Publisher's Notebook
from page 28

changing the narrative for our region.
The Greater West Bloomfield area,
Detroit and Southeastern Michigan are
great places to live because:
• We have a high quality of life and
affordable housing.
•We have world-class arts and cul-
ture as well as sports teams.
•We are at the continent's most heav-
ily traveled international crossing. We
can be in a foreign country and home
for dinner every day.
•We have one of the country's most-
acclaimed health care and higher edu-
cation infrastructures.
•We have one of America's great col-
lege cities in Ann Arbor.
•And when it really matters, we have
one of the world's largest concentra-
tions of fresh water.

Recruiting Matters
So what else can you do?
Put out a welcome mat for our "immi-
grant" children who have left the area.
Take a pledge that you will each
reach out to, and attempt to recruit, just
one child, grandchild or friend's child
each year. Can you help someone secure
work? Can you engage local bankers
or credit unions to establish a revolv-
ing loan fund to help someone start a
business? Can you commit a few hours
a week to mentor someone and help
them network with others?
I'd like to illustrate the transforma-
tional power just one immigrant can
have on a community. I was at a house
of mourning a few months ago for
Suzanne Orley. She was from a phil-
anthropic family that is at the core of
our general and Jewish communities.
Her brother-in-law, Graham, told me
of the recent 100th anniversary of his
father coming to America. He found
his way to Detroit alone as a teenager.
Today, Graham beamed, there are more
than 50 male Orley descendants and
a similar number of females, many
still in the area. His poor immigrant
father could not have imagined the
tremendous impact his singular and
lonely act would have on genera-
tions of Detroiters, Michiganders and
Americans.
Let's stop beating ourselves up and
do a better job of keeping our kids
here, or giving them and their friends
reasons and opportunities for coming
back. The inspiration we receive from
today's community service honorees
should remind us of the things we can
accomplish, if we are passionate and
determined. If little Dothan, Ala., with a
handful of modest attributes can do it,
we can too ... one person, one "immi-
grant:' one job and one welcome mat at
a time. H

Contributing Editor

Hamas: Top Obstacle To Peace

y

es, I'm bothered by President
Obama's provocative call last
week for Israeli-Palestinian
peace talks to be weighted by the pre-
1967 territorial lines combined with
mutually agreed-to land swaps. But I'm
more irked by his tempered approach to
who exactly would be sitting across the
bargaining table were such talks ever to
resume.
Fatah, the
governing party
of Palestinian
Authority
President
Mahmoud Abbas
who runs the West
Bank, teamed up
in a unity govern-
ment with Hamas,
which is declared
a terrorist group
by America, Israel
and the European Union. With incessant
rocket attacks on Negev towns, Hamas
underscores its hatred for Israel.
Fatah also is no stranger to terror. It
gives the world the impression it's a stable
government that Israel can negotiate
with. But the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, as
radical as Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic
Jihad, is part of Fatah. Further, President
Abbas heads a corrupt government.

Dry Bones

66 YEARS
AFTER THE
HOLOCAUST

.41111110.

HAS *EN PASS
FROM THE NAZI
THUGS OF THE

190S

Granted, in May 19 remarks delivered
at the U.S. State Department, Obama
cautioned that the May 4 power-sharing
pact between Hamas and Fatah "raises
profound and legitimate" security ques-
tions. He pushed Palestinian leaders to
understand they "will not achieve peace
or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path
of terror and rejection!'
"How can one negotiate with a party
that has shown itself unwilling to recog-
nize your right to exist?" Obama declared.
"In the weeks and months to come,
Palestinian leaders will have to provide a
credible answer to that question."
Of course, they certainly will.

Threaten Revoking Aid?
But Obama never pledged to consider
revoking U.S. aid to the Palestinian
Authority, this year earmarked at $550
million, until it not only rejects Al Aqsa,
but also until Hamas recognizes Israel,
shuns violence and commits to the peace
process. I'm convinced Hamas and Fatah,
political and military cronies at least
twice before, have reunited for the short-
term benefit of seeking an independent,
sovereign Palestinian state sanctioned by
the United Nations this September.
Obama could be trying to circumvent
that attempt by tossing the Palestinians a
bargaining bone (the call for rolling back
to the 1949 armistice
lines that formed the
basis for Israel's borders
from 1949 to the Six-Day
SURVIVAL
War in 1967): but such a
starting point (actually
the Palestinian-desired
endpoint) would be at
Israel's peril. Must Israel
cede land it held even
prior to the 1967 war?
Everything should be
subject to negotiation
based on the seriousness
and credibility of each
side.

TO THE
ANTI-ISRAELI
"ACTIVISTS" OF THE
2 1ST CENTURY

DryBonesBlog.com

Saga Of Borders
Speaking on May 22
at the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee
policy conference in
Washington, Obama said
the '67 lines as a start-
ing point over borders
allows the Israelis and
Palestinians "themselves
to account for the changes
that have taken place over
the last 44 years, includ-

ing the new demographic realities on the
ground and the needs of both sides."
Despite Obama's posturing over bor-
ders, the 1995 Oslo accords make it clear
that only final-status negotiations can
alter the physical makeup of the West
Bank or Gaza Strip.
Remember, too: In a 2004 letter to
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
President George W. Bush, while support-
ing final-status land swaps, emphasized,
with strong congressional support, that
it was "unrealistic" to think Israel would
give back major Jewish population centers
in the West Bank.
When current Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu talks about Israel
requiring "defensible borders:' he means,
and rightly so, that any exchange of land
first demands that Palestinians be recep-
tive to the art of negotiating.

Israeli Security Uppermost
Bluntly put, a demilitarized Palestine, but
yet a West Bank with no Israeli peace-
keeping centers and with vastly shrunken
Jewish neighborhoods in strategic areas
of Israel's defense blueprint, is hardly a
formula for secure Israeli borders.
Obama and the U.S. are walking a
diplomatic tightrope in the protests and
revolutions amid the Arab Spring in other
countries; clearly, Israel won't be immune
from the "Arab street" fallout.
We hope Congress provides the neces-
sary counterbalances to the president's
tenuous position on borders.
The JN has long held that the desired
outcome of face-to-face negotiation of
the core final-status issues — borders,
security, refugees, Jerusalem and previous
agreements — is a two-state solution.
Ultimately, the prudent outcome to
renewed peace talks, remote as they seem,
is the Jewish State of Israel and the Arab
State of Palestine — side-by-side, coexist-
ing in peace.
As long as terror emboldens Hamas,
any talks, while inviting, would be a les-
son in futility. Even President Obama
acknowledged for any progress to be
possible, it is the Palestinians who must
take the first step by finding a credible
answer to Hamas. Until then, there is little
anyone else, including the United States,
can do to move the process forward."
Time will tell if the president means
what he says about Hamas and pressures
Fatah, in not just words but also aid sanc-
tions, to pull away if its "unity" partner
doesn't reinvent itself. Fl

See related story on page 1.

May 26 . 2011

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