THE JEWISH NEWS
SERVING DETROIT'S JEWISH COMMUNITY NOVEMBER 1, 1991 / 24 CHESHVAN 5752
SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS
Sharpton's Tour
Visits Michigan
CLOSE-UP
NOAM M.M. NEUSNER
Staff Writer
T
here is a joke making
the rounds in the Jew-
ish community. "If
you've got Saddam Hussein,
Yassir Arafat and Al Sharp-
ton in a room, and you've got
a gun with two bullets, what
do you do? Shoot Sharpton
twice."
Mainly because of his
leadership role in this past
summer's events in Crown
Heights, the Rev. Sharpton
has won the enmity of most
American Jews.
The Rev. Sharpton, in
Michigan this week for a
whirlwind tour, spoke at the
University of Michigan, at a
Detroit church, in Grand
Rapids and on a bevy of
radio talk shows and televi-
sion interviews.
He also consented to an ex-
clusive interview with The
Jewish News, where he
discussed his role in the
Crown Heights violence and
the future of black-Jewish
relations.
"The Crown Heights affair
was not a planned strategy
by me or anyone else," he
said, referring to accusations
Rev. Al Sharpton
that he used a traffic acci-
dent in Brooklyn to advance
his own cause.
The burly Rev. Sharpton
says his concern was for the
family of Gavin Cato and for
the black community, which
he said suffers under "social
apartheid."
"People follow what is
needed in their lives," he
said. "If we were not filling a
leadership void, no one
would follow us. No one has
that much charisma."
Not everyone thinks so.
"Sharpton is successful in
his own circle because he
knows how to use a tragedy
Continued on Page 24
Israelis Uneasy
As Talks Begin
HELEN DAVIS
A
N
S KEPTICS
Reconstructionist Jews
seek to put
"new wine in old bottles."
Page 26
Foreign Correspondent
M
adrid — The small
army of purposeful
young men, each
wearing a white lapel badge
with a blue square, invaded
the Husa Princesa Hotel in
downtown Madrid this week.
They were definitely not
there for a good time.
They were members of the
formidable Israeli security
team which had traveled to
the Spanish capital to secure
the headquarters of the
Israeli delegation before its
members arrived for the
Middle East peace con-
ference.
While the hotel strove to
maintain a semblance of
normality, there was no
doubt that these were ab-
normal times.
The well-tailored Israeli
security team, augmented
by knots of uniformed, heav-
ily armed Spanish guards,
scrutinized every new ar-
rival and X-rayed every item
that guests and visitors car-
ried into the lobby.
It was an exercise designed
to deter extremists, to pre-
vent the bombs and bullets
of political rejectionists and
political fundamentalists
from transforming the peace
conference into a bloody car-
nage.
By the weekend, the ad-
vance party of Israeli ex-
perts, technicians and
spokesmen were running a
smooth operation in the
press center they had set up
inside the hotel, but the at-
mosphere was grim, the
natural ebullience of Israelis
Continued on Page 33