Community Views Editor's Notebook Chernobyl Threats Ten Years Later The Lessons Of War, And Of Making Peace BORIS KARASIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS ALAN HITSKY ASSOCIATE EDITOR I he accident that took the Three-Mile Island Unit 2 power plant out of service inMarch 1979, less than three months after its commer- cial operation began, was a com- plex one. Many factors, both human and mechanical, con- tributed to its seriousness. People soon understood that there was a great environmental problem. The total cost to clean up and dispose of the radioactive materials exceeded $1 billion. About 2.1 million gallons of wa- ter were contaminated with ra- dioactive materials during clean-up operations. The plant is still shut down. On April 26, 1986, an accident occurred at the nuclear power plant in Cher- nobyl, a .small north Ukrainian city. The N4 Reactor Core overheated; an explosion and meltdown oc- curred with the chance of a chain reaction. The So- viet government announced the accident three days later. It happened on a Friday and for two days, people in Kiev, the next big town to Cher- nobyl, did not know about the dangers of the contamination. The 3 million residents of Kiev used the Dnieper River water for swimming and fishing. Scandinavian scientists used sensitive equipment to determine the extent of the threat. Quanti- ties of radioactive material es- caped from the reactor building, drifting with atmospheric circu- lation over Scandinavia and East- ern Europe. After some days, Moscow Ra- dio and the official newspaper Pravda gave some information. The official report was: 31 deaths; 203 hospitalized for acute radia- tion sickness; 135,000 evacuated. On April 30, 1986, a radioac- tive cloud reached Kiev. During May, most children were evacu- ated by parents to other places in the former Soviet Union. The en- tire north of the Ukraine, the south of Byelorussia and the western part of Russia were pol- luted. Eastern and northern Eu- Boris Karasin is a former resident of Kiev who now lives in West Bloomfield. rope were also affected. Millions after the catastrophe in the pol- luted zone. There were only "So- felt fear. In a 30-kilometer zone, noth- viet people," not "Jews." These same people refuse to ing was alive. Firefighters, doc- tors and chemists were allowed see a future in the new, indepen- to enter the area. The soldiers of dent countries, where anti-Semi- the Soviet army and the police tism is not popular. Chernobyl continues to be a were on the front lines of the "bat- tle." Who knows how many of fear factor for many. The gov- ernment of Ukraine can't shut them are alive today? Prypiat, where the nuclear down the Chernobyl power plant power plant employees lived, is a the way Three- Mile Island was ghost town now. Hundreds of closed. The Ukraine needs its farms were destroyed. For 10 own electric power; oil and gas years, nobody took care of the from Russia cost too much. The fields or agricultural sites. A red- young country needs help, espe- brown pine forest became the cially from European neighbors. Chernobyl showed that air and symbol of this global disaster. Long ago in this part of the water pollution and radioactive Russian empire, there were many fallout ignore international boundaries. About $5 bil- lion is needed for clean-up and re- building a new cover under reac- tor N4. It's a huge price, even for industrial Western Euro- pean countries. Four nuclear power plants give Ukraine power. Unstable eco- nomic conditions do not permit them to refuse using nuclear en- ergy. Some Third World countries want nuclear power. They at- tract scientists from the former Soviet Union. The new, inde- pendent govern- ments do not have the money to compete for shtetls. After the 1917 revolution, great projects, and the entire some people emigrated; others world could become the hostage moved to larger cities where they of maniacs who have atomic pow- changed their lifestyles and be- er. How can we guarantee our came officers, teachers, doctors, lawyers. Neither pogroms, wars safety when only poorly educat- or farm collectivization lessened ed workers and technicians will the Jewish spirit. Only the Holo- be at work at the nuclear power caust proved a "final solution" to plants? I was in the Chernobyl zone 10 the Jewish presence there. Now Jewish people live only in the big years ago. I saw the empty cities cities. Bratzlav, Lubavitch and and villages; I saw the eyes of the Chernobyl were sites from which people whose destiny was broken. Chasidim spread their ideas of Without war, without revolution Judaism. Today, the Lubavitch or riot, without natural catastro- are well-known, but no one re- phe, they became refugees in members the Chernobyl Cha- their own land. Some families from the cont- sidim. After Chernobyl, Russian aminated zone live among us. For Nazis recalled