OPINION

CONTENTS

How To Respond To The
Conspiracy Of Silence

EDWARD ALEXANDER

Special to The Jewish News

R

ecent polls purporting
to reveal the views of
U.S. Jewish leaders on
trading "land for peace" and
negotiations with the Pales-
tine Liberation Organization
are sure to inflame debate
among Israelis over the ex-
tent to which Diaspora (prin-
cipally American) Jewry has
the right to intervene in
Israeli decision-making con-
cerning security and foreign
policy.
This debate, begun after
Israeli acquisition of Judea,
Samaria, and Gaza as a result
of the Arab aggression of
1967, has been carried on
with increasing intensity
since May 1977, when the
Israeli electorate deprived the
Labor Party of what had
begun to seem its perpetual
ownership of Israeli govern-
ment. From that time, the
Israeli left, with a few abbera-
tions and exceptions, has ad-
vocated Diaspora Jewry's
right of intervention and the
Israeli right has disputed it.
The left has argued that,in
the words of Israeli novelist
Yael Dayan, "as long as inside
Israel there is division, there
is no reason why the same
division cannot be exported,"
and that foreign policy
disagreements there should
be reflected and openly ex-
pressed among Diaspora
Jews. The right has held that
(as American politicians like
to say) disagreements about a
country's foreign policy
should cease at the water's
edge, and that dissident
cabinet ministers who seek to
marshall constituencies in
Manhattan and Los Angeles
they cannot command in
Israel violate the democratic
principle of collective cabinet
responsibility.
Both sides in this debate, in
fact, claim to be the more tru-
ly democratic. The left says
that not only Israel's majori-
ty but also its minority
should find a voice among
Diaspora Jews, and indeeed
more than a voice. "I do not
see," says Labor Party activist
Nimrod Novik, "a distinction
between advocacy of a certain
position and mobilizing sup-
port for that position."
The right asserts that for
the left to call on American
Jews to "save Israel from

Edward Alexander is
professor of English at the
University of Washington.

itself ' by publicly urging
the State Department to im-
pose on Israel policies rejected
by her electorate is to under-
mine the basic democratic
right to self-determination.
The left argues that the
large financial contributions
and active political support of
Diaspora Jews entitle them to
participate in the determina-
tion of Israeli policy, in-
cluding such matters as the
fate of the administered ter-
ritories. The right insists
that, from the ethical point of
view, the problem of the
Palestinian Arabs is ex-
clusively the problem of
Israeli Jews to decide, since
concessions to the Arabs in-
volve immense risks to them
alone, and not to Jews abroad.
The left maintains that
sharp disagreements bet-
ween, for example, Likud's
Yitzhak Shamir and Labor's
Shimon Peres on foreign
policy must not be confined to
Israel. "Yes," Peres has said,
"an American Jew has the
right to express himself on an
issue affecting even Israeli
security." The right retorts
that the fractiousness of the
Israeli cabinet already has
been so effectively exported
that, in the words of Israeli
diplomat Meir Rosenne, "we
Jews have managed to con-
vince the world that the
reason there is no peace today
is not because of Arab intran-
sigence, but because Shamir
does not agree with Peres!'
Both sides espouse the
metaphor of world Jewry as
an organic unity, but differ
widely in their symbolic
geography and location of the
organism's interdependent
parts.
The left claims that Israelis
need the tutelage of Diaspora
Jews in formulating policies
because the Jewish people is
partnership between its
physical presence or body in
Israel and its impressive
spiritual resources, its soul, in
the West. The right responds
that, for countless genera-
tions, millions of Jews longed
for Zion precisely because,
like the poet Yehuda Halevi,
they imagined that • while
their bodies were in the West,
their hearts and souls were in
the East. To assume that
power and national sovereign-
ty undermine the Jewish
spirit, says the right, is to re-
ject Zionism.
Many Diaspora Jews,
unable to decide between
those Israelis who counsel
them to support the Israeli

Continued on Page 11

15

DETROIT

Caring
Committee

SUSAN GRANT
A Temple Israel group
has fostered helping hands.

24

CLOSE-UP

Everything Old
Is New Again

24

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
Faces and places that shaped
Detroit Jewish history.

49

BUSINESS

Wild Things

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
Offbeat collections and exhibits
make this bookstore extraordinary.

53

SPORTS

Card Sharp

NEAL D. ZIPSER
Sports cards have become
investments and a big draw.

61

ENTERTAINMENT

The Write Stuff!

ADRIEN CHANDLER
Ex-Detroiter Bruce Rubin's
"Ghost" opens this weekend.

49

FINE ARTS

Remington STEEL

63

STEVE HARTZ
Using metal and imagination,
a Detroiter creates masterpieces.

77

LIFESTYLES

Hillel's Jewel

CARLA JEAN SCHWARTZ
Jeweler Howard Tapper begins
a two-year term at school.

DEPARTMENTS

33
39
44
78

Inside Washington
Insight
Synagogues
Engagements

83
84
87
118

Single Life
Births
Classified Ads
Obituaries

CANDLELIGHTING

63

8:52 p.m.
Friday, July 13, 1990
Sabbath ends July 14 10:01 p.m.

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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