The Future
I

Despite black-Jewish

vitriol and some

hesitation toward a

Middle East peace,

5754 may

have been a

seminal year.

ARTHUR J. MAGIDA

SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

nternationally, 5754 was a year
bracketed by cautiously optimistic
handshakes, riven by vestigial and
long-simmering distrust and blood-
ied by the sort of terror that is, by
now, almost inescapably linked
with the Middle East or with long-dis-
tance spinoffs to events in that roiling re-
gion:
Ten months after Israel's prime min-
ister somewhat reluctantly shook the
hand of PLO chief Yassir Arafat at the
White House, he stood almost on the
same spot in late July and gave Jordan's
King Hussein a much wanner, more gen-
uine handshake.
But in the intervening months, Israel's
relations with Mr. Arafat were marked
more by suspicion than good faith. And
slaughters, primarily in a Hebron
mosque by an Orthodox zealot and of
Jewish buildings in Buenos Aires and
London, meant that the Middle East had
not escaped its cyde of homicide and fear.
Nationally, the Anti-Defamation