the Jewish pres- them, all life has two parts: be- ence at the site. They tied the fore Chernobyl and after. They cause of the disaster to a world will never forget the "official lie" Jewish plot. Chernobyl, they said, and the help received from un- was the result of Zionist activity known people. We must not forget the date. in the Slavic lands. It did not mat- ter that Jewish doctors, nurses, The nuclear age tells us to be chemists and scientists worked careful. Our planet is so small. El You've seen the pictures hun- dreds of times. Mothers weep- ing amid the rubble. Rescue workers taking away the injured with blood streaming down their faces. Bodies strewn grotesquely in the streets. No matter how many times we see the images in the news- paper or on television, we stop, we shudder, we privately thank God that, aside from Oklahoma City and the World Trade Cen- ter, it hasn't happened here. And then we go on with our lives, as if it hasn't happened at all. It could be Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Kiryat Shemonah or the Buenos Aires Jewish Commu- nity Center. It could be a Unit- ed Nations refugee camp in Lebanon or Beirut itself. It could be Cairo, or Northern Ireland, or Bosnia. It could be Auschwitz- Birkenau or Dachau. We recoil, and we go on. Sometimes we protest. We'll march in front of a federal build- ing, or write our representatives in Congress. We'll talk to our friends and neighbors, express our sadness, attend memorial services, and life goes on. But it doesn't go on, not in the same way, for the families of the victims. For them, no words, no prayers, no letters of consolation will bring back a loved one wrenched from life by a bullet, a Katyusha rocket, an artillery shell, a mortar round, a suicide bomb. We can grieve, but it won't matter. The victims won't be back. Not the Bitar children from Dearborn killed last Thursday in Lebanon by Israeli shells. Nor the Israeli children in Purim cos- tumes who were scythed away by a Palestinian "martyr" on a Tel Aviv street. Remember those popular words from the Vietnam era — what if they started a war and nobody came? rve often thought that would be the most effective strategy when the neo-Nazis preach their hate —just let them talk to an empty street corner. Of course, that's what the neo- Nazis did over the weekend in Huntington Woods. They strewed their hatred through the city in the dark and then disap- peared back to their holes. Unfortunately, most wars these days don't start that way. It's not a question of nobody corn- ing, or only soldiers getting hurt. Bombs and shells are not as se- lective as we wanted to believe — during the Gulf War in 1991 or in Lebanon in 1996. Remember Lebanon in 1982. Fourteen years later, nothing much has changed. Syria pulls the strings, while a helpless Lebanese government sits and watches. Syrian-supplied ter- rorists set up shop in schools, hospitals, cities, refugee camps. You start a war, and people, real people — soldiers, civilians, women, babies — get killed. And then their friends and families scream in the newspa- pers, cry before the cameras, fly or bus to Washington for protest demonstrations, and demand the other side be censured, boy- cotted, sanctioned and cut off from the world community. We should be moved, but not swayed. It's sad. It's sad that there are any victims. It is sad that a pub- lic-relations campaign with po- litical overtones is the response. It is sad that peoplethink they can show the pictures of the bod- ies and the rubble, and that will sway our senators, our con- gressmen, our president, our public opinion. It will be sadder still if they are right. Have we so quickly forgotten the bus bombings in Israel? Or that Israel's bloody mistakes in Lebanon are just that, mistakes? Can the Arabs say the same for the suicide attacks or the Katyusha rockets crashing into civilian hamlets in northern Is- rael? Israel's foes have become more sophisticated in the public-rela- tions game. Have we and our leachers become more sophisti- cated? Israel for 50 years has offered to negotiate with its neighbors. Only a few have taken up that offer, at the risk of their lives. But in return, the region has achieved a modest peace and hope for a future of tranquility. Israel, the Arabs, the United States, the United Nations—we have a choice. At each juncture, we can head down the road to peace or the road to war. Many have hoped that the fragile peace achieved since the Camp David Accords in 1979 can be broad- ened. Each unsteady step down the peace path makes it harder to step down the opposite path. Can Israel stay the course in the face of Katyusha rockets? Can we? Will the terrorists, and their sympathizers, ever learn that the bloody reality is not the same as the television screen — bul- lets, and bombs and war don't just reach the bad guys, whoev- er they are. CI