OPINION

Paradoxes, Imponderables:
Israel At Fifty

KENNETH LASSON
Special to The Jewish News

T

he Rimon Inn sits high
atop the Galilee in the
ancient holy town of Safed
— its stone-walled gardens
and wrought-iron balconies and
glassed-in dining room providing a
spectacular view of the lush green val-
ley below and, on a clear day, of Lake
Kinneret 22 miles to the southeast.
Its lovely blend of modern ameni
ties and Old World charm also reflects
one of the many ironies at work in
Israel today: Last summer the Rimon
Inn became, of all things modern and
mundane, Howard Johnson's.
Such has been the westernization of
this wondrous country that Burger
Kings and Pizza Huts and Office
Depots and Toys-R-Us compete for
space side-by-side with kibbutzim and
archaeological digs and sacred tombs.
A decade ago it took over a year to
have a telephone installed here. Now
Israel has the third highest number of
cell phones per capita in the world
(after Hong Kong and Finland).
Hand-held phones ring incessantly —
on buses, in restaurants, on cobbled
streets in Old Jerusalem — in perfect
harmony with the naturally gregarious
Jewish psyche.
In the land Mark Twain once
described as "desolate and unlovely, a
silent mournful expanse," but which

Kenneth Lasson is a law professor at
the University of Baltimore.

percent and graduate degrees have
has been brought magnificently to
become increasingly commonplace,
blossom in little more than a half-cen-
tury by Israel's miraculous agricultural
finding a good job with a future
pioneers, a huge megalopolis is devel-
remains a difficult task.
oping between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv
Other socioeconomic anomalies
to the west, as well as between Tel
abound as well. Bus drivers have more
Aviv and Haifa to the north. What
financial security than physicians.
was once sere and barren is now full of Rabbis have as much political clout in
life but, at least in this populous corri-
the Knesset as career politicians. The
dor, again unlovely. The growth is at
obsessive intolerance of the ultra-reli-
the same time dynamic and
haphazard.
Housing and industrial
developments are piled on
top of one another, with little
apparent concern for the aes-
thetics of zoning or protec-
tion of the environment.
Traffic congestion is constant
throughout the day around
Tel Aviv; horn-honking grid-
lock is an accepted way of life
in Jerusalem.
The social landscape is
changing just as dramatically.
The country has absorbed
hundreds of thousands of
Russian and Ethiopian immi-
grants and integrated them
Kenneth Lasson
into the new culture so success-
fully that they both contribute to and
gious is matched only by that of the
benefit from Israel's current economic
ultra-secular.
prosperity. But as the standard of liv-
In the most richly religious country
ing increases, so does the cost. Rental
in the world, public morality seems to
be on the decline. The failure of man-
properties and condominiums in and
ners and civility is not new to Israel
around Jerusalem are impossibly
expensive — $250,000 for a modest
and can be explained, if not justified,
duplex in Bet Shemesh, 40 minutes by by the country's constant state of
car to the west.
siege. But now a wide variety of petty
While unemployment is down to 7
crime, from house break-ins to stolen

cars, is becoming as commonplace in
Jerusalem as it has been in Detroit.
Though it's still safe to walk the streets
at night, home- and car-owners are
buying security systems as never
before.
The possibilities for a genuine
peace inspire equal amounts of hope
and despair. Optimism is perhaps
more prevalent in the north. From the
beautiful bay city of Haifa to
C Tiberias and Safed, the atmos-
phere is more relaxed and the
countryside more bucolic.
3 Arabs and Jews have lived side-
§ by-side in Haifa for decades
without major incident. People
seem more laid back and eager
to please. The Galilee beckons.
Just south of Haifa is anoth-
er kibbutz, Ner Etzion, whose
main source of income is a
beautifully landscaped garden
hotel. The facility was rented
out recently for a weekend by
an American family to cele-
brate the bar mitzvah of their
son. Many of the guests also
were Americans who had made
aliyah. Practically all of them
have advanced degrees in the profes-
sions and the sciences, and have sacri-
ficed financially to live here.
To a person, they shared a common
point of view: Israel is a frustratingly
unfathomable place to live and do
business, but for them, despite the
overwhelming paradoxes and unceas-
ing imponderables, it is the only place
they want to raise their families. O

On the other hand, Orthodox
movements (those left, right and mid-
dle of the road) have also to recognize
that most Israelis would be better off
practicing Conservative and Reform
Judaism rather than the none-at-all
secularism most espouse today.
The Burg reforms seem a step in
the right direction. Let's support
them.
Lillian Rosenberg Hurwitz
Franklin

extradited terrorists to Israel.
Regardless of how peace-loving the
"Palestine"-Arabs were, Jews would be
sacrificing the land of their forefathers
for Arab good will. And while Rabin,
Peres, Barak and now Netanyahu still
spout Arafat's "peace," most of
Hebron, Bet Lechem, Jericho, Ramal-
lah and more have become the back-
bone of Arab subversion and territory
that the Jewish army has surrendered.
In anger, God will be throwing out
Jews for they do not deserve the land
upon which they stand.
Thus, either Israel expands and
annexes the land to the Jordan River
and Arabs are expelled some 35 miles
eastward or Israel shrinks before
expanding "Palestine."
As Rabbi Meir Kahane once said,
"Either the Israeli public votes for me,
PEACE on page 39

LETTERS

These demographics predict that
Jewry in the United States will all but
disappear by the latter half of the 21st
century.
If you think that Judaism as a reli-
gion is worth saving, then it must be
recognized that Orthodox Judaism
manages NOT to be a major contrib-
utor to the decimation of our popula-
tion.
While both Conservative and
Reform movements are instituting
. programs that have more probability
than past endeavors of keeping off-
spring within the fold, until such time
as these movements demonstrate that
they can at least stem the tide of inter-
marriage, we have an obligation to
support those Orthodox practices such
as conversions, marriages and deaths
in Israel that do not impact our
lifestyle.

2/13
1998

36

What Does
Peace Mean?

Regarding "In Arabic, Not A Word Of
Peace" by Jeff Jacoby (Feb. 6):
Mr. Jacoby finally puts into print
what every Arab already knew: "peace"
for the "Palestinian" Arabs is only a

means to obtain Israel's demise as a
state.
Western reporters saw "peace" in
English translations of the 1993 and
1995 Oslo Accords and more, but the
Arabs knew that they could expect
Arab "Palestine" after "peace" and the
coming war with Israel. Further, on
the Internet with Associated Press cer-
tification, Prime Minister Benyamin
Netanyahu just agreed with King Hus-
sein of Jordan that the "Palestinians"
would have a state inside of Israel.
Thus, despite Jordan occupying 78
percent of eastern "Palestine," it will
be Israel that will sacrifice the Judean-
Samarian hills to a western "Pales-
tine." And as if to emphasize the
nature of the enemy, the PLO never
renounced the Palestine National
Covenant, which calls for the
"destruction of the Zionist enemy," or

