Editorials
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Standing As One
tamed by the singing of Israel's national
anthem Hatikvah ("Hope") and the
moving folk song Yerushalaim Shel
Zahav ("Jerusalem of Gold"), the soli-
darity rally for Israel on Monday, Oct. 16, res-
onated with the spirit of a community united,
unconditionally, behind Eretz Yisroel — the Land of
Israel.
We came together — hopeful, resolute and proud
— to say we stand with our homeland amid the tur-
moil and tragedy surrounding it.
At Yeshivat Akiva in the center of Jewish Detroit,
the Southfield rally showed to the world the resolve
that binds us as a people, despite our diversity. Jews of
all ages, affiliations and political beliefs stood in defer-
ence to the Jewish state and all that Israel represents.
The crowd was estimated at 1,200. Some thought
Israel has been too timid responding to Palestinian
aggression, while others felt Israel has been the
aggressor. The disparity in perspective didn't really
matter, however.
The rally wasn't about politics or process. It was
about the search for lasting peace in a biblical region
of converging, and sometimes clashing, cultures.
It was about the Jews of Detroit, shoulder to
shoulder, letting the world know we stand by our
brethren in Israel in this time of crisis, when they
are threatened, reeling and feeling alone.
It was about the strength of our commitment to,
and the depth of our love for, a tiny Mideast nation
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Dry Bones
percolating with our heritage and history.
For a few minutes frozen in time, we set aside our
individual differences to help make a collective dif-
ference against the backdrop of promising peace
talks now in ruins.
Meanwhile, we should take this opportunity to
rededicate ourselves to ecumenism. We should start
by better promoting the work of local groups like
the American Arab and Jewish Friends so others
know we're eager to plant seeds of peace, not sow
fields of discord.
The Detroit Jewish community is a national
model for Jewish education, religious pluralism and
interfaith harmony. So in the wake of many travel
groups backing away from the Mideast, Jewish
Detroit should consider taking that national leader-
ship a step further by sending a small, representative
group on a short unity mission to the central
Galilee, our Israeli partner. To meet on holy soil,
joined by cause and Torah, would be the ultimate -
expression of support.
Monday's rally fell on the third day of Sukkot,
the seven-day holiday known as Zn2an Simchateinu,
the time of our joy. Sukkot, the Feast of Booths,
tells the story of the Israelites after their Exodus
from Egypt. For 40 years, they wandered in the
desert, camping in portable, thatched huts (sukkot),
anticipating Canaan, the Promised Land.
During Sukkot, we take stock of our will to sur-
vive and our oneness as a people — a theme rein-
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forced at the rally. The holiday brings to mind the
prayer, U: rot aleinu sukkat shlomechah — "spread
over us Your sukkah of peace." ❑
A Silence At The Center
he voice American Jews are now hearing
says, "I told you so." The danger is that
they will hear no other.
The further peril is that, when the
right cannot provide a hopeful vision for establish-
ing a true peace for Israel, another generation of
American Jews may simply lose interest in the coun-
try as the source of their identity.
In the U.S. as in the Middle East, everyone feels the
despair. The cease-fire agreement reached at Sharm el-
Sheikh is so provisional that the Palestinian leadership
may not be able to enforce it, and will readily abandon
such an effort if it has a tactical interest in doing so. If,
as it appears, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser
Arafat has decided that his unilaterally created "state"
should be born in violence, then this week's meeting
will be a forgettable footnote in the history of promises
the Palestinians made and did not keep.
It is not just Camp David II that has vanished.
The agreements reached at Wye River and even
Oslo were stabbed by the knives that killed Israeli
Sergeant Majors Vadim Novesche and Yosef Avra-
hami in Ramallah, and were trampled by the
Tanzim and Hamas boots that desecrated Joseph's
Tomb.
Related cover story: page 6
What Went Wrong
All over this country, Jews have rallied to show their
solidarity with Israel. And everywhere, they wonder
what more they could do. But mostly they ask how
we could have read it all so wrong.
The most ardent defenders of the peace process
suddenly have no answer to that question. Their
assumptions about Arafat and the Palestinians and
the Israeli Arabs have been shattered. They are like
the anthropologists who suddenly discover that the
tribe they have lauded as inherently pacifist are as
naturally red in tooth and claw as the most savage of
head-hunters. Even if the political left did speak,
who would believe them?
On the right, a certain grim self-satisfaction
declares itself. Enough with the hypocrisy of a peace
partnership, they say; Israel should expand the "facts
on the ground" in Judea and Samaria and buckle
down for protracted daily skirmishes. Israel should
seal the borders, warm up the Patriots and check the
condition of the gas masks in the shelters. On this
side of the ocean, says the Zionist extreme, make
sure that Congress sends not one more dime to
Gaza City and that the Pentagon shares every high-
tech advance with the Israel Defense Forces.
But these positions offer no credible, long-term
vision for the Middle East or for the role of Ameri-
can Jews in it. The great center of American Jewry,
enjoying unprecedented security and prosperity, has
been proudly exploring its cultural and religious
identity. Many Jews — particularly teenagers and
young adults — have found a resonance in Israel, in
the sunny heat of Masada, in the milk and honey of
the resorts, in the solemnity of the Western Wall.
Changing Impressions
The violence — yes, the violence of both sides — has
changed the image. This is not the struggling-to-be-
born Israel of 1948 or the proud victor of 1967 that
made kibbuczniks of American idealists. This is Israel
the armed, locked into a pattern of sporadic terrorist
action and reaction, an Israel that Americans will avoid
as too dangerous, too forbidding.
We will not forget Jerusalem, of course, and will
have to stay on guard so that it doesn't become distant
again, out of the foreground as young people contem-
plate who they are in America. They do not want false
promises, but they do need the hope for solutions.
America's presidential candidates agreed in debate
that a secure Israel and a peaceful Middle East was
vital to this country's national security. It is equally
vital to our identity as American Jews in the 21st cen-
tury. If the roads to Gaza City and Amman and
Cairo and Beirut are closed, we must search for other
routes, other strategies, to keep the possibility of
peace alive. Too much is at stake to do otherwise. ❑ *A SI
10/20
2000
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