Dry Bones

Opinion

Editorials are posted and archived on JNonline.us .

Taking A Just Stand

H

. auras is a terrorist

organization with the
single-minded determi-
nation to destroy Israel. Any
dealings with the Islamic funda-
mentalist group and with the
Palestinian Legislative Council it
now leads must be based on an
understanding of that reality.
This is a group that now
acknowledges its start-up fund-
ing came from Lebanon's
which means Iran
Hezbollah
— and has no intention of
changing its chilling covenant.
See the Middle East Media
Research Institute's translation at
www.memri.orgibin/opener_lat-
est.cgi?ID=SD109206.
The White House seems to get
it. President Bush has criticized
Hamas' victory in the Palestinian
elections Jan. 25, and Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice has
said in no uncertain terms that
no U.S. aid will go to or through
a Hamas-led Palestinian govern-
ment.
Congress seems to get it. On a
418-1 vote Feb. 15 — Democrat
Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii
being the one — the House of
Representatives concurred with

the Senate on a simple sense-of-
Congress resolution: The United
States should never provide aid
to the Palestinian Authority if
the legislative majority is held by
a party that calls for Israel's
destruction.
And now we know that at least
one of the 99 state legislative
chambers in America gets it.
That honor belongs to the
Georgia Senate, which unani-
mously passed an anti-Hamas
resolution the same day as the
U.S. House, becoming the first
state legislativebody to do so.
The measure isn't as terse as the
44 words in the congressional
measure, but it is more direct,
calling out Hamas by name and
detailing the horrors that vicious
organization has carried out in
its two decades of fighting Israel.
One sentence in the resolution
gets to the heart of the matter:
"The members of this body call
upon the United States of
America, the European Union,
the United Nations and all peo-
ple of peace throughout the
world to refuse to recognize
Hamas as a legitimate party in
the democratic process until it

PUTIN HAS
DECIDE? TO 00
SOMETHING
ABOUT ISLAMIC
TERROR.

I SEVENTEEN
MONTHS AFTER
THE TERRORIST
SLAUGHTER OF
RUSSIAN SCHOOL
KIDS

Editorial

renounces and ends violence,
dismantles its terrorist infra-
structure, recognizes Israel's
right to exist as a nation and
agrees to conduct direct negotia-
tions with Israel to achieve a
peaceful coexistence with the
State of Israel."
That's what it's all about. As
long as Hamas is, well, Hamas,
no one who loves Israel, no one
who longs for peace and no one
who despises terrorism can deal
with it as just another political
party.
It doesn't matter whether
Palestinian voters chose Hamas
to reject Fatah corruption or to
support suicide bombing, and it
doesn't matter how free and fair
the elections were. The
Palestinians chose bad people for
their leaders, and that choice
should have consequences. (If
only the world had responded
that way to the German elections
that put Adolf Hitler into power
in 1933.)
There's not much we can do to
put economic pressure on the
Palestinians; they've destroyed
their own economy with the
intifada. But we can send a clear

RUSSIAN
ROULETTE

•

RE'S INVITING
HAMAS TO TEA.

www.drybonesblog.blogspot.com

cosigned by 15 congressional
message that we reject any role
members, to President Bush in
now and in the future for
support of ending direct foreign
Hamas.
aid to the Palestinian Authority.
We salute the Georgia Senate
We, like Knollenberg, remind
for sending that message. More
that standing tall against Hamas,
important, we call on the
we must assure that the people
Michigan Legislature to follow
in the West Bank and the Gaza
that precedent as quickly as pos-
Strip aren't blocked from vital
sible and let the world know that
humanitarian aid.
as a terrorist group, Hamas will
find no support in our state.
E-mail letters of no more
Michigan can find an example
than 150 words to:
in U.S. Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-
Bloomfield Hills, who sent a letter, letters@thejewishnews.com .

Reality Check

Long Distance Call

W

hen the phone rings
at 4:20 a.m., you
know it's not going to
be good news. -
My sister-in-law, Joyce, was on
the line, telling me that my
brother was having a heart
attack. I threw on a pair of jeans,
splashed some water on my face
and took off for the emergency
room.
The drive took less than 10
minutes, but 55 years flashed
through my mind on the way.
I remembered the day Mike
was born; me dropping my
Monopoly set all over the hall of
our apartment building as my
parents rushed to drop me off at
• my grandma's house. And several
hours later, the phone ringing
with the news from the hospital,
and rushing to find out whether

I had a brother or sister and my
Aunt Shirley jumping up and
down and laughing and telling
my grandmother,"Don't tell him.
Don't tell him."
I flashed back to ballgames at .
Tiger Stadium and family vaca-
tions, seders and menorahs. Our
trip to Big Bend National Park,
when we rowed across the Rio
Grande and rode donkeys into
the nearby Mexican village.
Weddings and funerals. The
home movies of Mike as a
teenager sitting next to Al Kaline
in the Tigers' dugout in Lakeland
on a visit to spring training.
All that and so much more
raced across my memory.
The beautiful eulogy he gave
at our dad's funeral, and when
relatives expressed surprise at
his speaking skills he said,"But

time, I don't know
what do you think I
which of us was more
do for a living? I'm in
scared.
Court almost every
Heart disease does
day."
not run in the Cantor
He was heavily
family = it gallops. It
sedated when I got
struck down our grand-
there, and there was
father when he was in
no indication of how
George Cantor his early 50s, and so
severe the coronary
Colum nist many uncles and
had been. An ambu-
cousins before their
lance had been sent
time. Now here it was in the next
for to take him to Beaumont,
generation.
where more tests would be run.
I had a class to teach that
I walked to his side; and while
morning and left my cell phone
he didn't speak, he knew I was
on. When it rang halfway
there. He reached his hand out,
through the session, I froze and
and I held it until the ambulance
stared at it as if it were a snake
arrived.
— not wanting to hear what the
The years slipped away — and
message was. But this time it was
it was like we were crossing
good news, the best that could be
Trumbull again on our way to a
ballgame, and I had to watch out - expected under the circum-
stances.
for my little brother. Only this

I apologized to my students,
explained the situation and told
them to go home early.1 had no
more pearls of wisdom left on
this day.
Mike went home after a short
hospital stay, getting off with a
warning and an extended war-
ranty. Herring in sour cream was
out, exercise -was in. Not a bad
outcome, all things considered.
My brother is an attorney who
represents those who are being
denied benefits they should
receive from the government. It's
a worthy calling, and I've always
admired him although never
quite getting around to telling
him so.
I guess I should. .11

George Cantor's e-mail address is

gcantor614@aol.com .

February 23 2006

35