/—'

they say; gave Israel to the Jews. This is no
more negotiable than keeping kosher or ob-
serving Shabbat.: Subsequently, their posi-
tion is, "You give up your life rather than
give up the land'," Rabbi Tolwin explained.
A second group took to heart the words
of Yitzhak Rabin himself. "Never give up
the land," he had said repeatedly.
A third group never could come to terms
with Mr. Rabin's attitude toward religion,
with his apparent understanding that there
could be a Jewish people without Torah. "He
showed he really didn't have a grasp on
what the Jewish people is," Rabbi Tolwin
said, and so some dismissed what he had to
say about everything else.
Michael Drissman was on the steps at
Wayne State University in 1967 when he
got into a discussion anyone who knows him
today would find incongruous. He was tout-
ing the need to sit down and talk with the
Arabs. He thought they were rational. He
thought they really wanted peace with Is-
rael.
Today, he explains, "I was reading so
much junk from the Arabs that I had begun
to believe it."
Then he discovered a new truth. "I
learned that the Arabs wanted all of Israel,"
he says. "I learned my viewpoint had been
wrong. And I changed it."
Change is an understatement. Today, Mr.
Drissman is head of the local chapter of the
Jewish Idea, an organization whose policies
reflect those of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.
Rabbi Kahane called for the expulsion of
Arabs from Israel.
"It's a terrible thing," Mr. Drissman said
of the assassination. But he is angry that
few, if any, of those thousands mourning
the late prime minister have shed a single
tear for other Jews who have died in recent
months. Since the signing of the peace
treaty, Arab terrorists have killed more than
160 Jews, he said. "Yitzhak Rabin's blood
is no redder than theirs."
Mr. Drissman did not grow up in an Or-
thodox or politically right-wing home. For
many years, he was "oblivious to Israel."
But these days he is one of the most vis-
ible spokesmen against what he calls "the
so-called peace process."
He pickets. He dis-
,
- tributes fliers. He leaves leaflets.
His passion is seeing the continued exis-
tence of a Jewish state in Israel, and that
leaves no room for the PLO or Arabs un-
willing to make an oath of allegiance to the
State of Israel. "It's like any other democ-
racy," he says. "If you don't support the gov-
ernment, you leave the country."
He believes "Israelis are so tired of war
they're willing to gamble on a piece of pa-
per signed by the Arabs." But in doing so —
in giving up land won in war, in believing
the Arabs really want to coexist with a Jew-
ish state — Israelis are in fact "rationaliz-
ing their own suicide." ❑

THE JEWISH NEWS

Vol. CVIII

No. 1 0

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©COPYRIGHT 1995 DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Table Talk

Jane Sherman and Larry Jackier
chat with Yi,tzhak Rabin.

ane Sherman, co-chair of Mir-
acle Mission I:
"We could have been telling
him about the group. He was on
the phone to Washington the entire
time I was sitting there. There was
something going on. It must have been
the Oslo negotiations. He carried that
phone around all the time."

j

Larry Jackier, Miracle Mission II
co-chair: "We were probably talking
about the meaning of the Mission be-
ing in Israel. He was excited about all
of these people on one mission.
"I was trying to be extremely sen-
sitive to his schedule. I kept saying to
him, 'How is your time? Do we need
to move the program faster?' He said,

`Don't worry. Everything is fine.'
"He was very relaxed and he was en-
joying it. Hundreds came to get his
photo, and he didn't mind. He felt it
was like a family gathering, being with
the Detroit community. He wanted to
make it last." ■

`I Think We All
Kind Of Failed'

PHIL JACOBS EDITOR RUTH LITTMANN STAFF WRITER

0 ne of the major questions on the minds of De-
troiters in the wake of the assassination of
Yitzhak Rabin:
"What now?"
Bob Aronson, executive vice president of the
Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit:
Rabin successor Shimon Peres "will need the support of the
Israeli people to make peace work. Once we get past the mourn-
ing, it's up to Israel and the world's Jews to make it work.
"The fact is, we feel a tremendous sense of loss with Is-
rael. We have to make more commitments to Israel as De-
troiters.
"My fear is that 20 years from now people won't remem-
ber this grief we're feeling. That would be tragic, and that could
happen if we don't strengthen our connections with Israel."
Larry Jackier:
"It seems to me that the whole key is where we go from here.

In terms of the political landscape, it's a difficult thing to
predict.
"In terms of the social fabric of the Jewish people, it
may be more significant in the long run. I think we have
to pull together, and I think a lot of us who have been
silent, and watched things without reacting to things that
bothered us, have to speak out now. "We have reached
as a people a level of rhetoric that is unacceptable in civilized
society, particularly in the Israeli press. Even in the
Anglo press, though, the epithets and the terminology and
the references have gotten completely beyond reasoned dis-
course.
"The rhetoric, I'm concerned, leads to the behavior. By not
saying anything about it, you legitimize it, and now we're all
responsible by remaining silent.
"I think we all kind of failed. We have to learn from this and
go forward. It's one of the lowest points in Jewish history."

