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Waiting For The Dawn

Dry Bones

BUSH IS GIVING,
THE PALESTINIANS
A MASSIVE $350
MILLION!!

AND NOW
THAT ARAFAT
IS GONE...

ou could almost begin to believe that it is
morning in the Middle East. Almost. Most
obviously, important change is finally visi-
ble in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. The death of
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was imperative, of
course, to the lessening of violence. But possibly
more crucial was the sheer exhaustion of the
Palestinians after four years of futile efforts to terrify
Israel into offering greater concessions than it had
been prepared to make in peace talks at Camp
David.
This second intifada was different from previous
Arab wars against the Jewish state. In 1948 and the
subsequent conflicts, existing nations — Egypt,
Jordan, Syria and others — provided
troops as well as arms and suffered the
deaths and injuries of war. This time, the
Palestinians, not proxies, waged the fight
almost exclusively. And the Israeli government and
army soundly beat them.
The combination of actions — targeting terrorist
leaders, demolishing the homes of terrorist families,
the security barrier, curfews, strict checkpoints and
all the rest that drew such condemnation from
Europe and the United Nations — finally proved to
the Palestinians that Allah had not blessed their
uprising and that it could only continue to inflict
more pain on them than on Israel.
That realization has opened a door for a duly
elected Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud
Abbas, to try to rein in the terrorists and to develop
a government that is less corrupt and more interest-
ed in the well being of ordinary Palestinians. Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Knesset have
recognized his actions. They have quickly backed off
some of the most repressive measures, such as
destroying Palestinian homes.
Now Israel seems truly prepared to move ahead

on withdrawing the 8,000 Gaza settlers and
eventually getting back toward negotiations
on the difficult issues that must be settled
before Palestinian statehood can be an effec-
tive reality.
The happy by-product of this lessening of
violence is to help take the Israeli-
Palestinian issues off the table in other Arab
countries. Now the Lebanese can afford to
think about what their lives would be like
without the Syrian military and Hezbollah.
Syria could afford to fall in line and talk to
Israel about the Golan Heights. Egypt is
sending its ambassador back to Tel Aviv.
That is all good news. But off-
setting it is a rich history of Arab
and Muslim myopia. It shows up
in the assassination, possibly by
Syrian agents, of a leading Lebanese democ-
ratizer. It is visible in the continuing car-
nage in Iraq where Sunni suicide bombers
attack Shiite mosques as well as policemen.
You can read it in the sermons of the Saudi
imams and the Egyptian Holocaust deniers.
It is a revulsion against modernity by a
culture that is stuck in the rituals of the
eighth century — that continues to believe
that disputes must be settled by the sword,
that Islam is the perfection of religion and
that infidels must convert or die. It is a
society that claims it is honoring women by
making them second-class citizens, that teaches chil-
dren the Koran instead of physics — that fears the
present as much as it does the future.
Perhaps liberal democracy will arise in Iraq, but
every new bombing suggests otherwise. Maybe the
Iranian moderates will prevail, but Teheran's efforts
to build a nuclear arsenal says no. Maybe the small-

Jazz Age Memories

But the percentage of Jews in America's
about when you couldn't pay the rent.
population
was higher in the '20s, mostly
In the '20s, though, jazz was new and alive
because the restrictions on immigration
and everyone was besotted with it.
from Eastern Europe didn't go into effect
The first wave of '20s nostalgia came
until midway through the decade. The new
around when I was still in grade school. There
arrivals formed strong ethnic neighborhoods
was the usual one-generation lag, so it broke
and gave the big cities a certain tone. In all
in the early '50s. I thought it was all fairly
but a few places that is gone today.
ridiculous. Charlestons and raccoon coats and
This is when Jewish performers dominat-
banjo music. It had nothing to do with me.
GEO RGE
ed the stage. Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Fanny
But the more I learned about this decade that CAN TOR
Brice, the Marx Brothers were the biggest
had passed long before I was born, the more I
Re. ality
names on Broadway. Irving Berlin, the
understood that so much of our current cultural
Ch eck
Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Jerome Kern
phenomena was rooted there; from fast cars to
were at their peak. The Warner Brothers,
fast sex, from dirty dancing to national media
Samuel Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, Adolph Zukor
networks, from big-time sports to big-time crooks.
were
shaping Hollywood. Leo Reisman, Ben
It all went underground in the '30s and '40s, only
Pollock,
Gus Arnheim led the great dance bands.
to emerge in slightly altered form in the wild and
Many chose not to publicly acknowledge their
crazy '60s.
Jewishness. But a surprising number did, even
Even the city I grew up in was shaped in the boom-
though it was a time when anti-Semitism was
ing '20s. Most of the institutions and landmarks I
endemic in American life.
knew as a child in Detroit came into being then.
It was surely a time of contradictions. Most times
It was also a very Jewish decade. That may come
are.
But I love the music, and sometimes wish I
as a strange thought to those who think of progress .
could
have joined that long ago party.
as running in a straight line.

y

EDITORIAL

I

don't usually run out and buy a sound track
CD after seeing a movie I like. But I did with
The Aviator, the film about Howard Hughes
that is up for an Oscar this weekend.
The music chosen for the time frame of the pic-
ture, especially the late '20s, was dead-on perfect.
I have become newly infatuated with the 1920s. The
music is one big reason. I know the old recordings
sound jarring and tinny to modern ears. The driving
bass that characterizes the music of more recent . times
could not be picked up by equipment in use then.
But the music itself is so exuberant, so filled with
life. You just know the people for whom it was writ-
ten were having a terrific party, absolutely at home
in a buoyant America that was shakin' that thing.
Songwriter Kay Swift said that once the Depression
began "the heartbeat died." The rhythm. slowed, the
melodic line lengthened. There wasn't much to dance

George Cantor's e mail address is

-

gcantor@thejewishnews.corn

MAYBE IT WON'T
GET STOLEN.

www.drybonesproject.com

scale electoral experiments in Egypt and Saudi
Arabia are a precursor of an Enlightment like
Europe's, but you wouldn't want to bet on it.
And both America and Israel, while striving to
encourage an Arab awakening, must continue to
base their policies on the fact that the new era hasn't
quite dawned yet.

❑

❑

JR

2/24

2005

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