Page 2-f he (Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, June 26. 1986
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RABBI W. GUNTHER PLAUT
The dreadful spectacle of Jews in tel Aviv torching a synagogue and ripping prayer bcxiks in
yeshivcit to protest- the burning of bus shelters.
raises a series of fuiidaniental questions. ... First reactions portrayed these, events. as
■■pogroms" and "a repetition of Crystal Night""
(the November night in
1938 when the-Nazij; set
fire to the countr>'"s
synagogues). The
cheapening of language /
does little to describe
what, went on. for
pogroms and Crystal
Night were aiinod at the: ■ survival,   of ; Jews..
Siniilarly. when, ultra--
Orthtjdox Jews in Meah
She'arim.  wanted to
Rabbi Plaut
protest abortion practices they called the government "Nazis,""
When Jews use such extreme language against : each other they have little cause for coniplaint when Palestinians describe Israeli policies on the West .'.Bank as ■•genocide."'. No N.az-i'Holocaust was re-enacfed in the bus shelter escalation..
Those who set.fire to.a shul and destroyed holy, articles thought, they were taking just revenge tor ; the destruction of secular properties,. their sensitivities w'LTe apparently so blunted that the\' no longer realized that^ their attacks were directed against the sancta of the whole Jewish people. A burning synagogue or torn siddur touch more than a segment of pur people; they burn and tear all of us. -,
And. there we., come to the mo.stdeepl>; worrisome aspect of these terrible events. Here are Israeli citizens, brought up in secular schwls where the stiidy of Torah is part of the curriculum, who know Shabbat and holy days a.s national rest; period.s. yet who have come to identify all of these as having spiritual significance only tor thc; ■■religious." _
To them, religion has to do with black-hatted people who don't serve in the army, who try to prevent others from doing what they want, who burn bus shelters they don't like or throw stones and get away with it, who are intolerant of others and want to use the ptiwers of the state (in w hich they don't believe) to impose their way on everyone el.se.
There lies the real tragedy: that Jews ha\e cbnie to define religion as the property of .e.xtfeme elements, and that in the process they have learn-, ed not oniy to disregard but even to despise it. A syriagogue and a bus shelter, or an advertising placard and a siddur. have thus a.ssunied equal :Stattis.V' , ■
That is the heart of the problenv to whichat last — the official Israel rabbinate must give serious .spiritual and not merely political atteiition. The official rabJDinic establishiiient has allowed religious e.xtreiliisni totiourish and has paid fai-tw» little at^ tention to the majority of the population. They need •to. be attracted to the synagogue and to Jewish values/which are ill defined by mixed bathing controversies, by att;|cks oh Conservative and Refomi Jew^,. and the perennial"\Vho js a Jew" debaiev Prime Minister Shimon Peres has promi.sed to stop violence on both sides of the dispute. I fervently hope that he will be successful, and that in this he will be supported by the thoughtful and moderate sections of the population. I like to think that they still form the real majority and that they have no use for thugs on. either side of the spectrum. , :
vViolence. alas, has become part of Israel"s new eiilture'. Pe.fhaps these awful eNents-will awaken its people to the fact that the future of the state must rest on moral strength and not only on iiiilitar>' and economic security; .;
Greek invite declined
NEW YORK (JTA) ^
Kenneth Biialkin, outgoing chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, has declined ain invitation to Greece oh grounds that ■- 'the government of Greece iri recent years has followed a. pattern of pro-PLQ and.anti-Israel activity." . Bialkin, who will be suc-
ceeded on July 1 by Morris Abram. was responding to an invitation sent to him and several other American Jewish leaders by Andrew Mahatos.- a principal of a Washington firm representing . G re e k A m e ri c a n groups.
The invitation was on behalf of major Greisk shipowners and other businesses.
By i WOLF-BLITZER
WASHINGTON -
There. is no doubt that senior UTSTjDfficials, even those generally s^in-. pathetic toward Israel, remain very unjcasy oyer the , Jonathan Jay Pollard spy scandal.
Despite the .state depart-.ment's June 9 . statement welcoming Israel's "full cix)peratioh'' and President . Ronald Reagan's June II assertion that there has been "no evidence" of more Israeli spying. American officials are convinced that Israel has not yet come clean in providing the United States with the full stpr>' of other alleged espionage activities. ..The Americans are not .salis-tled.
The recent spate of leaked reports in the UvS. news
,m0d ia suggc,si ing that I.s.rael  has a more far-
, reuchiiig spy ring in place, in the .United States than earlier acknowledged is
. largely designed to pressure Israel into cooperating ui.th the continuing .American investigation
more . thoroughly. "It's aimed at turning the heat on Israel."" a U.S. justice departirient.' source said. "We want the Israelis to squirm."" ■ . Other administration of-ficials said there was a strong impres.siori through-
: but U ..S. governineht circles that. Israel's so-called "rogue■■ spying in
Washington went beyond Pollard, the 31 -year-old former U.S. naval intelligence analyst, who pleaded guilty to espionage activities on . behalf of Israeli He is currently awaiting formal sentenc-:
; ing. ..
