Israel to plant trees on
Palestinian soil as Detroiters
green up Jewish homeland.

ROBERT A. SKLAR
Editor

Modiin, Israel
s Michigan's third group of Miracle
Mission tourists to Israel planted 370
saplings in the Ben-Shemen Forest on
erev Yom HaZikaron on Monday, for-
mer Prime Minister Shimon Peres told them that
Israel will plant a million trees in the homelands of
its Palestinian neighbors as an olive branch toward
lasting peace.
"The greener their lands are," said the Nobel
Peace Prize recipient, flanked by armed guards,
"the greener our relations with them will
become. "
In introducing Peres, Mission chairman Ben
Rosenthal called the Detroit Jewish community "a
model of commitment and loyalty to Israel."
Co-Chair Ron Klein recalled how Detroiters a
generation ago generously responded to the Jewish
National Fund's plea for new trees to breathe life
into Israel's barren landscape. He told the 610 mis-
sion goers their garden of saplings near Tel Aviv
serves "as a way of passing on our hopes and our
dreams to the next generation.
"We Neill plant for our children," he said amid a
sea of blue and white Michigan Miracle Mission
III T-shirts, "just as our parents planted for us."
The ceremony came on the second day of the

A

After learning that the biblical fruit o
knowledge was not an apple, but nzore:
likely a fig, Harold Salter of Shaarey-
Zedek examines fig leaves at Newt
Kudumim, the biblical landscape
reserve in Lod, in a new zvay.

4/23
1999

14 Detroit Jewish News

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