Editorials

Letters to the Editor arc updated daily and archived on JN
www.detroitjewishnews.com

Reaffirming Wye

y

asser Arafat and the Palestinian
National Council don't deserve a
21-gun salute, but were relieved that
finally — after far too much cajoling
by President Bill Clinton and demands by the
Israeli government — they have voted to rid
their charter of all its noxious calls for Israel's
destruction.
The articles they scratched our, in place for
more than 34 years, were a disgrace to any
nation that seeks to take its place in the civilized
community. The vote was, in many ways, a reit-
eration of the action the council took in 1996,
but a much-needed step for Palestinian leaders
to publicly show their people where they should
stand in regards to the world's only _Jewish state.
While the Palestine National Council was not
duly elected, it retains a significant symbolic
presence in the Palestinian world.

So in that regard. it was remarkable to see
hundreds of former terrorists, some of whom
were personally involved in the planning and
execution of murder of Israelis, raise their right
hands to annul words that never should have
been given life. They were formally abandoning
their credo that "armed struggle is the only way
to liberate Palestine," and that "the partition of
Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the
State of Israel are entirely illegal."
President Clinton likely overstated realiry by
saying that the Palestinians have rejected the
destruction of Israel "fully, finally and forever."
No one can foresee the future. But the Ameri-
can leader rightly noted that "this moment
would have been unthinkable a decade ago."
Arafat had committed to the step at Wye
River. At long last, he delivered.

A Lesson For The World

0

vet the next few years, leaders of
business, government and Jewish
agencies will tend to the task of dis-
tributing several billion dollars in
Holocaust restitution.
Some restitution will be in the form of
money, ranging from the $1.25 billion the
Swiss banks have agreed to pay in addition to
the 541 million that Great Britain has
promised. Other reparations will be for billions
of dollars' worth of artwork looted by the
Nazis. Still other repayment will be for build-
ings and land that were appropriated, then
turned to public uses like schools and play-
grounds. Whenever possible, the money and
property must be returned to their rightful
owners, the survivors or their heirs.
But it is already clear that something will be
left undistributed at the end of the process.
The question then becomes what to do with it.
We think that it should be dedicated to a
new purpose — providing toleration education
throughout the world.
Fifty years after the Holocaust, its central
moral lesson clearly has not been learned.
Looking for genocide, we don't even have to
hark back to Cambodia when Rwanda and
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Algeria provide such
vivid recent cases. The potential for "ethnic
cleansing" all too dangerously remains between
Hindu and Muslim in India and Pakistan,
between. Sudan's Arab North and Christian
and Animist South, and between one clan and
the next in Somalia.
We can't here propose a specific program of
X number of teachers assigned to countries Y
and Z to re-educate adults and children about
race, ethnicity or religious affiliations A, B or
C. Children must unlearn the reflexive hatred
of their parents for everyone not sharinc , the
same beliefs. We look at the success of the tol-

eration programs at the Simon Wiesenthal
Center in Los Angeles and think those activi-
ties could work for larger audiences.
We don't know what institutional or gov-
ernmental vehicle might be best. Our hope is
that business interests, increasingly working
globally, might join with private philanthropy
and national governments to create an effective
framework for action.
It would be nice to believe that the United
Nations could be effective in combating ideas
of intolerance. But the UN is handicapped
institutionally, as member nations consistently
complain about "internal meddling." And,
given that it took the UN until last week to
take its first small official step toward eradicat-
ing anti-Semitism, the UN hardly seems the
appropriate body to use a fund that would not
have existed were it not for Nazi anti-Semi-
tism.
While Israel is the symbolic heir to those
who left no heirs, it cannot be effective globally.
Israel would be viewed with too much suspicion
‘vere it to try curbing, ler us say, warfare
between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
It is vital that the current process of seeking
a full accounting of the Holocaust and
demanding reparations nor be perceived
around the world as a quest for money and
property per se. Using some part of the repara-
tions to help the rest of the world would help
show that the representatives of the claimants
mean what they say about the process being a
way of allowing countries, businesses and indi-
viduals to pay a moral debt.
Creating a permanent institution to pro-
mote toleration globally would be a fitting
reminder that the families slaughtered in the
Holocaust were not truly eradicated but that
they live on, fulfilling their duty to tikkun
olam — repair the world. 7

Curtain Call

Sharon Fishman of Bloomfield Hills holds daughter Rachel, 11,
at the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit's Fam-
ily Arts presentation of "Punch & Judaism," a Chanukah puppet
show Dec. 6 at the Jimmy Prentis Morris Building in Oak Park.
Puppeteer and storyteller Marilyn Price of Evanston, Ill., uses
hand-crafted puppets to convey her joy of Jewish living.

LETTERS

Romanticizing
A Tragedy?

Having finally seen Lift Is
Beautiful, I am writing this
letter of anger and outrage to
protest the film's attempt to
romanticize the Holocaust.
As well, I am disgusted by
the widespread adulation and
positive press — including
two articles in The Jewish
News on Oct. 30 — that the
film has received.
Unlike the movie, the

Holocaust was not a romantic
comedy. Life was not beauti-
ful in the camps. Even Char-
lie Chaplin apologized in the
`60s for his 1940 The Great
Dictator, noting that he never
would have made it had he
known the extent of Hitler's
depravity.
Six million Jews were
raped, tortured, brutalized
and murdered.
That's not funny!
The Holocaust, in many
ways, is beyond comprehen-
sion; hence, most films trivial-

12/18
1998

Detroit Jewish News

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