a Dm
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Dry Bones
Doing Its Job. Not!
AMERICA "WENT IN"
I
n 1950, to great fanfare, the United Nations
Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) set up
shop in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan and
Lebanon. The agency was to provide help for the • .
700,000 or so Arabs who had left their homes in
Israel when the Arab nations went to war to destroy
the infant Jewish state.
It was supposed to be a temporary activity, some-
thing that would offer some help to these homeless
people until a permanent solution could be found
— maybe with their being assimilated into coun-
tries like Lebanon and Jordan and Egypt. After all,
an almost equal number of Jews had found homes
in Israel after being kicked out of their homes in
those same Arab countries when the war
began.
It just didn't work that way, and
UNRWA has shattered the record for the
longest-lasting and most one-sided agency that any
group of nations has ever underwritten. It may also
retire the trophy for being among the least effective
of all those hapless groups that operate under U.N.
auspices.
It has long since lost sight of the original goal of
encouraging the Arab states to assimilate the
Palestinians in their midst and has become a great
cheerleader for the idea of a Palestinian state. So
much of one, in fact, that it repeatedly turns a blind
eye to Palestinian terrorism, preferring to rail about
the damage done by Israel's defensive operations,
that are intended to halt the fanatics before they
strike again.
The blindness is understandable when you
ISRAEL IS "PULLING
remember that UNRWA has
BECAUSE BUSH
OUT" BECAUSE
grown into a mini-empire of
THOUGHT HE WAS
SHARON THINKS
25,000 employees, almost all of
them Palestinians, and a $300 mil-
RIGHT.
HE IS RIGH T.
lion budget. It is the major
provider of schools, food and other
social services in what it calls the
refugee camps but which are really
permanent communities of two-
and three-story houses. It exercises
enormous political power but, as in
all Arab communities, it is neither
elected nor accountable to the peo-
ple it is supposed to serve.
Ordinary Palestinians
could legitimately com-
r AND ME PUBLIC
HELD LONG
plain that the five
DECIDES WHO
AFTER THE DEEP
decades of UNRWA
WAS
RIGHT"
IN
Is DONE.
caretaking has left them poorer,
ELECTIONL
hungrier and less educated than
they were in 1948. But they don't
get to vote on that, and the United
Nations seems not to care about
the massive mission failure. It is
easier and more fashionable to
blame the Jews than to ask tough
questions of UNRWA's commis-
sioner-general, Peter Hansen:
Some small ray of hope, howev-
er, is visible for those who think it •
nations are beginning to decide what Israel has long
is time to hold the agency accountable. UNRWA is
known: UNRWA has never gotten it right and
currently running about $7 million in the red, and
never will. ❑
its annual "emergency appeal" for donations is get-
ting about half as much as it wants. Maybe the
••\
EDIT ORIAL
Farewell To Floyd
T
here were a dozen of us at o the grave site.
We stood out of the rain under the
branches of an old maple tree in a wooded
valley near Charlevoix. Frank Levy, a skilled carpen-
ter, had carved a small Star of David for a marker.
He also conducted the service.
It was faintly Buddhist in tone, although the sen-
timents were universal. He spoke of the precious
fragility of life and the need to live fully with every
breath. .
Then, we each placed two shovels of earth over
the box containing Floyd's ashes and lined up for
pictures.
A glass blower. A jewelry artisan. An attorney. A
couple of journalists. A few teachers. A commercial
real estate investor. Someone in furniture. Someone
in window treatments.
The scene kind of reminded me of the album
cover for Abbey Road.
"Fifty years from now," I said to- Dennis Ross,
"someone will look at this photograph and try to
figure out what in the name of heaven we were
George Cantor's e-mail address is
gcantor@thejewishnews.com
doing here."
the requisite brunch of bagels, lox and
"They'll probably think they stumbled
smoked whitefish, we felt good about it.
across evidence of a Jewish cult," he said.
That it was right to have come all these
So what were we doing there? Well, you
miles, on a blustery cold northern Michigan
should know that Floyd was a she, named
weekend, to give Floyd her farewell.
after the rock group Pink Floyd. To my
Even our irascible white highland terrier,
brother-in-law, Barry Bershad, Floyd was
Charlie, always deferred to Floyd. His usual
best friend, traveling companion and maybe
tumultuous spirits were tempered, and he
even something of an only child. Since Barry
treated the older dog with a respect that was
GEO RGE
was never married and never had a dog until
generally lacking for others of all specieS.
CAN TOR
Floyd, that is understandable.
Floyd was 14, and at the end it was the
Rea thy
You should also know that there was not a
merciful thing to end her life. Not that such
Ch eck
trace of mockery or disrespect in using the reli-
a fact made it any easier.
gious symbols. By using the forms with which
I recalled when our Snickers died. The
we were all familiar, it was meant as a tribute.
dog had always slept beneath our daughter_
The service seemed altogether appropriate to
Courtney's bed, much to her displeasure. After her
Barry, who has spent his career teaching the lessons
death, he never slept there again, switching to the
of basketball and life to the children of two genera-
area under Sherry's dressing table.
tions in the Jewish community.
I don't pretend to understand the instincts of ani-
A poem was read. A few of the mourners told sto-
mals, but I know there was a borid there. And when
ries about Floyd, and how she gently discouraged
Snickers died, it was like losing a part of Courtney
anyone who made the mistake of sitting in the front
again.
passenger seat of Barry's van or in her preferred
I once read an article that said it was all a. con;
place on the sofa at home.
that dogs know a good thing when they see it and
Even those who may have felt initially that it was
merely feign affection for us in order to get shelter
ludicrous to be moved by the death of a dog were
and food. Whoever wrote that, though, didn't know
touched by the little ritual.
Floyd.
And afterwards when we retired to the house for
❑
JN
10/29
2004
51