We Must Not Be Quiet

M

y father used to tell
me stories about
being a young Jew in
Detroit in the 1940s, that it was
simply normal to feel different. As
a Jew in school, in the army and
in the workplace, fear of discrimi-
nation was a natural part of life
for a Jew.
In Livonia in the 1960s, I
never thought much about what
it meant to ride on a bus twice
a week to the United Hebrew
Schools on West Seven Mile Road
in Detroit and face a flurry of
rocks coming at our windows on
each ride. We kids just thought it
was part of growing up.
Today, most of us "baby boom-
er" Jews live our lives as if we
were typical Americans, working,
going home to our families and
watching TV.
Then, Mel Gibson blames Jews
for all the wars in the world,
Jimmy Carter writes that Israel
is no better than South Africa
in its "apartheid" policies, Paul
Wolfowitz, a Jew, gets targeted
as the instigator who talked the
Bush administration into start-

ing the Iraq war and a
conference titled, "The
Holocaust: A World
Prospect:' takes place,
with 70 Holocaust
revisionists from 30
countries. The confer-
ence is sponsored by
the Iranian government
whose leader has called
the Nazi Holocaust "a
myth."
It is so easy for baby
boomers to feel uneasy
about what's going on in the
world, but it's easier to live our
lives as if everything were okay,
to believe that the freedom and
democracy we take for granted is
a God-given right that won't ever
be taken away from us.
We are sincerely delusional; not
much different from Jews who
believed the German govern-
ment in 1941 would eventually
come to its senses and act like a
responsible government of decent
human beings. We are in a very
precarious time for Jews. The
risky war to install democracy
in Iraq has fallen apart. We are

now arguing about
how to get out of Iraq
without the Middle
East falling into even
worse anarchy than
it is in today. Many of
the countries in the
world have ganged
up and blame the
"U.S./Israel alliance"
for the bombings and
shootings that are
destroying thousands
of innocent civilians
every month in Iraq.
But what can we expect? When
President Bush announced the
onset of war in Iraq, many of us,
including me, were skeptical and
fearful, but trusted our govern-
ment to act wisely. We sat still,
quietly accepting this war. We
prayed that we could bring the
wonders of freedom to Iraq and
that democracy would spread like
flowers everywhere.
Yes, and the Palestinians would
suddenly accept the right of Israel
to exist. Haven't we dreamed
before that Palestinian leaders
might be able to keep peace and

accept Jews and turn terrorists
there to freedom-loving people?
Yes, in our dreams, which are now
our nightmares.
So today, the world is more
dangerous, with bombs and guns
everywhere, terror in the streets
of Iraq, Iran getting stronger,
unparalleled genocide in Africa, a
fence put up to protect Israel and
a fence to be installed along the
southern U.S. border to protect
America from illegal immigrants.
We are too busy to notice. We
baby boomers get our new high-
definition TVs, go on our cruises,
buy our stocks and clothes, go to
work, take our kids to sporting
events and hope that our Jewish
organizations as well as our rab-
bis will speak up and protect us
from the crazy fanatics focused
on killing Israelis, Jews, and
Americans throughout the world.
We, who expect the world to
stay sensible and free, must stop
depending on our Jewish leaders
and our parents to protect us. Our
parents have been the people who
have continued to fund and aid
Israel and our critically needed

organizations.
It's our turn now. We have
to speak up. We have to give of
our time and money. We cannot
stay quiet, worried only about
ourselves and our families. Our
brothers and sisters in Israel are
surrounded by people and coun-
tries with a supreme goal: Kill as
many Jews in Israel as possible
and then come for us in America.
Whether you hate the Iraq
war or were angry that Israel
fought back in the north against
Lebanon, you must speak up. You
and I must protect our freedoms.
We must stand up for our kids to
have a world that will want them
in it.
We must not be quiet anymore.
We must write and call and e-mail
our thoughts and opinions to
anyone who will listen and even to
those who won't. Otherwise, like
so many Jews over 60 years ago,
we will go quietly into the night
and accept our fates ... whatever
our fates will be. 17,

Arnie Goldman is a Farmington Hills

resident.

Ancient Lies No Basis For A Policy

Philadelphia

T

wo seemingly unrelated
events in the waning
hours of 2006 pretty
much summed up everything
you need to know about the
Arab-Israeli conflict. Their mean-
ing can be characterized simply:
The Arab world's obsession
with eradicating the State of
Israel and the West's willingness
to deceive itself about the char-
acter of Arab leaders and their
intentions both are based on lies.
The more famous of the
two events was the hanging of
deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein. In his final moments
before he got his just desserts, the
doomed Iraqi once again played
the card that he and other Arab
despots have always used with
impunity: Israel. Thus, among his
final comments on the gallows
came this declaration: "Palestine
is Arab!"
Why invoke this cause with his

last breath? Because
also by their intel-
even at that moment,
lectuals and would-be
he still thought it worth
reformers who ought
a try to deflect discus-
to know better.
sion of his comeup-
By focusing on
pance to that of the
the external enemy
conflict with Israel.
— and a state ruled
The Arab world has
by a despised minor-
used the fight against
ity of dhimmi Jews at
Zionism as an excuse
Jonathan S.
that — the Arabs have
Tobin
for every problem that
given themselves as
exists within their soci-
Special
well as their leaders a
Commentary
eties. Whether it is the
ready-made excuse for
domination of tyrants
all of their failures.
like Saddam or the lack
Though he spent
of economic progress and the rest his career terrorizing his own
of the standards by which they
people, Saddam was always care-
lag behind the West, the answer is ful to pose as a pan-Arab anti-
always the same: It would be dif-
Zionist. When his troops were
ferent if only there were no Israel. evicted from Kuwait in 1991 with
That this thesis is nonsense has little resistance on the part of his
been no deterrent to its frequent
army, it was no surprise that he
use. This diversionary tactic is so
used his Scud missiles to attack
deeply ingrained in the culture of Israel.
the Arab world that it is routinely
Though Israel had nothing
repeated not just by spokesmen
to do with Saddam's looting of
for the regimes that run rough-
Kuwait and was excluded from
shod over their own people but
the international coalition orga-

nized to oppose him by the first
President Bush, it was imperative
for him to make it appear as if
Israel was actually a belligerent
in that war. This earned him the
cheers of Palestinians, who took
to their rooftops to cheer the mis-
siles headed for Tel Aviv.
He reinforced that impression
with his subsequent payments to
the families of Palestinian suicide
bombers. But this was, like every-
thing else he did, a lie.
Like the rest of the Arab
world, Iraq did nothing useful
for the Palestinians other than to
encourage them to continue in a
pointless war. But by doing so, he
deflected criticism from Muslims
who still prefer to embrace
canards about the Jews rather
than to examine their own faults.
And by saying "Palestine"
before the trap door opened,
Saddam gave Arabs another
excuse to ignore the truth about
the campaign to remove his
regime.

All this also helps to feed the
fallacy — still widely believed
in the West — that the Arab-
Israeli dispute is the source of
all the region's problems. But as
Saddam's life and death proved,
intra-Arab warfare and atrocities
have little to do with the Jews.
Another event that was
received with far less fanfare took
place only days before Hussein's
death. It was the release of a
33-year-old classified document
by the U.S. State Department. It
confirmed what had long been
rumored: that the late Palestinian
Liberation Organization leader
Yasser Arafat personally ordered
the murders of two kidnapped
American diplomats in March
1973.
Members of a PLO-front group
called "Black September gunned
down the two, Cleo Noel, U.S.
ambassador to Sudan, and the
embassy's Charge d'Affaires

Tobin on page 32

Ja n ua

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2esk0"7