak
will move toward the Syrian
option, with dire conse-
quences for Israel, Rabin
said.
Syria favors an interna-
tional peace conference of all
parties to the Middle East
conflict, in which Israel
would be confronted by the
five permanent members of
the U.N. Security Council,
including the Soviet Union,
as well as the PLO.
"These are the only two
choices; there is no third,"
Rabin declared.
Ben-Elissar's fears and
Rabin's hopes relate to the

Mubarak greets the PLO's Arafat before a meeting.

long term. Neither Camp
David nor an international
conference are on the Arab
agenda at the moment.
At the moment, Arab dip-
lomats are busy traveling
between Arab capitals try-
ing to arrange a new Arab
summit meeting that would
include Iraq, Jordan and the
PLO. They would like it to
convene in Baghdad,
possibly before the end of
this month.
If the summit mate-
rializes, there is little doubt
it will unite around one of
the few subjects the Arabs
can unite over: the menace
of Israel, or more specifically
at this time "the dangers of

Soviet Jewish immigration
to the Arab world."
The road to Baghdad,
however, is not an easy one.
Assad and President
Saddam Hussein of Iraq are
still arch-enemies:
Saudi Arabia and Jordan
are trying to pick up the
mediation effort where Mu-
barak left it last week.
Egypt itself, while paying
lip-service to Arab unity,
may not , want to rush to
Baghdad, where Saddam
Hussein clearly aspires to a
leadership role in the Arab
world.

To register a group in the
directory, print or type the
following information on one
side of an 81/2x11 page: 1)
meeting place (city and
state, plus street address if
constant); 2) contact person,
address and phone number;
3) a brief description of a
typical Rosh Chodesh
celebration.
Mail to Jewish Women's
Resource Center, National
Council of Jewish Women
New York Section, 9 E. 69th
St., New York, N.Y. 10021,
or call Alicia Driks (212)
535-5900.

tion providing psychological
care to Holocaust victims,
The AMCHA award,
which does not constitute
reparations, marks the first
overt gesture of East Ger-
man aid to Holocaust vic-
tims. The former Commu-
nist regime accepted no
responsibility for the Nazi
crimes, saying East Ger-
many became a national en-
tity only in 1949, after the
end of the Holocaust.

East Germany
Makes Pledge

A Tel Aviv University
educator has just published
Israel's first teacher's guide
to sex discrimination. She
and He in the Classroom, by
Judith Abrahami-Einat, is
intended to help teachers
avoid perpetuating sexual
stereotypes.
Israel is at least 10 years
behind the rest of the world
in awareness of sex discrim-
ination, Abrahami-Einat
says. "Most people don't
even know what sexism

means, or are even aware
that discrimination exists
here."
Abrahami-Einat's resear-
ch shows that in Israel, girls
and boys are steered into
sex-typed occupations, and
that sex discrimination
begins in the cradle.
By the time students are in
junior high, girls are steered
toward traditional "women's
work," while boys are en-
couraged to study engineer-
ing and the sciences, she
says.
In her book, Abrahami-
Einat cites speaking with a
group of school counselors
about the need to channel
girls into non-traditional
studies. The counselors rais-
ed numerous objections, pro-
testing that joining "male"
courses would make the girls
lonely and embittered, pre-
vent them from finding
husbands and impair their
ability to function as wives
and mothers.

❑

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

ROUND UP

CARE Celebrates
44th Anniversary

CARE, the international
relief and development
organization, is celebrating
its 44th anniversary today,
May 11. On this date in
1946, the first CARE

the 1948 and 1956 wars and
subsequent development
projects, continued for more
than 30 years.
Today, CARE distributes
food to 30 million impover-
ished men, women and chil-
dren in 37 countries.

Rosh Chodesh
Groups Are Sought

An Israeli girl in the 1940s holds a
kosher CARE package.

.

packages, issued as part of
the Marshall Plan, arrived
in Le Havre, France.
Several years after the
first CARE packages arrived
in Europe, CARE began
working in Israel. That
work, including relief after

Rosh Chodesh, the celebra-
tion of the new moon and the
beginning of the new Heb-
rew month, traditionally has
been a women's celebration
observed with ritual, gather-
ing and discussion.
Now, the Jewish Women's
Resource Center of the Na-
tional Council of Jewish
Women's New York section
is compiling a Rosh Chodesh
Group Directory, for which it
is seeking submissions.
The directory will be a na-
tional, international and
local geographic list of Rosh
Chodesh groups. It will in-
clude information about
each group, as well as
meeting dates, location and
contacts.

New York (JTA) — The
new East German govern-
ment has followed up its
April 12 declaration of a
moral responsibility for the
crimes of the Third Reich
with a monetary pledge to
Jewish victims of the Holo-
caust.
East Berlin has announced
a stipend of $3.65 million to
AMCHA, an Israeli founda-

Its Herstory,
Not History

Compiled by
Elizabeth Applebaum

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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