Usually the heaviest men on
board, they also steady the
yacht, keeping the center of
balance near its middle.
Yoel Sela debuted in inter-
national competition with the
first Israeli J-24 crew in June
1989, at the European Open
Championships held in Sar-
dinia, where they finished
35th out of 59. "We learned a
lot from that experience,"
recalls Mr. Tordjman. "After
all, that's what we went for."
With Mr. Sela, Eitan
Friedlander, and other
leading local seamen concen-
trating on Olympic competi-
tion this year, a national J-24
crew has been molded around
Austrian-born former world
champion Harry Mitter, 30,
with 37-year-old Yoram Dafni
manning the spinnaker,
Yuval Donskoy, 26, the mid-
dle man, Israel Peretz, 27, on
foredeck and Mr. Tordjman,

the helmsman.
In an effort to drum up in-
terest in sailing off the Israeli
coast, Mr. Tordjman and his
crew toured yacht clubs along
the U.S. Eastern Seaboard,
with a particular eye to
Jewish boat owners. With a
new marina — Israel's fifth —
to be opened in Herzliya, the
eastern Mediterranean is
presenting quite an
attraction.
Notes crew member Yoram
Dafni: "The future of the J-24
in Israel is looking brighter
all the time. There will soon
be four J-24s in Israel — it's
less physically demanding
than Olympic-class boats, and
most of our top yachtsmen
will be taking it up now that
the Olympics are over. You
watch — in a few years' time,
we'll be a world force in the
sport." ❑

WZPS

Officials Are Split
On Curbing Attacks

Bonn (JTA) — German
federal and state officials
have failed to agree on a
common approach to curbing
the recent upsurge in neo-
Nazi violence against for-
eigners.
Interior Minister Rudolf
Seiters said he was disap-
pointed that the interior and
justice ministers of the 16
German states and their
federal counterparts in Bonn
could not come up with
specific proposals at a
meeting last week.
Mr. Seiters and some of his
colleagues from the Chris-
tian Democratic Union
favored granting police more
powers to apprehend
suspects and bring them to
trial swiftly.
But most ministers from
the Social Democratic Party-
ruled states said the problem
was not legislation but
rather lack of resolve.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl,
meanwhile, has angrily re-
jected criticism by the head
of Germany's Jewish com-
munity that the government
had encouraged outbreaks of
nationalist violence against
refugees seeking asylum
here.
Ignatz Bubis, chairman of
the Central Council of Jews
in Germany, had accused the
government of failing to
head off violence from the
right-wingers as efficiently
as it had when the danger

came from the far left.
Mr. Bubis termed it scan-
dalous that neo-Nazi ac-
tivists were routinely
released shortly after being
arrested and showed up
hours later in new scenes of
violence.
Government spokesman
Dieter Vogel said Mr. Bubis
had "a rather unusual idea"
about what the government
was able to do. "The federal
government has from the
very beginning condemned
these acts by right-wing ex-
tremists with the greatest
sharpness and clarity," he
said.
In a Bundestag debate on
the situation last week,
many lawmakers warned of
parallels between the cur-
rent neo-Nazi attacks and
the Nazi mob that helped
pave the way for Adolf
Hitler's ascension to power
in 1933.
Hans-Jochen Vogel, a So-
cial Democratic leader and a
former candidate for
chancellor, pointed out that
the Weimar Republic did not
fail because of lack of laws
against violence, but rather
because too few politicians
were ready to stand up and
fight for democracy.
Germany's internal
security service, meanwhile,
reported that assaults on
foreigners have become
more frequent and more
brutal.

.

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