Community Views
Editor's Notebook
!Clinton And Gore:
lip-Sliding Away
Putting Out The Fire
That's Burning Around Us
LEV RAPHAEL SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
JARY ROSENBLATT EDITOR
Bill
Clinton's
campaign theme
song was Fleet-
wood Mac's "Don't
Stop Thinking
About Tomor-
row." But judg-
ing from the
incoming presi-
dent's recent policies on Haiti
and the Mideast, perhaps
'Paul Simon's "Slip-Sliding
Away" would be more appro-
priate.
For all the excitement of a
new administration in Wash-
ngton, headed by two fellow
baby-boomers with whom I
eel cultural and ideological
ties, I can't help feeling disil-
lusioned already. And these
words are being written even
before Bill Clinton and Al
Gore have even been sworn
lin.
• For the last 12 years of
Reaganbush, I've grown ac-
customed to presidential mis-
speak which ranged from
memory lapses to lies. Did I
;expect otherwise from Bill
Clinton? Am I that naive to
answer yes?
But I recall hearing Candi-
date Clinton speaking out
against the Bush adminis-
ration's "cruel policy of re-
turning Haitian refugees to a
brutal dictatorship without
n asylum hearing." When
Mr. Clinton asserted that
his policy must not stand,"
felt a resonance with those
words that echoed back to im-
ages of Jewish refugees from
Germany being turned away
rom the United States by
resident Roosevelt.
Here, I thought when I
eard Bill Clinton's outrage,
is a leader who will have the
moral strength to do what is
right, even if it proves to be
politically unpopular.
• But in recent days, on the
ye of moving from outsider
the center of authority, Mr.
Clinton has reversed himself
— and seems to have at-
tracted little criticism amidst
all the hoopla surrounding his
inauguration.
• I don't want to sound like a
party pooper. I like Bill Clin-
ton and what I think he
stands for, but that doesn't
mean he shouldn't be held ac-
I i countable for his words and
) actions.
And the fact is that a few
=months ago Mr. Clinton said
that even Haitians judged not
to be political refugees would
be given temporary asylum in
the U.S. until the elected goy-
) ernment of Haiti was restored
to power. And now he is say-
` ing that he will let stand the
„----
standards applied by the
Bush administration to decide
whether an applicant for po-
i.
/
litical asylum has a genuine
fear of prosecution.
Candidate Clinton had
agreed with the federal court
which declared the Bush pol-
icy illegal. When did he
change his mind?
The Clinton suggestion to
expand the number of sites in
Haiti for processing applica-
tions for asylum does not
seem to take into account that
Haiti is ruled by a cruel mili-
tary dictatorship. Any Hait-
ian who officially declares
himself an opponent of the
government and seeks asy-
lum is, in essence, putting his
name on a Hit List.
To his credit, Mr. Clinton
has been working for an
Mr. Clinton
should be held as
accountable as
any other
elected official,
honeymoon or no
honeymoon.
es in jeopardy are those call-
ing for legalizing homosexu-
als in the armed services,
halving the deficit within four
years and cutting the White
House staff by 25 percent.
Then there's the Mideast,
and more specifically Candi-
date Clinton's promise to "put
an end" to the Bush adminis-
tration's "relentless pressure
on Israel." The jury's still out
on this one, but there is cause
for concern, even at this ear-
ly date.
That's because Mr. Clinton
chose Warren Christopher as
secretary of state and Antho-
ny Lake as national security
adviser, two Carter-era offi-
cials whom the pre 1.,rael
community views with cau-
tion. In addition, none of the
names on the pro-Israel shop-
ping list of appointees for key
foreign policy posts were
approved in the first go-
round.
At this point it appears
that Jerusalem will be happy
if the Clinton administration
just continues the Bush poli-
cy of keeping the peace talks
going. A far cry from the im-
age of a few months ago of
White Knight Clinton chal-
How about a few bars of "Slip-Sliding Away"?
agreement between Haiti's
ousted president and the mil-
itary regime that took control
more than a year ago. And it
is true that if tens of thou-
sands of Haitian refugees set
sail for the U.S., states like
Florida would face political
and logistical problems in
dealing with a huge influx of
poor black foreigners. But the
short-term answer is not to
force refugees back into the
jaws of tyranny, breaking
faith with American values
and laws.
