Opinion

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Dry Bones 'THEN ANO NOW

Editorial

Gaza To Egypt

T

he Israeli withdrawal from the
Gaza Strip in the late summer of
2005 has been a failure.
That's true as a matter of domestic pol-
icy because Israel has shamefully failed to
live up to its promises to the 8,000 people
forcibly evacuated from Gush Katif who,
like so many people who fled New Orleans
and Hurricane Katrina only weeks earlier,
remain stuck in temporary housing amid
uncertainty about where they will go and
what they will do.
The failure is also apparent as a mat-
ter of foreign and security policy, whose
needs were thought to justify the unilat-
eral withdrawal and the disruption to so
many Israeli lives. Just look at the most
recent Israeli military incursion into Gaza
and the never-ending rocket barrages
from Gaza, shattering life in Sderot and
threatening to do the same in Ashkelon.
Leaving Gaza was supposed to save
Israel money and improve security by
eliminating the need to protect the settlers
amid a million-plus hostile Palestinians.
Instead, the withdrawal just moved the
front line deeper into Israel.
The problem is that Israel handed Gaza
to the wrong people.
The Palestinians in Gaza aren't ready to
be partners for peace, as shown by their

overwhelming support of Hamas in elec-
tions four months after the Israeli with-
drawal, their continued backing of that
terrorist organization and their refusal to
stop firing rockets and start developing an
economy.
It's time to correct that mistake by
handing Gaza to a less hostile government:
Egypt.
Israel captured Gaza from Egypt in
1967, not some mythical Palestinian state.
That fact usually is overlooked in all the
talk of returning to the 1967 borders.
Israel gave the Sinai back to Egypt under
the 1979 peace treaty, and that worked out.
The peace between Israel and Egypt isn't
the warmest in the world, but it is peace.
We're confident Egypt would end the
rocket attacks. The Egyptian security
services' methods might not be pleasant,
but they are effective. They have extensive
experience with the Muslim Brotherhood,
which spawned Hamas, and the same
international organizations that are quick
to criticize Israel turn a blind eye to
Egypt's transgressions. Look at the collec-
tive yawn with which the world responded
to Egypt's plans for a 10-foot concrete wall
with guard towers all along the Gaza bor-
der, and compare that with the grief Israel
takes over its security fence.

HERZL THEN

WORLD JEWRY HAS A RIGHT
TO ITS OWN LAND . . . TO
H AVE A JEWISH COUNTRY.

Egyptian sovereignty
would not be the final sta-
tus for Gaza. Egypt would
WE DO?
take back the Strip with
REALLY?
the understanding that it
would constitute part of a
Palestinian nation in the
future, once an economy and
secular political institutions
developed.
HERZL NOW?
WORLD JEWRY HAS A RIGHT
Israel should like the idea
TO OBJECT TO AN ISRAELI
as a way to secure Gaza
GOV'T GIVING AWAY CHUNKS '2,',
without the army and to
OF THAT COUNTRY.
remove any obligation to
supply food and energy to
people who are working
toward Israel's destruction.
Egypt should like the
idea to reduce the risk of
a Muslim Brotherhood-
aligned Islamist state on
www.drybonesblog.com
its border, to strengthen its
authority in the Arab world,
to regain the last bit of territory it lost in
process forward in a constructive man-
1967, and to remove a thorn in Israeli-
ner. The Gazans themselves should like
Egyptian relations — the smuggling of
the chance to develop as a nation without
arms and terrorists across the Egyptian-
Israeli interference.
Gazan border.
And the families of Sderot and Ashkelon
The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority
should like the opportunity to send their
should like the idea to undermine its
children to school without fear of the next
archrival, Hamas, and to move the peace
rocket attack. ILI

Reality Check

D

Matter Of Values

etroit's Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick
did not hesitate to play the fam-
ily card, among others, as he
tried to defend the indefensible.
But that is among the things that lie at
the very core of his offense, at least in the
moral dimension, because the crisis in his
city goes far beyond the peccadilloes of its
mayor.
It is, ultimately, a crisis in the break-
down of family structure, of young men
refusing to accept the responsibilities of
being husbands and fathers.
Repeated studies, after controlling for
income and education, have shown an
inescapable correlation between young
men who grow up in single-parent and
stepfamily homes and rates of incar-
ceration, substance abuse and failure in
school.
Researchers say it is responsible for
41 percent of the most recent increase in
family income inequality.
It was not unreasonable for Detroit
residents to expect their mayor, who is so

popular among young people,
to act as a role model. To show
them that this is the way a suc-
cessful, responsible black man
behaves. These are the values he
believes in.
His failure on that score is just
as terrible as his legal offenses.
The clergy who defend him are
too enmeshed in the city's dys-
functional racial political struc-
ture to see the damage being
done before their eyes.
But rather than rail about failures in the
city, let's turn to what we can do in our
own community. Mentor Connection of
Oakland County is a non-sectarian pro-
gram of Jewish Family Service (JFS) and
it needs caring adults who want to make a
difference in the life of an at-risk child.
The mentors are asked to give attention
and guidance to these youngsters. The
JFS is trying to find mentors for 50 at-risk
youths in Oakland County. The organiza-
tion will be sponsoring a "Friendraiser"

hockey game, between the
Detroit Red Wings alumni
and Oakland County Public
Safety All Stars, to help raise
awareness. It will be held
Sunday, April 6, at 4:30 p.m.
at the Orchard Lake St. Mary's
Athletic Complex. Tickets are
$12, with an additional fee for
autographs.
If you'd like to learn more
about the program or this
event, contact Julie Hennessey at (248)
366-0388 or jhennesey@shazaam.com .
On a not entirely unrelated front, how
many recall Newton Minow, who was
named by President John F. Kennedy
to head the Federal Communications
Commission in 1961? Minow famously
described the commercial television he
saw then as "a vast wasteland." That same
era is now, of course, called the "the gold-
en age of television!' Time does change
things.
But I wonder what Minow would think

of TV today. One recent evening, I was
looking for something to watch and these
were my choices: Wife Swap; The Moment
of Truth, in which contestants are hooked
up to a lie detector and asked titillating
personal questions; Survivor; Big Brother;
Supernanny; America's Next Top Model;
Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious.
If he looked and saw a wasteland, I look
and see a toxic dump. Prurient and dis-
gusting, a popular culture that has been
debased beyond recall.
Do you think that, just maybe, if you
were a child growing up in a home with
little or no adult guidance and watched
this junk as a steady diet your values
system might end up being knocked a bit
askew?
My hope is that the people who put this
noxious swill on the air become aware that
their own children are watching it, too.
And good luck with that. ❑

George Cantor's e-mail address is

gcantor614@aol.com .

iN

April 3 2008

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