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Essay

Editorial

The Name Game

Naming schools for terrorists
a ghastly Palestinian practice.

T

he Palestinian Authority not only
has historically sanctioned an
education system that's
a teaching manual for hatred
and terror against "infidels" —
against nonbelievers of Islam
— but also has upped the ante,
freely publicizing the Ramallah-
based government's approval of
naming schools after terrorists.
Talk about an outrageous
policy for a government seeking
Rober
international recognition for a
Contr
Palestinian state.
Ed
The P.A. governs Palestinian-
controlled areas of the West
Bank through its Fatah political party. It
also would technically preside over the
Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip if Fatah and
Hamas, a terrorist organization, truly unite
under one government.
At least 25 Palestinian schools are
named after terrorist murderers, Israel-
based Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)
reports. The pervasive indoctrination
should underscore the P.A. has no inten-
tion of changing its culture of hate even
if it chooses to resume peace talks with
Israel. It'll take at least a generation to
reverse this indoctrinating damage.

Telling Names
In late August, the official government
news agency WAFA confirmed the naming
of P.A. schools falls under the Ministry of
Education and Higher Education's jurisdic-
tion. That means Fatah has the power not
just to name schools, but also to change
offensive names. Kids, of course, are high-
ly susceptible to school names rooted in a
world of violence and vitriol.
Consider these gruesome examples:
• Three P.A. schools are named after
Dalal Mughrabi, the terrorist who led the
Coastal Road massacre in 1978. She and
other Fatah-affiliated terrorists hijacked
a bus and killed 37 civilians, including 12
children. More than 70 were wounded.
The attack was the most lethal in Israel's
67-year history.

• Two P.A. schools are named after
Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, who was a key play-
er in the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine terror-
ist organization. She was killed
in 1968 when a bomb she was
prepping for an attack in Tel
Aviv suddenly detonated.
• Three P.A. schools are
named after Abu Jihad, a Fatah
founder and deputy to Fatah's
first president, Yasser Arafat.
Jihad planned a series of
Fatah-initiated terror attacks
that killed a total of 125
Israelis.

Holding Firm
The P.A. continues to promote and glorify
terror by keeping those school names and
turning the memorialized terrorists into
"martyrs for Allah" — and also into role
models for students. The P.A. continues
to shun lifting this veil of hate.
Were the P.A. to change the names of
schools honoring terrorists, PMW argues,
"it would be a signal to Israel and the
world that Palestinians want peace and
no longer find it morally justifiable to
elevate killers of civilians to heroes:'
Sadly, that's unlikely to happen.
Exhorting why those school names will
stay, Minister of Education and Higher
Education Sabri Saidam,
an adviser to P.A.
President Mahmoud
Abbas, emphasized that
"national symbols" —
"terrorists" as the West
knows them — "must
not be denigrated in any
way:'
Sabri Saidam
Renewed Israeli-
Palestinian talks would
ring hollow without a sea change in how
the P.A., Israel's supposed peace part-
ner, hypes "martyrdom:' It's abhorrent
to encourage kids to murder Jews as a
virtuous act tied to achieving Palestinian
statehood.

❑

The pervasive indoctrination should
underscore the P.A. has no intention of
changing its culture of hate.

52

September 24 • 2015

Appreciating Our
Communal Assets

I

t owns and operates 2.3
million square feet on 1,756
acres, while controlling mon-
etary and real estate assets of
$600 million, all on behalf of the
Detroit Jewish community.
Despite being a pillar of
Jewish Detroit, the United
Jewish Foundation largely works
beyond the glare of public scru-
tiny. That's a tribute to the
trust we as a community have
placed in the charitable agency.
UJF is the Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit's banking
and real estate arm.
It's high trust, indeed.
UJF's professional and lay
leaders are entrusted to grow
Foundation investment yields
and inspire Federation fundrais-
ing support. It's not far-fetched
to say the financial health of
what we are as a community
hinges on the fiscal acuity of
UJF and Federation.
As our chief planning and
fundraising agency, Federation
is responsible for day-to-day
decisions relating to helping
meet Jewish needs locally, in
Israel and, to a lesser extent,
elsewhere in the diaspora. UJF
takes a broader view of com-
munity activities and resources,
striving to maximize the amount
of communal dollars available to
allocate.

Dealing With Upkeep

UJF's local inventory includes
41 sites with more than 300
buildings of assorted uses. Sites
include office buildings, schools,
apartments, camps, adult day
care centers, community centers
and theaters.
Therein lies the rub.
Our facilities are largely aging.
As UJF President Ben Rosenthal
explained at the Federation/
UJF combined annual meeting
on Sept.17, "For the first time in
our history, we have remained
in place and continue to use our
facilities rather than building
new ones as we moved farther
out."
Rosenthal was referring to
Jewish Detroit's historic trend
known as a hegira, a mass migra-
tion – a relentless northwesterly

march from Detroit's lower east
side beginning in the mid-1800s.
The trend continues as
Jews have put down roots
in Walled Lake, Commerce,
Milford, Waterford, Highland and
beyond. Our core facilities, how-
ever, largely haven't changed.
Investing in their upkeep, secu-
rity and management without
losing sight of pressing human
needs remains a critical chal-
lenge for our communal leader-
ship, the affected agencies and
the larger Jewish community.

Fiscal Juggling

An easy move on the part of
Federation/UJF to lower costs,
improve quality and tackle
deferred needs was to initiate
the process of consolidating not
only some facilities management
and maintenance, but also janito-
rial and housekeeping functions.
To help protect our Jewish
future in the wake of declin-
ing population numbers and a
slow-growing state economy,
the Federation/Foundation
Centennial Campaign, under
Nancy Grosfeld's leadership,
has secured $160 million in
lifetime and testamentary gifts
toward a goal of $250 million.
The Centennial Campaign stands
as a significant supplement to
Federation's Annual Campaign.
The Annual Campaign is our
major communal fundraiser but
is still tied to donor quirks and
allocation priorities.
Rosenthal's call to build a
communal reserve "for the chal-
lenges that will inevitably come"
presents two big questions: How
high should the reserve ultimate-
ly go and how best should its
holdings be used? Finding those
important answers will test the
prudence of our communal lead-
ership.
When it comes to fiduciary
management and investing, UJF
has built a level of respect. It's
up to the community to demand
continued openness and trans-
parency. That will secure our fis-
cal accountability.
The way we manage our com-
munal money must never be
taken for granted.

❑