100%

Scanned image of the page. Keyboard directions: use + to zoom in, - to zoom out, arrow keys to pan inside the viewer.

Page Options

Share

Something wrong?

Something wrong with this page? Report problem.

Rights / Permissions

The University of Michigan Library provides access to these materials for educational and research purposes. These materials may be under copyright. If you decide to use any of these materials, you are responsible for making your own legal assessment and securing any necessary permission. If you have questions about the collection, please contact the Bentley Historical Library at bentley.ref@umich.edu

April 19, 1991 - Image 29

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 1991-04-19

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

BACKGROUND

HELEN DAVIS

Foreign Correspondent

his week's celebration
of Yom Ha'atzmaut,,
the 43rd anniversary of
Israel's establishment, was
given a particular poignancy
by the terrible human
tragedy now unfolding on
the frozen steppes of nor-
thern Iraq.
Kurdish suffering finds an
echo in Jewish memory, stir-
ring ghosts not long laid to
rest, opening wounds that
have still not healed.
The terror-stricken flight
from danger, the closed
borders, the death of the old
and young, the pious mur-
murings of regret from the
international community .. .
These are all too familiar to
Jewish ears.
But as Jews watch the
Kurdish tragedy being
played out — live on their
television screens, unlike
any Jewish catastrophe ever
was — they are suspended
between outrage and relief.
For there, but by the grace of
God, go we.
There are many lessons for
Jews to learn from the Gulf
war and its aftermath.
Foremost among them is a
renewed appreciation of the
physical existence and
military strength of the
State of Israel.
If those pioneering Zionist
leaders had not seized the
moment and slipped through
that small, momentary
crack in history to establish
their own state in 1948, un-
told millions of hapless Jew-
ish refugees would have
been thrown on to the uncer-
tain charity of the interna-
tional community.
Instead, even as the
friendless Kurds are
perishing because all doors
are closed to them, Israel is
continuing to provide a
haven for thousands of
distressed Jews from
Albania, from Ethiopia,

Brave New Fuzzy World

As we celebrate Israel's founding, it is well to
remember how precarious (and precious) freedom is.

from Bulgaria and, of course,
from the Soviet Union.
The abandonment of the
Kurds should serve as a
sobering reminder to the
Jewish world that, while it
wrestles over approaches to
peace and territorial issues,
Israel remains a beacon of
hope for the helpless.
The Jewish state may not
be as lovely as its early
pioneers envisioned, but it is
faithfully fulfilling the vital
mission of gathering in the
exiles; offering a sense of
security and identity; pro-
viding a cast-iron guarantee
of Jewish survival.
Despite all the imperfec-
tions of the Jewish state, it is
chilling to ponder what
might have been if the Jew-
ish nation was still stateless,
still impotent in the face of
Jewish suffering and
powerlessness.

It is a moment when Israel
should acknowledge its pro-
found debt to the unswerv-
ing support and solidarity of
Diaspora Jewry. Equally, it
is a moment when the
Diaspora should acknowl-

The cold, hard fact
remains that the
war against
tyranny and
oppression has
ended on a
dispiriting note.

edge its debt to the Jewish
state.
This is a time for sober
reappraisal, a time to halt
the legitimate differences
and bury the discord, albeit
temporarily, which wracks
the Jewish world. This is a

time to rejoice in the exis-
tence of a state which throws
open its doors to the huddled
Jewish masses.
The end of the Cold War
has not yet lived up to its
promise of harmony and
peace. The world is still a
cauldron of powerful inter-
ests and dangerous conflicts,
where even the benign in-
tentions of the powerful
West fail to protect the weak
from the brutal aggressor
and the psychotic mega-
lomaniac.
It is a world which still
abandons the powerless and
friendless to their fate, a
world in which peace groups,
which rise up in righteous
indignation at the prospect
of confronting Saddam Hus-
sein, are strangely silent at
the prospect of his victims
being slaughtered in their
tens of thousands.

This is not, of course, a
wholly novel experience for
the Jewish people, but amid
their comfort, affluence and
security in the "newly
enlightened" West, the
plight of the Kurds is a time-
ly reminder of their own re-
cent history.
Even the most realistic
and hard-headed are temp-
ted to believe that it could
never happen again, that the
democratic, liberal West
would never abandon Israel
or allow anti-Semitism free
rein on its soil.
They may be right, but the
Jewish world takes such
presumptions for granted at
its own peril.
It is apparently still possi-
ble, in the case of the Kurds,
to excuse inaction as inter-
ference in Iraq's internal af-
fairs — as though the defeat
of Hitler would have made it
impossible for the Allies to
stop the continued slaughter
of Jews in the Nazi exter-
mination camps on the
grounds that such action
would have infringed Ger-
many's sovereign integrity.
Of course, Israel is not
Kuwait and the Jews are not
the Kurds. The Jewish state
is capable of defending itself
and it has loyal friends and
allies who offer vital polit-
ical and diplomatic support.
Yet the cold, hard fact re-
mains that the war against
tyranny and oppression has
ended on a dispiriting note.
What began as an unam-
biguous battle between the
forces of darkness and the
forces of light has produced a
fuzzy, gray compromise.
The vacilation of the UN
and international aid and
rescue organizations, the
apparent indifference of
Arab leaders to the fate of
the Kurds and Shi'ites, the
hand-wringing refusal of the
West to become involved —
for whatever reason — sug-
gests something less than a
brave new world order.
What it looks like is the

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

29

C

Back to Top

© 2024 Regents of the University of Michigan