- Raton, producer and host of South Florida's Jewish Horizon radio show. "As long as you tell people where the money is going, there's no problem," said Mr. Friedson, who often interviews YESHA representatives and supporters on his radio show. Denying YESHA has misused funds, Mr. Umansky said the West Bank and Gaza Jewish set- tlements need money for hu- manitarian needs such as medical clinics, religious schools and daycare centers. Most Jew- ish organizations, including the United Jewish Appeal and Jew- ish National Fund, do not sup- port projects in the West Bank and Gaza. And the Israeli gov- ernment provides the settlements only bare necessities, Mr. Leiter said. Noting that the West Bank and Gaza settlements have re- ceived more than their fair share of government financial support over the years — including hous- ing incentives, low mortgages and tax breaks — Mr. Rubin said YESHA is exaggerating its needs to elicit sympathy from North American Jews. "Saying they have been short- changed by the Israeli govern- ment is just a fund-raising tactic," he said. "The only places that have been shortchanged in the past 15 years have been the poor neighborhoods inside Israel." YESHA needs North Ameri- can Jews' money primarily to fi- nance its political activities, including civil disobedience, Mr. Rubin said, noting that Peace Now plans to soon demonstrate in support of the peace process. While opposing Israeli gov- ernment policy is not new to Jew- ish American organizations — Peace Now, for example, often spoke out in North America against the Likud government — the right-wing has taken the de- bate in the U.S. to an unprece- dented level, Mr. Rubin said. "(Likud leader Benjamin) Ne- tanyahu, (former Defense Min- ister Ariel) Sharon and (former Prime Minister Yitzhak) Shamir are lobbying against the Israeli government in Congress," Mr. Rubin said. "It's not that you shouldn't criticize — but you have to know where to draw the line." YESHA not only exaggerates its humanitarian needs, but also cn twists the facts by claiming most Israelis support it, Mr. Rubin said. = In Israel outside the West cc) — Bank and Gaza, 70-80 percent of . the Jews are "sympathetic to the settlers," Mr. Leiter said. c) In the West Bank and Gaza, oC where Labor received 18 percent • of the votes in 1992, 95 percent w cm of the settlers support their coun- u-' cil's civil disobedience campaign, f-- he added. But Israeli newspapers re- ported last week that a large mi- nority of settlers do not support 44 Riot police cart away a right- wing protester from an Aug. 8 demonstration near a Tel Aviv intersection. YESHA's civil disobedi- ence campaign. Some Israelis see the settlers as "crazed fanat- ics" who pose a danger to the country's security, Mr. Friedson noted. And many American Jews buy into this label. "The problem is that not enough people from here have met people from there (the West Bank and Gaza settle- ments)," Mr. Friedson said. "Jewish organiza- tions typically do not in- clude visits over the Green Line during their missions (to Israel). "There are yuppies and professionals living (in the West Bank and Gaza settlements). The settlers are normal peo- ple." Mr. Leiter, for one, projects a rational image, decrying violence, noting he often reads the columns of left-wing journalists and declaring he is more devot- ed to keeping the Jewish state a democracy than to achieving his goal of insuring Israel does not give up any land. "If this is what the people want, then I will support it," he said. "But this is not what the people want." In addition to Mr. Leiter's so- cial dexterity, which his Israeli colleagues are only now starting to acquire, he displayed his knowledge of the conduct of civil disobedience last year when he published Crisis in Israel: A Peace Plan to Resist. "When I told my Israeli col- leagues, they looked at me like I fell from the sky," said Mr. Leit- er, who served as "mayor" of He- bron's Jewish community from 1989 to 1992. "As an American, I know what civil disobedience is all about. Growing up, I used to see students blocking streets at the University of Scranton to protest the Vietnam War." American Jews — including Mr. Leiter and Rabbi Shlomo Riskin of Efrat, former spiritual leader of the Lincoln Square Syn- agogue in New York — are help- ing lead the settlers' civil disobedience campaign, accord- ing to The New York Times. This is one of the major prob- lems with the settlers' campaign, said Hirsh Goodman, editor-in- chief of The Jerusalem Report. "Many of the (American-born settlers) never served in the Is- raeli army and treat it like the Vietnam protesters treated the (National Guard)," Mr. Goodman said. "They don't understand the special relationship (between Is- raelis and their military)." ❑ Facts On The Ground A history of Israeli settlements in the territories. s DAVID HOLZEL SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS eventeen days after Israel won the Six- Day war in June 1967, it annexed east Jerusalem. Not long after, it began establishing settle- ments in the areas it had cap- tured from the Arabs — the Sinai peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Allon Plan of 1967 set out the ruling Labor Party's policy on the territories, according to Kenneth Stein, Middle East his- torian at Emory University in Atlanta. The government be- lieved settlements enhanced the country's security. It decided "Is- rael's military frontier must be the Jordan River," Dr. Stein said. "So the government estab- lished a belt of semi-military set- tlements along the western bank of the Jordan," Dr. Stein said. The settlements were "facts on the ground," bricks-and-mortar statements of Israel's determi- nation not to be be forced back to the pre-1967 lines. In September 1973, the gov- ernment adopted the Galili doc- ument, which provided for the David Holzel is assistant editor of our sister publication, the Atlanta Jewish Times. growth and development of set- tlements in the West Bank, on Gaza's border with the Sinai and in the Golan, Dr. Stein said. The Yom Kippur War in Oc- tober 1973 dealt a death blow to the plan. "It was shelved to show Israel's striving for peace," Dr. Stein said. The wars of 1967 and 1973 re- leased a spirit of messianism in Israel, particularly among the Orthodox minority. By the Yom Kippur War, a new political force was taking shape — Gush Emu- nim, or Bloc of the Faithful. Or- ganized in 1973, the single-issue group called for expanding set- tlements and permanent Israeli control of the territories. "Israel was traumatized by the '73 war," Dr. Stein said. Gush Emunim combined Israeli fears for their security in a hostile Arab sea with national-religious ac- tivism. "It was a hard concept to combat if you were a leftist at the time." And the Labor government of Yitzhak Rabin compromised with Gush Emunim, rather than fight. This marked a turning point in Israel's settlement of the territo- ries. It had been Labor's policy to generally avoid settling in dense- ly populated Arab areas. Gush Emunim took its settlements to the spine of the West Bank's hill country, where the majority of Palestinians lived. In 1977, when Menachem Be- gin swept Labor from power, the transition was complete. Two days after his election, Begin was at a West Bank army post where settlers had been removed from the makeshift settlement of Elon Moreh. 'There will be many more Elon Morehs," Begin declared. And he kept his word. For Be- gin, the West Bank, or Yehudah Veshomron (Judea and Samaria) were not occupied territories, but liberated Jewish lands. As such, they were to be settled in their entirety, never to be handed over to Arab sovereignty. Begin's government began a massive construction program and offered incentives for Israelis to move to the territories. While religious settlers made the head- lines, most who took up the invi- tation were secular Israelis looking for cheap housing. They settled in bedroom communities just across the Green Line that separated Israel from the West Bank before 1967. "From Begin onwards, you have increasing population and growth of settlements," Dr. Stein said. "It became a nasty issue in U.S.-Israel relations." By the 1980s, Israel was spending hundreds of millions of