Editor's Letter
When you
From Censure To Seeds
• Oliver Finegold, a reporter for London's
Evening Standard, was seeking a com-
ment from London Mayor Ken
Livingstone after a Feb. 8, 2005, reception
marking the 20th anniversary since
Chris Smith became the first Minister of
Parliament to come out as gay.
During the attempted interview,
according to the London-based Web site
Robert A. Sklar Guardian Unlimited, Livingstone ques-
tioned Finegold's choice to work at the
Editor
Evening Standard. "How awful for you.
Have you thought of having treatment?" Livingstone asked.
When Finegold again asked for a comment, Livingstone
responded: "What did you do? Were you a German war crimi-
nal?" When Finegold said he was Jewish and was offended by
the remark, Livingstone likened the journalist's job to a con-
centration camp guard. "You are just doing it because you are
paid to, aren't you?" the mayor said.
Livingstone's attitude cried out for public rebuke.
Last Friday, the Adjudication Panel for England, a three-per-
son independent tribunal that rules on complaints against
public officials, suspended Livingstone with full pay for four
weeks after bringing his office into disrepute for remarks
deemed "unnecessarily insensitive and offensive?'
The penalty, invoked on March 1, is a joke. It amounts to
paid time off.
For his part, Livingstone, 60, said the ruling "strikes at the
heart of democracy." He's appealing.
I'm all for free speech, but public leaders have no business
using their official power as a bully pulpit for Jew baiting. The
interview never left the gutter.
Journalists take insults in stride. But Livingstone crossed
the ethical line of public service in ridiculing Finegold's
Jewish heritage. There was no provocation to spur such
venom. World Jewry can't stand on the sidelines when public
leaders think their stature gives them free rein to indulge in
anti-Jewish canards.
Livingstone has a feud going with the
Standard's sister newspaper, the London-
based Daily Mail, over its reputed support
of fascism and opposition to Jewish
refugees as Nazi Germany infested
European Jewry in the 1930s.
Had Livingstone thought for just an
Ken Livingstone
instant, he could have avoided the messy
affair. He later refused to apologize. His
knee-jerk response typifies his approach toward Jews. When
the London Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games in
2012 suggested a ceremony to commemorate the 40th
anniversary of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich
Olympics in 1972, the Jerusalem-based ynetnews.com quoted
Livingstone, an avowed left-winger, as saying: "The most suit-
able way to commemorate the Munich Olympics is the cre-
ation of a Palestinian state next to Israel but without barriers:'
Livingstone's loose lips toward Finegold's ethnicity and the
someone
Daily Mail's long-ago past was more an example of his igno-
rance about the physical and emotional toll of the Nazi
slaughter and its lingering effects than a knowingly malicious
insult to its victims.
Still, the Board of Deputies of
British Jews is right: "It cannot
be right that such statements
can be made by an elected offi-
cial with impunity."
• Dana Naor, 22, completed her
Israeli military service and is
now a third-year law and poli-
tics student at Tel Aviv
University. She heard that West
Dana Naor
Bloomfield businessman Joel
Jacob, one of Metro Detroit's
communal giants and a Seeds of Peace supporter, was acceler-
ating his anti-hunger campaign in Israel and America. And
she wanted to help. While working with Jacob, she answered
his request to reflect on the impact of her 1997 Seeds of Peace
summer. Her response echoed a familiar theme: that not every
Arab is a terrorist and that Israel will only achieve a lasting
peace if moderate Palestinians somehow gain power in the
Gaza Strip and West Bank.
"Even though my family is very peaceful, I never had talked
to an Arab before camp and I was afraid of them," she said.
"So coming to camp and living for five weeks with Arabs was,
in itself, an important lesson for me."
Naor maintained her Arab friendships after camp, but the
Palestinian reign of terror unleashed on Israel in 2000
shocked and disappointed her. "After a while," she said, "I
started to understand that we must make it work again, at
least for us Seeds. Ever since then, it has been very hard to
meet Palestinians and talk to them."
She added, "All of us have lost people we knew and loved;
having fun with 'the other side' is not what we need right
now."
What's needed is understanding.
So Naor and her friends have begun a monthly negotiating
group of eight Israeli and Palestinian young women who dis-
cuss issues central to living amid conflict. "The important
thing is that we're trying to use what we learned back in camp
in 1997 in our lives now," Naor said.
"We're not giving up on dialogue yet"
Jacob felt Naor's note sparked "a feeling that there is still
hope for a better future?'
I'm leery of lasting peace in the embattled region any time
soon. But I've not lost hope.
Such peace will emerge only if young people like Dana Naor
and her Israeli and Palestinian friends truly can find common
currents, then manage to make them the dominant force amid
a dangerous energy field of clashing cultures, politics and val-
ues.
with a
disability,
you enrich
a life.
Yours.
The hardest part
about having a
disability isn't the
disability. Its having
your gifts and talents overlooked. It's
being left out by those who don't know
what you can bring to the party.
F ma=r
So do something nice for yourself.
Include someone with a disability in
your life. Discover how much more
we're alike than different. We can help
you make that connection.
Call JARC at 248-538-6610 ext. 349
or log onto jarc.org .
❑
POINTS TO PO NDER...
T
alk about a study in contrasts. The mayor of London is
publicly censured for his Jew-baiting statements to a
Jewish newspaper reporter, while a 1997 Seeds of
Peace experience prompts a young Jewish Israeli to reach out
to "the other side."
include
Is Ken Livingstone's penalty appropriate?
Is Dana Naor's dream of peace achievable?
E-mail: letters@thejewishnews.com.
jarc
Helping People With Disabilities
Be included In Their Community -
All Through Their Lives
107CA3N,
March 2 2006
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