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Where Are We
When Israel Needs Us?

GARY ROSENBLATT

Editor

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The headline in
last Friday's Bal-
timore Evening
Sun read like a
sick joke: "Jews
dance near site
of Arab killings."
But this was
not a textbook example of
how to twist the reality of an
event — Jews celebrating
Simchat Torah at the Western
Wall in Jerusalem — into the
equivalent of dancing on the
graves of one's enemies. This
was a real story in
Baltimore's afternoon daily.
And the lead sentence
amplified the theme: "Jews,
some waving Israeli flags,
danced and sang in a re-
ligious festival by the Wail-
ing Wall early today near
the bloodstains of 21 Pales-
tinians shot to death by
police Monday."
Such reporting makes the
United Nations look objec-
tive.
A call to the copy desk of
the Evening Sun on Monday
morning elicited a sympa-
thetic response to my com-
plaint, but the deed had been
done. The fact that
thousands of Jews
celebrated the most joyous
day on the Jewish calendar
at Judaism's most holy site,
as they do each year, was
made to appear as some kind
of ghoulish rejoicing over the
deaths of 21 Palestinians.
The temptation for me is to
target the media for such
biased reporting, and leave
it at that. Or better yet, to
suggest that the case against
Israel is as unfair as that
headline.
But the Arab-Israeli
dilemma is not a black and
white issue, much as we'd
like it to be, and the current
Persian Gulf crisis, com-
pounded by Washington's
fragile alliance with a
number of Arab states, has
made the Mideast an even
more complicated issue.
On one layer, it is easy to
see why Israel has responded
as she has —refusing to co-
operate with the Nited
Nations investigative mis-
sion. Israel believes that the
world is biased against her,
and the United Nations is
the most flagrant example of
a world obsessed with con-
demning — if not destroying
— the Jewish state.
Israeli officials view the
UN as an international co-

alition of hypocrisy which
ignores the human rights
abuses and violence of most
nations while focusing on
Israel. When was the last
time the daily killings in
Lebanon were the subject of
a UN resolution?
And Israel believes that
the United States is selling
its soul to maintain its coali-
tion of Arab states opposed
to Iraq. is Washington
prepared to abandon the one
democracy in the Middle
East to bolster some of the
most illegitimate, repressive
and undemocratic states in
the world? This is a case
where the facts have become
secondary. At this point, few
care who started the
violence at the Temple
Mount last week. More im-
portant are images and
symbols. And they portray
Israel as the bully, killing
fleeing Palestinians, and
then refusing to say we're
sorry.
Of course the UN resolu-
tion condemning Israel was
one-sided,' never mentioning

If all of our rhetoric
about "We Are
One" is to have any
meaning, then we
have to stick with
Israel when times
are rough.

the stone-throwing by a mob
of Palestinians on Jews
praying at the Western
Wall. But many of us would
have preferred - that Israel
had not used live ammuni-
tion to quell the disturbance.
Many would have hoped
that, after the fact, Israel
would haaTe apologized for
the bloodshed, or would have
cooperated with the UN in-
vestigation. Not to mention
the timing of announcing
new housing projects for
East Jerusalem when the
Bush administration is
angered at Israel.
But Israel's government
has chosen to make a state-
ment, whether we American
Jews like it or not. And that
statement is one of defiance.
It is to assert the in-
dependence of the Jewish
state and to tell the UN, the
Nvorld, and even the United
States, to ge stick it in their
collective ear.
And that. leaves me with
the distinctly mixed feeling