•
our members to support it."
AIPAC insiders say opponents of
Barak's policies are trying to use the
lobby group's imprimatur to create the
false impression that mainstream Jewish
leaders oppose Barak's peace moves.
Klein insisted that the letter did rep-
resent the views of mainstream Jewish
leaders — and AIPAC's leadership.
"I have personally spoken to at least
half of AIPAC's national board in the
past month," he said. "Everybody I
talked to was deeply concerned about
Barak's behavior. This is a wakeup call
to AIPAC."
But an AIPAC spokesman pointed
out that only a tiny fraction of
AIPAC's two boards — the 463 mem-
ber executive committee and the 54
member national board — signed the
letter, and that several have since
expressed regret.
.
Holocaust Documents
This week, an interagency task force
released some 400,000 pages of World
War II-era records of the Office of
Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor
to the CIA.
The long-secret records, which his-
torians are just beginning to digest,
show that the allies knew more about
mass killings of Italian Jews than pre-
viously admitted.
The release was part of the govern-
ment's effort to comply with the 1998
Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. In
addition to new information about the
Nazi roundup of Jews in Rome, the
data includes early reports on U.S.
efforts to identify and track German
financial assets after the war, POW
interrogation reports and information
on looted art.
"These documents are of enormous
historical importance," said Eli
Rosenbaum, director of the Justice
Department's Office of Special
Investigations, the unit that tracks and
prosecutes Nazi war criminals. "But,
they raise as many questions as
answers.
There are also transcripts of private
conversations among German POWs
collected by bugging devices, includ-
ing a chat in which one captured
German general tells another about
the "removal" of Jews.
"If there was anyone left on this
planet who harbors a suspicion that
Holocaust survivors have exaggerated
the grotesqueries inflicted by the Nazis
on their victims, that suspicion will be
allayed by reading the transcript of
this unguarded Nazi conversation,"
Rosenbaum said.
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Court Decisions
The U.S. Supreme Court neared the
end of the current session with a win
and a modest setback for Jewish
groups.
Only a week after the justices dealt
a major blow to promoters of student-
led prayer in public schools in a land-
mark Texas case, they refused to hear a
case involving prayers at school events
in Alabama, including sporting events
and graduation ceremonies.
A federal judge had ruled the
Alabama law allowing student-led
prayer unconstitutional, but an
appeals court reversed that decision.
But on Monday, the Supreme
Court told the appeals judges to take
another look, based on last week's
sweeping prayer decision.
That's good news for Jewish leaders
who had hoped the earlier decision
would serve as a strong precedent for
new school prayer cases.
The news was not as good in the
area of hate crimes.
In a 5-4 decision, the justices ruled
against a New Jersey hate crimes law
that allows judges to impose extra sen-
tences because a crime was motivated
by racial, religious or ethnic hatred.
But the decision was not as bad as
it could have been, said Michael •
Lieberman, Washington counsel for
the Anti-Defamation League.
"What was at issue here is not hate
crimes laws themselves, but the sen-
tencing structure," he said. "They
treated the issue of hate crimes in a
very general way."
Most of some 42 state hate crimes
laws — including Michigan's — are
based on the ADL model. It requires
that the hate motive be proven to a
jury as an element of the crime; the
older New Jersey law and a handful of
others allow judges simply to tack on
added punishment if he or she deter-
mines hate is the motive.
The 5-4 decision reversed the
tough sentence imposed on Charles C.
Apprendi, a white New Jersey man
convicted of firing into the home of a
black family. El
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Correction
An incorrect address was given
for Jewish Family Service ("A
Time To Care," June 23, page
12). Tax-deductible checks for
the Michalson brothers should
go to JFS at 24123 Greenfield,
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