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Question The Safety
Of The UHS Buses
"Oil leaking all over engine, dash lights out, rear
brake shoes out of adjustment, gear box leaking,
exhaust leaking."
This isn't the description of a clunker surviv-
ing a Michigan winter. It is, instead, a state of
Michigan vehicle inspector's recent report of Unit-
ed Hebrew School Bus No. 131, a vehicle that has
been "red-tagged," meaning it needed to stay off
the road until repairs were made.
During the 1992-93 school year, at least 28 oth-
er UHS buses also were "red-tagged." The state
says it is investigating whether "red-tagged" bus-
es were on the road, unrepaired.
These vehicles were probably on the road, per-
haps carrying your children, when they picked
up the defects that qualified them for red tagging.
Jewish Federation officials were unable to spec-
ify how many clients and institutions they serve
with the buses, the total number of students they
transport, how many were Jewish and how many
were unaffiliated with Jewish operations, and
how much money is spent repairing "red-tagged"
buses.
They said they did not have that information
at hand.
We recommend, therefore, that if you are con-
cerned about the safety of your children on a UHS
bus, write down its number and call the people
we did in search of answers.
These are the names of the people who might
be able to answer your questions about the safe-
ty of these buses: They include Federation Plan-
ning Director Larry Ziffer, 642-4260; and Bruce
Schjolin (pronounced Shay-leen), executive di-
rector of UHS Transportation, 399-0880.
Yes or no, is my child's bus safe?
Letters
Justifying
Terrorism
When I received news of the
Hebron massacre, I can not tell
you the sadness that I felt in my
heart when it became clear
where and by whose hand this
act of terror took place. The sad-
ness was only magnified by the
attempts of some to justify this
act of terror.
As a Jew, I can not accept
Israel Needs To Face
Its Settlement Dilemma
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said it best. The
situation in the West Bank settlements is "an un-
necessary time bomb."
Hearings and investigations on the Hebron
massacre have shown disturbing evidence that
scheduled Israeli security to protect the Muslim
worshippers was not in place. Guards who were
supposed to be on duty allegedly were napping.
Then there's the issue, also revealed at the hear-
ings, that Jews are allowed to enter the cave with
their weapons. A military member of the panel
investigating the massacre publicly asked why
weapons were needed during prayer.
What these hearings will only do is provide
more evidence that the rules governing the more
radical fringe of settlers should not be the same
as for everyone else.
Many settlers choose to live in the territories
because they seek a different way of life than they
know from the cities. Some of these reasons are
religious; some are not. But overwhelmingly, these
are good, decent people.
Not every settler has tefillin in one hand, an
automatic weapon in the other, like the major me-
dia seems to enjoy picturing. But the haters, the
ones who share the same publicity as those who
hate us, are effectively dousing the small light of
peace with their invective.
Nobody here in America has the tight to tell Is-
rael how to live, how to act. We've said that be-
fore. When the goal of many of your neighbors
is to see that you don't exist, then the day-to-day
life of an average citizen is something that a Jew
living in American suburbia cannot judge.
Israel and only Israel really understands what
is happening between its more extreme settlers
and the Arabs they live among. It's for these peo-
ple to work out.
Our only word is that it must be worked out.
This is an issue that goes beyond a desperate Dr.
Baruch Goldstein's tragic actions. It's more than
just allowing Jews to tote guns into prayer ses-
sions. And they do so because they're afraid not
to.
Defenders of Dr. Goldstein have said that the
Arabs on the other side of the cave have taunt-
ed Jews, calling for their deaths even as the Jews
were in prayer. If this is true, then the Arabs also
have been carrying "bullets" into religious ser-
vices. They don't kill physically, but they hurt and
harm emotionally. And maybe they contributed
to Dr. Goldstein's rage.
Issues such as carrying weapons into worship
must be addressed. But so do the larger, more
global issues for the area. The issue of the settle-
ments won't solve itself positively unless the Ra-
bin government, the settlers and the Arabs work
together. If this doesn't happen, then the ex-
tremists on both the Arab and Israeli sides get
what they want: more bloodshed and more de-
tails to untangle in the way of the work that hap-
pened on Sept. 13.
— — —
WIIAT1AZULp_I -r
'TAKE TO GET
ARAFAT - TO
FINALLY
CONV•AN
T
c•
ERRorel S
I
ISRAE L?
weeks or months before Ki Tis-
sa, during the time when at
least 33 Jewish innocents were
murdered by 33 different Arab
murderers.
Was she able to light her
Sabbath candles on the weeks
when the pregnant woman was
killed, or the father and son, or
the poor student?
One becomes resigned to the
fact that the non-Jewish world
righteously condemns terror-
ism on both sides. One would
hope that at least the Jewish
world would remember that on
one side it is an official, ac-
knowledged, encouraged poli-
cy. On the other, we see the
Israeli government and Jewish
leaders tripping over them-
selves to condemn and apolo-
gize for the unauthorized acts
of one fanatical. individual.
We are sometimes our own
worst enemies.
Claire Arm
Southfield
Transferring
Populations
Dr. Baruch Goldstein:
Hero or villain?
any justification for someone to
walk into a house of worship
while its members are on bent
knee with head bowed in
prayer, to gun them down in
a cold-blooded act of genocide
by a so-called sensitive man.
This was the act of a fearful
hate-filled, self-righteous indi-
vidual, not someone who had
learned from the Torah and
Talmud. For in the end, to jus-
tify such a terrorist's action by
one of our own is to give justi-
fication to those who would
commit such acts against us.
Frank Russ
Farmington Hills
Where Was Outcry
For Jewish Deaths?
I note with interest that
Sharona Shapiro began to weep
and beat her breast on Shabbat
Ki Tissa, in atonement for mur-
dered souls (March 4 issue). She
struck the match but could not
kindle the Sabbath lights that
day.
I wonder to myself why she
did not start to beat her breast
It's more politically correct to-
day to plot to evict Jews from
Judea than to even think about
resettling Judea's Arabs. Hu-
manitarians used to win Nobel
Prizes for arranging just such
transfers — they uprooted huge
populations, to reduce or elim-
inate ethnic friction and war —
but now, for many Jews, if only
in respect to the Arabs, the sub-
ject has become unspeakable.
Someone whispers "cattle
cars," and we shudder and fall
silent.
This reflex seems to short-cir-
cuit the brain. Both history and
Torah point to a solution to the
unsolvable, an answer to the
prospect of endless Arab-Jew-
ish conflict, but the spectre of
the Nazi way of doing things
doesn't let us even consider bet-
ter ways.
If Jews are supposed to en-
lighten the world, Israel needs
to show it how to manage a nec-
essary transfer.
It's a shame before the gen-
tiles that we continue, so
unimaginatively, to prolong
both our own and another peo-
ple's pain.
Mike Maim
Detroit