Equally disturbing is that
the Haiti policy is not the only
area where Mr. Clinton has
been backtracking on cam-
paign pledges. Other promis-
lenging Evil Bakerbush in de-
fense of Israel.
I'm not suggesting that Bill
Clinton is a two-faced politi-
cian who will say anything
to get elected. But I do believe
that Mr. Clinton should be
held as accountable as any
other elected official, honey-
moon or no honeymoon, and
that we should not hesitate
to point out his unfulfill-
ed promises or broken
pledges.
The slogan credited with
getting Mr. Clinton elected
was "It's The Economy, Stu-
pid." Perhaps the slogan that
will keep him on his toes in
office is, "We're Watching, Mr.
President." LI
As a writer and
avid magazine
and newspaper
reader, I have
always liked to
follow opinions
and controver-
sies in the let-
ters columns of
journals I read. I enjoy well-
argued letters and unexpect-
ed tidbits of information I
sometimes learn from knowl-
edgeable letter writers. But
reading Letters to the Editor
in the Lansing State Journal
is often a depressing and
maddening experience for
me. The voices of narrow-
mindedness, ignorance and
unadulterated hatred crop up
far too frequently, making me
feel isolated in my mid-Michi-
gan home.
It would be a mistake for
me to sneeringly shrug off
such evidence of prejudice
and say, "Well, that's Lans-
ing, what can you expect from
a town that thinks it's a city?"
What can you expect from
what my parents would pun-
gently call in Yiddish a lo-
chovich?
A real mistake. Because
the bigoted voices I encounter
in the Journal sometimes
crop up in our supposedly
more sophisticated and tol-
erant Jewish community.
I'm thinking of a recent let-
ter in the State Journal in
which someone confidently
maintained that the perse-
cution of Jews and homosex-
uals in — as she confusedly
put it — "postwar" Germany
could not be compared. Why?
Because Jews were persecut-
ed for being Jewish, while ho-
mosexuals were persecuted
for "illegal and immoral be-
havior."
That letter writer seems to
imply that the persecution of
homosexuals — which in-
cluded harassment, incar-
ceration in concentration
camps, torture and death —
is acceptable. Or at least
more acceptable than perse-
cuting Jews.
To make such a statement
is to blame the victim, and we
Jews should be sensitive to
such rhetorical tricks, since
we have been falsely accused
by some writers of having
participated in our own
slaughter during World War
II, and even having encour-
aged it in some obscene way.
Jews and homosexuals
were persecuted and mur-
dered by the Nazis because
the Nazis were sick and full
Lev Raphael is the East-Lans-
ing-based author of Dancing
on Tisha B'Av and Winter
Eyes.
of hate. It is the behavior
and identity of the mur-
derers that counts, not the
victims, because the Nazis
targeted different groups
for discrimination, impris-
onment or death at differ-
ent times: Jehovah's
Witnesses, labor union
leaders, epileptics, women,
Catholics, Gypsies, Com-
munists, the mentally re-
tarded, Poles. Anyone could
have been crushed by the
Nazi Moloch for reasons of
"We Jews have to
be sensitive to
such rhetorical
tricks, since we
have been falsely
accused by some
writers of having
participated in our
own slaughter
during WWII, and
even having
encouraged
it in some
obscene way,"
policy. Anyone could be
made vulnerable and ruled
outside of the law.
Yes, homosexual activi-
ty was illegal in Germany
before Hitler. But the
Nazis made restricting and
punishing it an obsessive
focus of their perversion of
German law and life, just
as they scapegoated and
hounded Jews. In 1933
laws were passed to ban
Jews from the legal profes-
sions and civil service;
groups promoting homo-
sexual rights were banned
that same year. The 1935
Nuremberg laws eliminat-
ed Jews' civil rights, citi-
zenship, banned inter-
marriage and sexual con-
tacts between Jews and
non-Jews. That very year,
widened restrictions on ho-
mosexuals, such as ban-
ning gay bars, made it
more possible to legally tar-
get homosexuals for perse-
cution. As we know,
conditions for German
Jews grew steadily harsh-
er and ended in catastro-
phe but perhaps less
well known especially to
Jews is the parallel per-
secutions of homosexuals.
That sad history is well
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