1942 - 2023

Covering and Connecting 
Jewish Detroit Every Week

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DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 
FOUNDATION
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people of greater Detroit and beyond, and the State of Israel.

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Detroit Jewish community, reflecting the diverse views and interests of the Jewish community while advancing the 
morale and spirit of the community and advocating Jewish unity, identity and continuity.

DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
32255 Northwestern Hwy. Suite 205,
Farmington Hills, MI 48334
248-354-6060
thejewishnews.com

 
 
Publisher
The Detroit Jewish 
News Foundation

| Board of Directors:
 Chair: Gary Torgow
 Vice President: David Kramer 
 Secretary: Robin Axelrod
 Treasurer: Max Berlin
 Board members: Michael J. Eizelman 
 Larry Jackier, Jeffrey Schlussel, 
 Mark Zausmer
 
 
 Executive Director:
 Marni Raitt 
 Senior Advisor to the Board: 
 Mark Davidoff
 Alene and Graham Landau Archivist Chair: 
 Mike Smith
 Founding President & Publisher Emeritus: 
 Arthur Horwitz
 Founding Publisher 
 Philip Slomovitz, of blessed memory

 

 Editorial 
 Director of Editorial: 
 Jackie Headapohl
jheadapohl@thejewishnews.com
Contributing Editors: 
David Sachs, Keri Guten Cohen
Staff Reporter: 
Danny Schwartz 
dschwartz@thejewishnews.com
Editorial Assistant: 
Sy Manello
smanello@thejewishnews.com 
Digital Manager:
Elizabeth King 
eking@thejewishnews.com 

Contributing Writers:
Nate Bloom, Rochel Burstyn, 
Suzanne Chessler, Shari S. Cohen, 
Louis Finkelman, Samantha Foon, 
Yevgeniya Gazman, Stacy Gittleman, 
Esther Allweiss Ingber, Barbara Lewis, 
Jennifer Lovy, Rabbi Jason Miller, 
Alan Muskovitz, Karen Schwartz, 
Robin Schwartz, Steve Stein, 
Nathaniel Warshay, Julie Smith Yolles, 
Ashley Zlatopolsky 

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| Business Office
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6 | NOVEMBER 2 • 2023 J
N

PURELY COMMENTARY

continued on page 7

D

uring his whirlwind 
visit to Israel in the 
wake of the attack 
by Hamas on the Jewish 
State, President Joe Biden 
made a profound observation 
which means a 
lot to me. Biden 
stated, “You 
don’t have to be 
Jewish to be a 
Zionist.”
No words 
could be more 
true. My own 
Zionist background dates 
back to the Yom Kippur War 
in 1973 (when I was 13 years 
old). The leadership of Golda 
Meir made an impression on 
me. She remains my favorite 
Israeli prime minister in 
history.
But my Catholic boyhood 
still shielded me from the 

reality of antisemitism 
(mitigated as anti-Zionism). It 
was not until my years at 
Wayne State University when 
anti-Zionism/antisemitism 
got my attention. Northern 
Israel had been the object 
for years of PLO shelling 
and raids conducted from 
Lebanon. When Israel invaded 

Lebanon to rid the world of 
the PLO menace in 1982, the 
Jewish state was the object 
of rebuke from all corners, 
including from the Reagan 
Administration.
Not that the situation should 
have been a surprise. Israel 
had destroyed Saddam 
Hussein’s nuclear reactor in 

1981, only to be condemned 
by the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick, 
Ronald Reagan’s Ambassador 
to the United Nations. Israel 
also received spurious blame 
for the Christian Phalangists’ 
massacre of Palestinians in 
the refugee camps of Sabra 
and Shatilla during the war in 
Lebanon.
Nowhere was the anti-
Israel vitriol more acute than 
on the campus of Wayne 
State University. In 1983, the 
university was host to French 
diplomat Charles Crettien, 
who, on behalf of France, 
chastised the Jewish State for 
defending itself. My rebuttal 
to Crettien, which appeared 
in The South End (the student 
newspaper at Wayne State 
University), was greeted with 
utter hostility. Friends could 
only be found at the campus 

John O’Neill 

guest column

 
I, Too, Am a Zionist!

