Help Wanted!
"Just watching the news is
more traumatic for our children
than coming out here," said Tzip-
pi Floresheim as youngsters
worked all around her to prepare
another hilltop protest site. "Peo-
ple abroad think these demon-
strations are over a political
disagreement, but we feel that
we're headed for a new holocaust.
So the demonstrations are more
a catharsis for our children than
a trauma. At least they see that
we're doing something."
Other mothers speak of the ed-
ucational value of "teaching chil-
dren to love their land and that
sometimes they must fight for
what they love."
But Dr. Kadman suspects that
the demonstrators bring their
children to potentially violent
events because their presence has
the desired effect — if not on the
broader public then at least on
the soldiers facing them.
Indeed, before long the debate
had spread from involving chil-
dren in demonstrations to em-
ploying women soldiers to remove
them (along with their mothers
and female protesters in gener-
al). That controversy was
sparked by film clips of female
conscripts — who are no more
than teen-agers themselves —
openly weeping as they carried
out their tasks.
"Our girls were not drafted
into the army for this purpose,"
a former commander in the
Women's Corps argued hotly on
the radio. But Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin soon silenced such
complaints by shaming their pro-
ponents into consistency. "The
feminists demand that women be
allowed to be fighter pilots but
oppose their being used to evac-
uate [settlers]," he sneered at a
meeting of the Labor Party leg-
islators.
Besides, young women soldiers
are not the only tender souls in
the Israeli army. "When we
reached the demonstration site
and saw the hundreds of families
— children, women, and babies,
people tied with handcuffs to
stones, buildings and vehicles —
we were shaken," a 19-year-old
paratrooper reported in the af-
termath of one protest. "I signed
up for an elite combat unit and
find myself facing a crying little
child. We'd rather return to corn-
bat duty in Lebanon."
Similar sentiments were
voiced by soldiers during the in-
tifada, when they spoke of feel-
ing "humiliated" by having to
chase stone-throwing urchins
down blind alleys. Policing
demonstrators, they argued then
(and argue now), is not a task for
which they were drafted or are
trained. Indeed, after a meeting
with legal and law enforcement
officials Sunday, Mr. Rabin de-
cided that from now on, only po-
licemen will be used to vacate the
settlers from their strongholds
(while soldiers guard their
perimeters).
Yet the question remains
whether protesters, whatever
their cause, could not make their
point just as forcefully without
involving children in their strug-
gle. "Every demonstrator will tell
you that he's fighting for the sake
of his kids, but that's not the
point," said Dr. Kadman. "What
we need is a wall-to-wall 'social
contract' that leaves children out
of social and political struggles.
This is not an attempt to gag
protest," he stressed. "Israelis
have every right to air their griev-
ances on the streets and hilltops.
But if they're really concerned
about their children's welfare,
they should leave their kids at
home." ❑
Bosnia, Again
Jewish leaders — in the face of the Balkans tragedy
see the Holocaust's lessons slipping away.
Curriculum Facilitators/Speakers
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Training for MJAC Curriculum Facilitators and Speakers BureaL.
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No charge. To register, call: 810/356-2123
Training for new and veteran
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JAMES D. BESSER WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT
T
he U.S. Holocaust Memor-
ial Museum, for the first
time, has directly ad-
dressed an issue in today's
tumultuous world. Last week,
diplomatic representatives from
around the world gathered at the
museum for a service intended
to express ecumenical horror at
the "ethnic cleansing" that con-
tinues to ravage Bosnia.
The week before, both Houses
of Congress voted to lift the arms
embargo on Bosnia, a stinging re-
buke to the Clinton administra-
tion. In the Senate, all nine
Jewish members — eight De-
mocrats and one Republican —
voted with the GOP majority; in
the House, support for the con-
troversial action among Jewish
members was strong, though not
unanimous.
Both events reflect something
just below the surface of Jewish
activism: more and more, Jewish
leaders are afraid that the
lessons of the Holocaust have
been lost to a world that seems
unwilling to take chances to stop
genocide.
Jews, like others, do not have
solutions to the quagmire in the
former Yugoslavia, which deep-
ened this week with a Croatian
offensive and resulting tidal wave
of refugees. But increasingly,
BOSNIA, AGAIN page 110
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