Thus, one state department official said: ' I You know what they say about cockroaches. For everyone you see, there are plentv of others vou don't see.""       , '
That seems to be the prevailing mx)od in Washington about Israeli spies. Pollard was exposed; there almost certainly are others whO have not. There is an intense search under way in the U.S. capital- for more Israeli spies. This is making life for Isi-ael and its friends in the United States, especially in the Jewish community, very uncomfortable. Someone in Israel should have thought abiaut this before hiring Pollard.
The most: determined hunt for. Israeli spies understandably ihvojyes the law-enforcenient officers at the justice; depart^ inent. the Federal Bureau
. of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Attomey"s Office . for the District of Columbia. .Xhey. of course, afe charge d w i t h | i n d i n g criminals. includiii|^ .spies. They take their responsibilities ver)' seriously.. They look at the. situation
; in the most narrow possi^ ble way. ''It's cops and robbers to them," one Amencan official explain-
Unlike . the : more . politically attuned foreign affairs specialists at the state department, the National Security Council and-the Pentagon, the law-enforcement people have
little patience for or intere.st in the "bigg€T, picture" involving U.S..-Israeli relations.
This helps to e.Xplain why there have been so many conflicting .state-merits coinjng out of Washington in recent days. The .s la t e d e p art m e n t. especially Secretary of State George Shul'tz, is. very sensitive to the continuing relation.ship with Israel. The jaw-entprcemem officials —.
' even Attorney-General Edwin Meese —..are riot. They don't want any subsequent inVesUgation of their behavior to show even the slightest hint of a political coverrup. Watergate is still very fresh on their minds. Thus, this admiriisti;a-
' tioti; when it comes to Pollard and other related espionage developments. simply cannot speak with one voice even when it tries. What one sees. depends oh where One sits. But what ha.s deeply jr-
. ritated almost all U.S. officials is the reaction in Israel to Pollard's capture. No one in Israel seems to have paid much of a price for the suppo.sed blunder. There is no serious outct^y aritong the public at large;. e\'en in thfc generally very aggressive Israeli press, It seems that such brutal spy-, ing on JFriends is acceptable in Israel'
There is the disturbing fact that Rafael Eitan. the masterinind of ■ the now-disbanded intcllicence unit
which "rah" Pollard for some 18 months, was given a nice, cUshy job as head of Israel Cherntcals even though he had supposedly. gone^J^eyond his earliei" authority. Tmhe Americans. Eitan was rewarded for his work, rather than punished, and this stinks.
He did what he was supposed to do," an Aririeriean oiTicial said. "That-s what Israel's rcactionto Pollard tells us."
The same, they feel, is true about Brig:-Gen. Aviem Sella, who^ as a colonel and a visiting graduate student at New York University in 1984, first recuited Pollard. Sella is today comnjander of the American-built arid financed Rimon Air Base in the ■ Negev.. It was Sel 1 a, accor-ding to the formal U.S. in-dictriient of Pollard, who. first received stacks of stolen classi fied docuriients from the American analyst.
U.S. officials are clearly upset that the Israeli government did ■ not disclose Sella"s role when a team of American inr vestigators. led by state departinent legal advisor Abraham Sofaei", questioned several Israeli leaders la.st December during a visit to Israel. There is a sense in Washington that Israel tried, to conceal Sella"s role as well as that of other Israelis, including one official cited only as "Uzi" in couri documents.
The  Americans arc
cleariy not intimidated by thinly-veijed threatii in the
; Israeii news media that the U.S. itself has beenuaLUght
. .spying on Israel in the pa.st, and that if. the U.S. pressure on Israel continues, those incidents will be disclosed and the U;S. will be embarrassed. According to these Israeli
^ reports, . Israel ■has diplomatically hushed up th()se^ incidents over the years, quietly asking the .implicated American officials to leave, rather than publicly strain the overall Auierican-Israeli relationship. Why didn't the'U.S. behave the sanic way once Pollard was caUght'.^ i
■ 'If they have .the goiSds on us.^* one American of-ficial ■ sajd,  '' Let, them
l disclose th|m. We're not very nervous..I don't think;, they have anything that, comes close to a Pollard:"' The U..S. has, of course snooped on Israel over the years, especially, in the
. 1950s. But since the days of former Central Intelligence Agency, counterintelligence chief Jaiiies Jesus Angleton in the. 196()s. there have been strict constraints The Americans have riot actually undertaken coyert opera-
' tion.s against. Israel in any such heavy-handed nianner: ;
In the Pollard affair, l.^rael made seSeral major
■ mistakes and is paying a serious price for them to-: day.  "In Washington," wrote New York Times
coluinriist William Safire the; ;<ither .day,"Israers d et ract ors are a I most. beside themselves with glee as the case, unfolds and duplicity is exposed. I sriiel" s friends — espec ial -ly Jewish Americans, who -have been doubly betrayed -by an Israeli operatioripay-ing a Jew tobea traitor are not merely dismayed, but justifiably furious. Aqd the Grand Jury that indicted Pollard remains in :businGSs;. we'll see.rnore.'" .
