March 1990, Page 42

Jews and Israel

By Andrea Barron

Tutu's Remarks Upset Jewish Groups

Jewish groups strongly criticized Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a leader of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, for suggesting recently that Jews should forgive the Nazis for the Holocaust and pray to God for help so that they would not, in turn, make others suffer. Tutu, a Nobel peace laureate, made the comments upon emerging from the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem, a memorial to the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust.

Henry Siegman, executive director of the liberal American Jewish Congress, said: "Bishop Tutu's unsolicited advice to victims of the Holocaust and to their descendants about the benefits of prayer and forgiveness shows an insensitivity that is particularly surprising in a religious person of his stature. If Bishop Tutu ... could not get himself to say anything about the culpability of a Christian civilization that did so little to help the victims of the Holocaust, he might at least have observed a respectful silence."

Tutu also compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians and South Africa's policy toward Blacks. But these comments did not appear to outrage American Jews as much as those pertaining to the Holocaust. According to the Washington Jewish Week, "Tutu has every right, however foolish he may be in exercising his rights, to criticize Jews for their actions, but he has no right whatsoever to impose on Jews any moral obligation to grant forgiveness to Nazis or to tell Jews what to feel in their hearts. Indeed, he has not taken this approach with respect to Black Americans, nor with respect to Black South Africans."

The Near East Report (NER), the newsletter of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, compared Tutu unfavorably to Dr. Martin Luther King who, in 1968, called Israel "one of the great outposts of democracy in the world." NER editor Mitchell Bard wrote that "Tutu could learn from King" and wonders what the archbishop would say if he learned that a forest in Israel named after Dr. King was being destroyed by an arson campaign being conducted by Palestinians inside Israel.

Rosensaft Calls Arafat Shamir's "Mirror Image"

Menachem Rosensaft, a member of the American Jewish delegation which met with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in December 1988, has accused Arafat of bad faith and of failing to convince Israelis that the PLO is serious about peace. Rosensaft is the president of the Labor Zionist Alliance and former head of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

In an open letter to Arafat published in the Dec. 11 edition of Newsweek, Rosensaft wrote: "In effect, you have become the mirror image of Israel's more intransigent leaders. You have put forth conditions which are unacceptable to the other side. So have they. Prime Minister Shamir refuses to talk to you. You prevent other Palestinians from talking to him." Referring to the killing last year of over 100 Palestinian collaborators by other Palestinians, Rosensaft asked Arafat: "Don't you realize that not even the most peace-oriented Israelis will trust you with the lives of Israeli civilians if you continue to murder your own people?"

Drora Kass, executive director of the Tel Aviv-based International Center for Peace in the Middle East, said she thinks the PLO does need to do more for peace. But she criticized Rosensaft for how he chose to get this message across. "I think his agenda had nothing to do with advancing the peace process and everything to do with writing his way back into the mainstream (American) Jewish community," she was quoted as saying in the Jerusalem Post. It was Kass who invited Rosensaft to join the delegation that met with Arafat in Stockholm.

Rosensaft insists that he still believes Palestinians have the right to self-determination, and that the PLO should participate in any negotiations with Israel. "But I will not follow the left party line," he argued, "which is characterized by an unwillingness to find any fault with Arafat."

Should Jewish Journalists Criticize Israel?

Over 160 Jewish journalists from 27 different countries traveled to Jerusalem in January to attend the Third International Conference of the Jewish Media, sponsored by the World Zionist Organization's information department. One of the dominant themes of the conference was the question of whether Jewish journalists always should attempt to present Israel in a positive light or whether they should simply seek out the truth and write about it.

In his address to the media conference, Prime Minister Shamir emphasized the importance of freedom of speech, telling the audience that this freedom is protected by law in Israel but is totally absent in the Arab world. But he also stressed the "responsibility" of the Jewish media to "seek ways to strengthen the Jewish people and not weaken it" and to "bind them to Eretz Yisrael, which is the focal point of Jewish life, of Jewish existence and of Jewish future."

Journalists disagreed about the issue of criticizing Israel in print. Gary Rosenblatt, editor of newspapers in Atlanta, Baltimore and Detroit, said it is especially difficult to write anything negative about Israel in those papers owned by Jewish federations. "I once heard an editor say that Pravda has more independence than Jewish newspapers, because at least in Pravda you will find from time to time a letter critical of the Communist party," Rosenblatt told the Jerusalem Post.

But Joseph Polakoff, who has been a journalist in the US for many years, had another opinion. "When it comes to Israel there is no objectivity in the general press," he said. "We should not be intimidated by the general press. As Jewish journalists our first objective should be the survival and strength of Israel. Because without Israel, there won't be any Jewish newspapers."

Orthodox Israeli Professor Says US Should Cut Aid to Israel

Dr. Daniel Boyarin, an Orthodox Israeli professor who emigrated to Israel from the United States in 1977, has called for a cut in US aid to Israel because of Israel's violation of Palestinian human rights in the West Bank and Gaza. Boyarin teaches Talmudic Studies at Bar-Ilan, an Orthodox Jewish university located outside of Tel Aviv.

He was in Washington on Dec. 31 to represent the International Jewish Peace Union (IJPU) at a "White House Vigil for Israeli-Palestinian Peace." The vigil was sponsored by the IJPU and some 16 other organizations to coincide with the "1990: Time for Peace" events which took place in Jerusalem on Dec. 29-31.

"I don't think the US should reduce aid to Israel to punish or extract something from it," Boyarin said. "I just think the United States should apply the same human rights standards to Israel that it applies to every other country. It's not a question of calling on the US to start intervening in Israel's affairs. The US is intervening right now by footing the bill for the occupation and the brutal repression of Palestinians. We say the intervention has to stop."

The 43-year-old Boyarin admits that the majority of Orthodox Jews in Israel do not support the goals of the peace movement a Palestinian state and negotiations with the PLO. But he said the number who do has been gradually increasing. "This makes sense since peace is a central value of Judaism. Three times a day, when we pray to God, we ask Him to bring peace to the world."

Andrea Barron, a Ph.D. candidate in international relations at the American University in Washington, DC, is a member of the Jewish Committee for Israeli-Palestinian Peace.