I
Prime Minister Rabin: Taking a risk.
Tom Dine: Loses his job.
the previous 11 1/2 months also
brought their own headlines.
In the Mideast, the intifada
took a new turn as Palestinians
stopped using rocks and began
wielding knives and guns. The
death toll to Israeli military per-
sonnel, police and even civilians
rose unacceptably high even
within Israel itself.
Many terrorist acts were in
response to Israel deporting 415
suspected leaders and allies of
Hamas, the Islamic fundamen-
talist group dedicated to exter-
minating Israel_and Judaism.
In April, government officials
closed border checkpoints at
Gaza and the West Bank to keep
out Palestinians who worked in
Israel. The decision dramatically
decreased terrorism in Israel
proper, but exacerbated civil
unrest among West Bank and
Gazan Palestinians by worsen-
ing unemployment.
After being prodded by the
Rev. Jesse Jackson and others to
let Jews freely exit their coun-
try, Syrian officials gave assur-
ances regarding such depar-
tures. (Mr. Jackson was involved
as part of his efforts to heal the
rift between blacks and Jews.)
By year's end, though, few
Syrian Jews had actually been
able to leave.
After a seven-year struggle to
prove that he was not "Ivan the
Terrible," the infamous killer at
Treblinka, John Demjanjuk pre-
vailed in an Israeli court. The
former Cleveland auto factory
worker remains in Israel as a
group of Holocaust survivors
tries to persuade Israeli courts
that he should be retried since
he was a death camp guard
responsible for the deaths of
Jews.
Terrorists And
Hate Crimes
Another year of
incarceration as
the Pollard story
continues.
iolence and terror
waged by Islamic fun-
damentalists rose.
Perhaps the worst
such incident came in February
when followers of Egyptian cler-
ic Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman
were charged with bombing one
of New York's two World Trade
Center buildings.
Meanwhile, terrorist attacks
in Egypt, mostly against
tourists, increased dramatically.
Former Israeli U.N. Ambassa-
dor Benjamin Netanyahu, who
was an eloquent spokesman on
U.S. television during the
Persian Gulf War, admitted he'd
had an extramarital affair. At
the time of the disclosure, he
was seeking the chairmanship of
the Likud party — which he got
despite the scandal.
And in November, Pope John
Paul II denounced the resur-
gence of hate crimes and anti-
Semitism since the fall of the
Berlin Wall. During his regular
weekly audience in the Vatican,