ell(
itive" is problematic. "For ex-
ample, the Arabs in these books
were depicted as people who
saved Israeli children lost in the
desert, Professor Cohen ex-
plains, "teaching that the 'good
Arab' is the Arab who is good
for me," rather than a person
with needs and wants and an
agenda of his own.
In many ways, this challenge
has been met more successful-
ly by the Israeli arts and media.
First of all, they began tackling
the subject earlier, essentially
in the wake of the Lebanon
In Israeli children's
literature, Arabs
were long portrayed
only as "thieves,
terrorists...and
highjackers."
War. Books like David Gross-
man's The Yellow Wind (a pre-
intifada exploration of life under
the occupation) and films like
Avanti Populo (a tragi-comedy
about Israeli and Egyptian sol-
diers lost together in the Sinai)
restored the human dimension
to the cardboard image of the
Arab.
At the same time, Israeli
writers and filmmakers, from
Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua to
Assi Dayan, produced intro-
spective works that scaled the
image of the omnipotent sabra
down to human size. A trend
toward debunking long-held
myths has also emerged in aca-
demic studies, some of which
"portray the sabra ... as a pa-
thetic character searching for
the past, or as a brutal macho
1994 PARK AVENUE
Europe as World War II was
breaking out and, because
they were Jewish, they were
sent to concentration camps.
Currently, only survivors
who were classified as
"stateless" and went
through resettlement camps
are eligible for reparations.
Mr. Princz, 70, whose
parents and siblings were
killed in the camps, is suing
the German government for
$17 million.
The Senate resolution was
sponsored by Sen. Frank Laut-
enberg, D-N.J. E
a .
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'Where You Come First"
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Washington (JTA) — In a
show of concern for a sur-
vivor of the Holocaust, the
U.S. Senate passed a resolu-
tion backing Hugo Princz in
his quest to gain reparations
from the German govern-
ment.
Mr. Princz, whose case
against the German
government is currently go-
ing through the legal process
,here, has not received
reparations because, during
the war, he was an Ameri-
can citizen.
He and his family lived in
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type, and the Labor-movement
establishment as callous and
manipulative."
The Palestinians, for their
part, have contributed to un-
dermining deeply imbedded
stereotypes by sending master
communicators to feature in the
Israeli media.
"It may be easy to hate a
knife-wielding masked man,"
writes Mr. Ali-nog, "but it's hard
to hate people like Sari Nus-
seibeh, Ziyad Abu Zayyed,
Hanan Ashrawi, and others of
their ilk — all educated, digni-
fied, articulate people dressed
in Western suits."
Since the signing of the ac-
cord, the Israeli media has gone
a step further, interviewing peo-
ple who are readily identified
as the former captains of the in-
tifada. Handsome young men
outfitted in sports shirts and
leather jackets, they often speak
fluent Hebrew (which viewers
know was learned during long
stints in Israeli prisons) and
convey a mirror image of the Is-
raeli's own distress by describ-
ing a desire for peace mixed
with lingering distrust and con-
fusion on the Palestinian side.
Perhaps those shared feel-
ings of confusion are precisely
the key to future understand-
ing. In any case, as Mr. Aimog
notes, even the disappearance
of stereotyped "Arab ene-
my" has its drawbacks, for it
will deprive Israeli society of the
"strong adhesive that has made
it into a family."
Just as Americans, having
lost the "glue" of the communist
threat, replaced it with other
demons — from Saddam Hus-
sein to the Japanese economic
juggernaut — so Israelis will
probably find another object on
which to focus their frustrations
and fears. It might even be one
another. ❑
Senate Backs Case
Against Germany
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