Opinion
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Editorial
A Fair To Remember
...And Inspire
L
ast week's "A Fair to Remember"
proved once again that Israel is a
tremendous unifying force among
the Jewish people, and particularly among
our Jewish community. The fantastic
Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit
event, with all its music, food, rides,
activities, attractions and performances,
wouldn't have been anywhere near what
it was without Israel's 60th anniversary as
its unifying theme.
While some narrow-minded and, in
retrospect, laughably out of touch critics
of Israel and our Jewish community tried
to paint us as illegitimate usurpers of both
Israel and the Michigan State Fairgrounds
in Detroit, the view inside from the corner
of "Dizengoff and Ben-Yehudah" was much
more real.
There were the JCC Maccabi kids and
coaches, 3,200 strong from across the U.S.
and beyond, adding a special energy to the
event. There were the young families with
wide-eyed little kids looking at amusement
rides and cotton candy, and the older folks
basking in a sense of community whose
visibility has faded, but whose resilience
and reality was once again so evident.
You were more likely to see 10 or 20
people you knew than just one or two. It
was hard to walk three feet without seeing
someone you knew. It didn't matter if you
were from Trenton, Bloomfield Hills, Oak
Park, Southfield, Grosse Pointe, Detroit,
West Bloomfield or Novi or wherever our
increasingly far-flung Jewish community
lives: It was like old-home week. A family
reunion.
The organizers were correct to keep it
a family affair. While the importance of
pro-Israel forces in the political sphere is
not to be underestimated, the definition
of pro-Israel is flexible. We've seen Israeli
military action and unilateral withdrawals
fail to deliver what the proponents of each
had hoped for. The beauty of what Israel
and the American Jewish community
has achieved in the past 60 years is that
even eternal vigilance doesn't require us
to forgo celebrations. While we've come
together in times of adversity and crisis,
the health of our community and the real-
ity of all we have achieved require us to
also come together in celebration and joy.
From the concert with Israeli musician
Noa and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra
at a packed Max M. Fisher Music Center
in Detroit in May, to the 16,000-person
strong "A Fair to Remember;' to the
Family Mission to Israel this December,
Federation deserves plaudits and grati-
tude. Its legions of volunteers and dedicat-
ed professionals garnered the community
and financial support to make it all possi-
ble. The lineup for Detroit Jewry's yearlong
Israel At 60 celebration may not have met
all the diverse needs in the community,
but it didn't have to. We are blessed with
strong Jewish institutions and organiza-
tions that celebrated, educated, activated
and advocated in as many different ways
as folks in our community desired. What
the Federation did was show once again
why it is the central address of our com-
munity for planning and giving while the
breadth of community offerings show that
it isn't, nor need be, the only address.
So when we look back on last week with
the successes of "A Fair To Remember"
and the Metro Detroit-hosted JCC Maccabi
Games, made possible by hundreds and
hundreds of dedicated volunteers and pro-
fessionals, we can kvell but we can't rest.
May what we've achieved inspire us, and
give us the confidence and even the chutz-
pah, to do even more for ourselves and our
children, our families, our community, our
state, our nation, the State of Israel and
our world.
L'Chayim! ❑
Undermining Community Relations
T
he Arab American News, which
claims to speak for Metro
Detroit's Arab American com-
munity, published a guest commentary on
Aug. 9 filled with numerous anti-Semitic
references.
It was a transparent effort to generate
incitement within Detroit's Arab American
community, manipulate the African
American community to support the
author's call for the destruction of Israel
and stimulate the turnout of anti-Israel
protestors outside the Jewish community's
Aug. 21 celebration at the Michigan State
Fairgrounds of the 60th anniversary of the
State of Israel.
The article clearly failed regarding the
protest: Only a handful of demonstrators
showed up. It also failed to deter the hun-
dreds of African Americans who turned
out to join in the Jewish community's
celebration.
But we have reason to be concerned
about how readers in the Arab American
community responded to the incitement.
From its opening headline, "Detroit
Jewish Federation: Celebrating racism and
making money at it," the article (page 14)
A30
August 28 2008
contained a litany of stereotypes of Jews,
implied that Jews are responsible for the
economic disparities in Metro
Detroit and rewrote the his-
tory of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
rights to all of its citizens.
• It accused Israel of subjecting its own
Palestinian citizens to a system
of institutionalized discrimina-
tion, whereas the Israeli govern-
ment is committed to reduc-
ing the economic disparities
Consider These
between its various population
Here are just a few examples of
groups. Opinion polls of Israeli
the article's hate speech:
Arabs show an overwhelm-
• It portrayed Palestinian
ing percentage of them would
Arabs as victims of "genocide"
rather remain Israeli citizens
and "ethnic cleansing;' when
than become citizens of a new
Robert Cohen
in reality it is Israel's citizens
Palestinian state.
Comm unity
whom Palestinian terrorists
• It labeled Jews and Israelis
Vi ew
have deliberately targeted for
as racists, ignoring the Jewish
murder while eating in pizzerias, shopping community's central role in the civil rights
and celebrating religious holidays. Not
movement and Israel's status as the only
only was there no policy of ethnic cleans-
nation in history to have rescued a black
ing by Israel during the 1948 war, Jewish
community — Ethiopian Jews — from
residents in Haifa and other cities also
impoverishment and brought them into
begged their Arab neighbors to remain as freedom.
free residents of the new state.
• It highlighted Malcolm X's anti-Zionist
• It used emotionally charged words
stand and ignored that Dr. Martin Luther
such as "apartheid" that have profound
King Jr. strongly supported Israel and said
meaning. Israel is a multi-racial, multi-
that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
ethnic society that guarantees freedom,
• It denied Israel's right to exist as a
non-discrimination and equal political
Jewish state, ignoring the U.N.'s recogni-
tion of Israel's sovereignty and Israel's six
decades of efforts to achieve peace with its
Arab American neighbors.
• It made numerous references to the
wealth of Detroit's Jewish community. In
fact, Detroit's Jewish community has a
significant population of poor and under-
privileged, and the number of economical-
ly distressed Jews amongst us has grown
dramatically during the current economic
downturn.
• It conveyed the stereotype of the
greedy Jew by juxtaposing statements
about the wealth of the Jewish community
with baseless claims that the Federation
had snared a sweetheart contract with the
state and would make a great deal of profit
on the event. In truth, the state stood to
earn as much as $100,000 in bonus rev-
enue from the deal, and the Federation
hoped to break even on its event costs.
Much of the article reads as if it were
ripped from Hamas or Hezbollah propa-
ganda documents. Which should come as
no surprise considering Arab American
News publisher Osama Siblani likes to
describe Hezbollah as "freedom fighters;'
not terrorists. But if it is not surprising,