EDITORIAL]

I

Better Late Than Never

Finally, the Bush administration has
given its okay for up to $10 billion in U.S.
loan guarantees to Israel. All it took was a
change of government in Jerusalem and
the very real threat of a similar change at
the White House to get past previous Bush
opposition.
What this all goes to prove is the
stranglehold that politics have on issues
that should be decided strictly on the basis
of humanitarian concerns.
The Soviet Jews in Israel who will be the
primary beneficiaries of the loan guar-
antees were as worthy of the aid last year
as they are today. The fact that they were
made to suffer economically by the loan
guarantee delay is no small matter that
can now be overlooked in the euphoria of
the moment.

Both President George Bush and former
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir
share the blame for what transpired. Mr.
Shamir has already received his comeup-
pance from Israeli voters. American Jew-
ish voters should not be taken in by Presi-
dent Bush's new — and politically expe-
dient — attitude toward the guarantees
and to Israel.
The same goes for Prime Minister Yit-
zhak Rabin. While his policies helped pave
the way for the Bush turnaround — for
which he should be congratulated — Mr.
Rabin must guard against being lulled into
thinking that Israel now has a friend in the
White House.
The truth is otherwise. The president is
still playing politics, even if, for the mo-
ment, they work out in Israel's favor.

According to the Detroit
News, "the Bush administra-

The world has become too much of a
global village to ignore what happens
elsewhere. Saddam could once again
threaten Western oil supplies, which, like
it or not, are vital to the American econo-
my. For Jews, of course, the question of
what to do about Saddam also involves the
question of Israel's security.

Yet how much can the U.S. do? Do we
also get involved on a grand scale in Cam-
bodia and Somalia, nations where ethnic
and ideological differences have led to even
more horrific conditions than exist in
Bosnia? What about Haiti?

In a complex world, there are no simple
answers. Still, we have no choice but to
grapple with the ambiguities. Both Gov.
Bill Clinton and President George Bush
need to articulate clear foreign policy
guidelines. What they say about events
overseas should be listened to as closely as
what they say about our needs at home.

Registering Concern

Amidst the surge of interest in the presi-
dential election and speculation that the
Jewish vote will be pivotal this fall, a new
study has found that one in five American
Jewish adults is not registered to vote.
That figure is far smaller than the 50
percent of Americans not registered, but it
may surprise those who believe that vir-
tually every Jew votes in elections.
That myth is a holdover from decades
past when Jewish immigrants and their
children looked upon voting as almost "a
religious rite — a sacred, meaningful and
obligatory act," said Steven M. Cohen, the
demographer who conducted the study for
the Synagogue Council of America.
As Jews assimilate into the mainstream
culture, he said, that "political hyperac-
tive" involvement has dissipated.
Much has been written about the fact

6

FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 1992

of rather recent origin. Last 4
year, an affiliate of the ICRC,4
the Palestinian Red Crescent
magazine, Balsam, publishe4

We Must Stop
New Holocaust

Foreign Tricks

The Great Political Dirty Trickster has
struck again, and the 1992 presidential
campaign has been irreversibly changed.
No, Richard Nixon has not come back to
haunt us. Nor has the Bush campaign
managed to come up with another ignoble
Willie Horton-type theme.
This time it was that capricious bugaboo
known as foreign affairs. Just when the
campaign seemed to be turning on how the
candidates stood on domestic issues, up
pops 'Bosnia-Herzegovina and, once again,
Saddam Hussein.
The American economy may be pressing,
but it's just too hard to ignore Serbian mor-
tar shells falling on Muslim Slays trying to
bury their civilian dead, Serbian detention
camps that sound more like concentration
camps, and Saddam again claiming that
Kuwait is the 19th province of Iraq. Now
that the United States stands alone as the
world's only super power, the burdens of
leadership weigh even heavier.

LETTERS

that while Jews make up only a small frac-
tion of the electorate, they hold greater in-
fluence at the ballot box because of the
Electoral College. Ninety percent of
American Jews live in 13 states, and those
states have a combined total of 272 elec-
toral votes — just over half of the 540 total
Electoral College votes necessary to elect a
president.

The Synagogue Council of America voter
registration project has set up a toll-free
hotline (800-927-7469) to provide informa-
tion and assistance. Locally, the Jewish
Community Council is conducting voter
registration drives.

Jewish electoral clout depends on Jewish
voter involvement. That's the way a
democracy works, and it is up to each of us
to. make our vote count.

an article alleging that the
Jews had fabricated the fic-I1
tion of the Holocausl to ob-
tain "big sums of compensa-
tion" from West Germany d
which they used to create the
Jewish state.
At that time the ICRC
president would not comin'
himself to any action against
the magazine or the group-4
because it was a "political"
controversy "that would en-
danger the ICRC work in the . 1
field."
We can only hope that thy.,
ICRC's soul-searching will
result in action as well as 4I

tion has confirmed that
Croats and Slavic Muslims
are being tortured and killed
in Serb 'detention camps' . . ."
The News also reports that

while the United States has
condemned the "practice of
ethnic cleansing," it has "no
special plans to make an
issue of the detentions."
During World War II, the
Roosevelt administration
made no issue of German con-
centration camps either. We
American Jews cannot sit by
and allow another holocaust
to take place. We must all
write to President Bush and
urge him to call a U.N.
Security Council meeting and
consider air strikes on the
Serbian military.
We Jews have never
forgiven those who did
nothing to stop the Nazi
holocaust. If we do nothing
about the Serbian holocaust,
will we be able to forgive
ourselves?

Miriam Sh-erbin
Farmington Hills

Soul-Searching
And The Red Cross

Rebecca Irvin, deputy head
of communications at the In-
ternational Red Cross/Red
Crescent writes (July 31) that
ICRC inaction during the
Holocaust was its "greatest
failure, one which still causes
soul-searching in Geneva to-
day."
In explaining the organiza-
tion's failure to speak out
against the Holocaust, Ms. Ir-
vin states that the Red Cross
"feared that a denunciation
would endanger" its work
with prisoners of war.
This soul-searching must be

.

words. Perhaps the organiza-
tion might see its way clear to '
recognizing and granting af-
filiation to the Magen David 1
Adorn in Israel: Of course,,

that might endanger its work
in the field.

Barry Mehler
Big Rapids

Yeshiva Cuts Need
Closer Scrutiny

In its July 31 editorial, The Al
Jewish News seemed to en-
dorse the actions taken by the '
board of directors of Yeshiva
Beth Yehudah to ease the
school's financial woes. While 0

the board should be com-
mended for "digging in its
heels," its approach to cutting
the school's budget needs
closer scrutiny.
Basically, the board's 41
answer to the need for budget._
cuts is to lay off about 15 peo-'
ple — teachers, principals and . 1
secretaries. Practically all of "
these employees are over age
50, and all of these older
employees have at least 20
years of service with the
Yeshiva. Apparently, the
Continued on Page 10