Before deciding to operate Pollard, Israel s h ou 1 d • h a ve mo re c a re f u 1 -ly worried about the cOijt \S the spy. ring were exposed. Whatever information he • provided about Arab niili-tary capabilities.was almo.st certainly not. worth. the ' price. . ;.
.What about the Impact of Pollard on future Aiileri-can-lsraeli relation.s? Much will depend on the upcoming fallout from the.ongoing investigation. If riidre arrests are made, if other ! Israeli spies are foUnd. the. damagevyill be very real. But if no more evidence.of Israeli spying is found, the daiiiage: will be limited. The relationship will eventually rebound to its normally strong' state — sooner' rather than later-But we will have to see whether the U.S. investiga-tion and Grand Jury come up with inore Pollards.. The case is "^ riot yet .'closed despite Pollard's guilty plea.
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RICHARD GOHEN WASHINGTON - '
■Occasionally, you get a man who is perfectly matched to the office he holds. That will be the case when Kurt Waldheim- allegedly a war cririiinal arid indisputably a liar; officiiilly becomes the president of Austria. It is an empty office for an empty riiari — a ceremonial post that is supposed to represent Austria. Never has the country been better represented;
The temptation, even the duty, is to lambast AMStria for what it ha.sdone and to wonder about a countr>- that could elect as a head of state a man whose morality, like his clothes, is trimmed to reflect his times.. He.was a Nazi when it was . popular} not a Nazi when it wasn't; and now sort of is and son of i.sn't — re.fieciirig the moral ambiguity of the people who elected him. .
But sornething within me cheers the election of Waldheim.. As president of Austria, he will travel the worid as an object lesson; a reminder that the horrors of the Nazi era were not perpetrated .solely by atliqUe of niad Gemians. but bypi'dinarv' people doing what they thought were ordinary things.; Like .some clerk out Kafka, Waldheirirmay have done nothing more than sign papers; The point, always; was to have a clean desk. From there, a clean conscience soriiehow followed.
The tendency in recent years has been to see the Holocaust as something that transpired between Germans and Jews. Germans had their grievances and Jews their peculiar wiays. The Holocaust belongs to these two peoples — one as perpetratoi^, the others as victims. And in this formulation it has almost nothing to do with anyone else: Jonathan Yardley, the astute book ; critic for the Washington Post, inadvertently put it this way when reviewing a book about China's Great Cultural Revolution: "Its effect was to plunge China into a deciade-and-a^half of terror that is likely to haunt it for generations^ much as the Holocaust haunts Germany and the
■Jews.";-'' •
Yardley says the .sentence does not really reflect what he meant — Or wharhe knowsMu.se it not because I believe otherwi.se, but becauseit attracted no attention frorii editors Or readers, because it
seems to be a perfectly reasoriable;noncontrover- g
sial statement. But it is wrorig.As.Waldheim's own . =
career rnakes manifest; the Holocaust was not just i
the work of Germans. It Was also the work of =
Austrians — and Latvian.s. Lithuanians, Ukrai- . |
riians, Poles, Huiigariiins. Romanians, Russians e
arid other peoples as well. Everywhere Jews or 1 Gypsies. Poles or intellectuals. Communists or. =
; clerics died, the Germans had their coHaborators.- |
The real horror of the Holocaust is that people kill-. =
ed people for absolutely no reason. =
We all have -a difficult time facing up to the =
Holocaust. Not only are the facts unspeakable, but 1
they say something unspeakable about human be- =
ings: In the fniddle of the 20th c^ritury. in the most .=
advanced natiorts on earth,niiliions were murdered e
by millions riot because they were a threat, but =:
because they were differerit. It is no wonder that ^ §
Margaret Thatcher, no ignoramus when it comes =
to European history, broke down recently after . =
visiting Yad Vashem. the rnuseum-memorial-tq the : ^
HqUKaust in Jerusalem.. 5
The facts are just too awful to confront. So by ; s
and large the world does not. President Reagan cer- =
tainly did not when, in visiting Bitbiirg,. he duek- |
ed the real meaning of thii Holocaust. He pretend- e
ed Nazism, was spmethirig foisted.on the German 1
nation, that it was totally jmpo.sed. by a small group ' §
of tariatics. Helimited responsibility for the crime =
to the Nazi leadership arid exonerated everyone 5
else And when protests erupted, they came most- s
ly from Jewish organi:zations — as if Reagan's .|
simplistic version of history insulted only them. : |
The rest of the nation saw things largely the same ; =
way: Once again^this was something that mostly . i
concerned Jews, |
So here, thanks to Austria, is history's cor- i
rective. Here is Kurt Waldheim, the true =
perpetrator of the Holocaust, not a German, but |
an Austrian; not a mad beast, but an ordinary |
(oh so ordinary!) man. Here iis the humanist with . |
the Nazi past, the internationalist at his most §
provincial, the intellectual who kept the books i
for the lynch mob. He has been elected to repre- |
sent Au.stria but the Austriahs, as is their wont, I
are too modest. In ways we are reluctant to face, =
he represents njany of us all. =
(Copyright Washington Post Wiriters Group) |
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