Editorials
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Dry Bones
The Scourge Of AIDS
Iff
ary Fisher came home to Temple Beth
El to keynote a coming-out against
the global scourge of "a roaring con-
flagration of agony" — HIV/AIDS.
A daughter of Franklin's Marjorie and Max Fisher
and the mother of two boys, Mary revealed that she
was HIV positive in a 1992 speech at the Republi-
can National Convention in Houston. Her husband
died of AIDS in 1993.
At Temple Beth El, she drove home why the Jewish
community must join with others to dispel the myth
that HIV/AIDS is "just a dirty little sex thing."
It's not.
It's contracted in many ways through the sharing
of bodily fluids. And it knows no bounds — infect-
ing fetuses as it saps their mothers, ravaging women
as it does men.
Jews carry the human immunodeficiency virus
(HIV) and die from the acquired immunodeficiency
syndrome (AIDS), but so do many other Americans.
Gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders develop
HIV/AIDS, but so do heterosexuals. Blacks, Asians
and Hispanics get it, but so do other races.
Worldwide, 36 million adults live with HIV/AIDS.
The disease is rampant in Africa, where one of every
two children is infected. Says Fisher: "Acres of Africa
are littered with orphans, too hungry and too weak to
do anything more than whimper."
That image should haunt each of us.
HIV/AIDS can strike unknowingly. And to not
care is to condone the work of a methodic killer.
Fisher, now a New Yorker and AIDS activist, was
confirmed at Temple Beth El in 1963. She spoke
Related story: page 59
Dec. 1 at the Michigan Jewish AIDS Coalition's
Shabbat Service of Healing on World AIDS Day.
She related how HIV/AIDS seems to have gone
underground in the U.S. while continuing to kill
at a growing clip. Upwards of 200 new cases are
reported weekly.
"Even in dying, some find healing. It's that
search for healing that brings us here today," Fisher
said from the Temple Beth El pulpit.
West Bloomfield's Sylvia Block, whose son
Nathan David Block died at age 42 in 1996, was
there to hear Fisher's message and participate in
the service. And her courage was humbling. She
has seen AIDS cast its deadly spell, but has sum-
moned the strength to fight it via the magic of the
Michigan Jewish AIDS Coalition. MJAC strives to
instill hope, provide support and maintain dignity
through gemilut chasidim, acts of loving kindness.
Meanwhile, U.S. health statistics should res-
onate in our hearts until it hurts. Each year, the
Centers for Disease Control log 40,000 new HIV
infections; one in every two involves a person age
25 or younger. Some 13,000 Michiganians have
HIV or AIDS. The.yearly cost of anti-HIV therapy
can reach $16,000.
Numbers can be just that, interesting but inani-
mate — unless they embrace a relative, a friend or
an acquaintance. Then they move you.
But by then, it can be too late.
Detroit Jewry can do its part through the com-
mandment ofpikuach nefesh, of saving a life. We can
learn more and care more about HIV/AIDS. We
can give more, too.
We also can help encourage prevention while
toppling stereotypes. People with HIVS/AIDS —
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even strangers — need a caring hand, not a cold
shoulder. Whatever twists and turns put them on
the road to the disease, they're not looking to be
judged or forsaken.
They're looking for faith, not scorn. They're look-
ing to be accepted, not ridiculed. And they're look-
ing to live, not die.
We must answer the call.
For it's the right thing to do.
It's the Jewish way.
❑
A Lame Duck
I sraeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak needs to
start behaving as if he understands what he
agreed to in okaying new national elections.
Chiefly, he must recognize that he no
longer has a mandate to negotiate a comprehensive
peace settlement with the Palestinians. At most, he
should work for a series of concrete steps that will
substantially eliminate terrorist actions and violent
actions by the Palestinian masses, while bringing a
standdown of the Israeli troops, tanks and gun ships
that have been used to retaliate for Palestinian
assaults.
It is troubling to hear Barak — whose courage we
admire but whose political judgment we have come
to question — talk about a willingness to continue
seeking either a partial, or a total, agreement with
the Palestinians. Hasn't he read the Hanoch/Smith
poll, which shows that only 24 percent of the nation
— and that includes Israeli Arab support — backs
him as prime minister?
Barak seems not to realize that he now heads an
interim government that does not have a popular
mandate to commit the nation to any major domes-
tic or international policy position, much less dis-
cuss terms on the most vital question of Israel's
future.
Imagine if President Bill Clinton, in the next six
weeks before he leaves office, were to order the
destruction of America's nuclear-missile system. You
would have some idea of how preposterous it is to
think about Barak's resuming substantive talks with
the Palestinians, who replied to the generous offers
of Camp David with some of the worst acts of anti-
Israeli violence in more than a decade.
Limited Success
When Barak was elected 18 months ago, he did
have specific mandates embodied in that 54-46
trouncing of Likud's Binyamin Netanyahu, the
incumbent prime minister. Barak delivered on the
promise to get the troops out of Lebanon. Bravo.
But he could not deliver a long-lasting peace pact
with the Palestinians.
Admittedly, it wasn't for lack of trying, but
rather because Palestinian Authority leader Yasser
Arafat and the Palestinian people were not ready
to abandon their rejection of Israel as a legitimate
state, and believed that they could bring the Jew-
ish state to its knees through regular acts of vio-
lence.
Whatever the cause, the peace mandate of 1999
has vanished. It will take the coming political cam-
paign to sort out whether the majority of the nation
wants to continue along the road from Oslo, or
whether it believes a path of controlled mutual
antagonism will have to do over the next few years.
That is, until the Palestinians realize that compro-
mise — not gunfire — is the only way to achieve a
state for themselves and a future for their children.
What remains of Barak's One Israel coalition gov-
ernment can — and indeed, should — explore lim-
ited, concrete and enforceable agreements that stop
the escalating cycles of fighting that have claimed
nearly 300 lives in the last two months.
But until the country can sort out where it
stands, Barak cannot solidly play either dove or
hawk. He is, and must remain quite simply, a lame
duck.
❑
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