June 1989, Page 35

Jews and Israel

By Andrea Barron

Passover Rally for Israel-Palestinian Peace

Over 500 Jews rallied in New York on April 16—the Sunday before Passover—to call for negotiations between Israel and the PLO, an active American role in the Mideast peace process, and a mutual end to violence. Passover is the Jewish festival of freedom which celebrates the Jews' escape from slavery in Egypt over 3,000 years ago. The rally was organized by the Passover Peace Coalition, an umbrella group of 28 Jewish organizations including Friends of Peace Now, New Jewish Agenda, and the International Jewish Peace Union, as well as more mainstream groups such as the Progressive Zionist Caucus, the Holocaust Survivors Association USA, and the Labor Zionist Alliance.

The demonstrators marched in heavy rain from the New York Public Library to the United Nations carrying signs showing Israeli and Palestinian flags and "Passover Peace Doves." The organizers blamed the weather for the relatively small turnout but refused to allow the rain to dim their enthusiasm. They stood under umbrellas with wet signs listening to speakers tell them that Jews celebrating Passover can not really be free until everyone—Jews and non-Jews, Israelis and Palestinians—are also free.

Among the speakers were Rabbi Joy Levitt, past president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association; Israeli novelist Yoram Kaniuk, author of Confessions of a Good Arab; writer Grace Paley, New York's 1988 poet laureate; actor Ed Asner, former president of the Screen Actors Guild; and Peter Yarrow from the Peter, Paul and Mary folk group. Asner said that liberation theology, which usually is applied by Christians to Central America, can also be applied by Jews to the Middle East. "Liberation theology means going back to the scriptures. The scriptures say that the true God liberates, not enslaves. The first commandment tells us not to worship idols and this means not idolizing a nation.

Yarrow played "Don't Let the Light Go Out," a song he composed after the 1982 massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. "Light one candle for those who are suffering the pain we learned so long ago," he sang. "Light it for the people suffering in Palestine, the Philippines, El Salvador, and South Africa." Yarrow told reporters he had received several death threats, probably from right-wing Jewish groups, which warned him not to participate in the Passover rally. He called the threats "horrific" but said they would not deter him. "Peter, Paul, and Mary received death threats when we sang in the South during the civil rights movement. But that didn't dissuade us. This kind of thing goes with the terrain. If you are going to sing peace songs, you've got to believe in them and act on them."

Midge Decter Attacks Jewish Progressives

Midge Decter—author, lecturer and right-wing Jewish activist—has come out in full force against American Jews such as economist Stanley Sheinbaum who have met with PLO officials. Decter is the wife of Commentary magazine editor Norman Podhoretz and executive director of the Committee for a Free World, a New York-based group which calls for increased US defense spending and a more aggressive foreign policy. "She is often regarded as the high priestess of the New York Jewish intellectuals' circle of ideologues," wrote Gladys Damon in Boston's Jewish Advocate.

Speaking to a group of Jewish students at the Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel, Decter criticized Sheinbaum and four other prominent US Jews for meeting with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat last December in Stockholm. "If Sheinbaum is a Jewish leader, then so is Yasser Arafat," she said. Decter then proceeded to lambast Peter Weiss, the New York attorney who organized the "Road to Peace" conference held at Columbia University last March. The meeting provided PLO officials and Israeli parliamentarians the opportunity to engage in direct dialogue in the United States. Decter said that Weiss and the Samuel Rubin Foundation, which paid for the New York conference, are responsible for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, "one of the most vicious, sneaky and underhanded organizations ... and an outlet for Third World propaganda."

Decter criticized US Jews for not recognizing that "the safety of Israel depends on the survival of strong Western nations. The US is the linchpin. We owe it our applause to remain a strong, heavily armed world power. We must not cut the US military budget in order to provide medical insurance." Decter said the problem with the Israeli army was "not that they are brutal, but that they are not brutal enough. No one honest on earth has figured out how to deal nicely with the organized exploitation of young kids for purposes of rioting, and neither have the Israelis. "

Meanwhile on April 2, about 200 members of right-wing Zionist groups demonstrated outside the PLO's United Nations mission in New York to call for an end to the US-PLO dialogue. Among the groups represented were Americans for a Safe Israel, Emunah Women of America, and Kach International, which is associated with Rabbi Meir Kahane's Kach party in Israel. The rally was organized to express "anger and impatience with the US and PLO dialogue," announced Kenneth Kelner, president of the Manhattan Region of the Zionist Organization of America. "America has mentioned a unilateral stand against terrorism and now we see that commitment ending," he declared. Rabbi David Algaze of the Orthodox Havurat Israel Synagogue in Queens said a coalition of Jewish organizations against the PLO would be established after the rally.

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