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The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, September 12, 1985-Page 11
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5745: Review of the international scene
ews
en a
year
The Maccabiah was also a high point for Israel in a year of difficulty and hope. Athletes from 36 countries participated in an opening ceremony last July that Was both a parade and a joyous family reunion.
The Ramat Gan stadium rang with cheers as athletes from such putposts of the Jewish world, as Zaire, Zimbabwe, Gibraltar and Berrnuda marched past. .
Seven members of the Israeli team strode behind a banner proclaiming "Let my people gO" — a reference tp;those countries, like the USSR, which do not permit Jewish athletes to travel to • Israel'. ' ■
Soviet Jewry was, in fact, represented. Nine-, ty percent of Israel's wrestling team was born in the USSR, a.s was Canadian judo gold medali.st Mark Bcrgcr. .
The belts Israelis had their eyes on in 5745 were not those of judo competitors at the Games, but their own, pulled tight by tough government measures aimed at bringing Israel's economy u nder control.
As the year began. Shimon Peres' new unity government slapped a 6-mont,h ban on the import of a long list of such "luxury" items as automobiles and furniture, in an effort to save rapidly dwindling currency, reserves.
As the cost of living soared — even though a domestic price freeze had been imposed concur--, rently with the import ban — Israelis found their . previously sacrosanct cost-of-living allowances slashed'nearly in half.
A series of economic agreements oscillated between total and partial freezes on wages, prices and taxes— and the inflation rate oscillated along with the packages, ranging anywhere from a projected annual rate of 200% to 500%,.     ' ■.
.Finally, in an 1 Ith-hour agreement before a se-corid general.strike-would have taken place in July, Peres and weary Histadrut negotiators came up with a settlement on draconian economic measures, including a 30% devaluation of the .shekel (replaced at the beginning of September with a new shekel worth 1,000 of the old ones), and massive cut.s in government .subsidies on staples like bread and milk. V^^
Under the agreement, cost-of-living increments will soften the decline in wages.and salaries.
sponsored bills to curb racism in politics and public affairs. .
An unhappy chapter in Israel's history finally came.toan end in June, on the third anniversary ' of Israel's invasion of Lebanon, when the IDF completed  its  withdrawal   from, Lebanese territory. '
Put into effect in January, the 3-stage withdrawal plan.of Defence'Minister Yitzhak Rabin split the nationii! unity cabinet — and even the Likud bloc; twoofwho.sc ministers voted for the^plan.. ■     •        ■ ■
But the feeling Within Israel, and among the troops, was one of relief. By the time the puUout was completed, 654 Israeli soldiers and security personnel were dead and nearly 6,000 wounded — some of them as aresult of attacks by Shiite guerrillas during the withdrawal.
Behind them, the IDF left a country in,chaps. iPresident AminGemayers.credibility as a leader, already in tatters from challenges from both Siinni and Shiite Moslem factions, was effectively destroyed by a niutiny within his own Christian Lebanese Forces.
And leaders in Israeli towns along the northern border.appeared to fmd little comfort in a key element of the withdrawal plan — the establishment of a buffer zone under the authority of the Israel-backed   South    Lebanon Army.
As the year ended, Israel conducted a series of land and air raids in southern Lebanon in retaliation for the firing of katyush.a rockets against Jewish settlements in noi'thern Galilee, as well as a spate of attacks against SLA troops and IDF patrpis which took the life of twp more Israeli soldiers.
And in a fascinating sidelight to the Lebanese War. Ariel Sharpn claimed a moralvictory even though he lost his SSO.million libel suit against Time magazine for publishing a false account of his role in the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in ■ Beirut.
The jury found that a paragraph in the 1983 story was untrue and that Sharon had been defamed, but decided there was no malice involved.
the U.S. via Jordan and PLO chief 'Yas.ser Arafat, there were no .West Batik or Gaza Strip Palestinian representatives on it — only seven members of the Palestinian National Council, which Israel regards as an instrument of the PLO.
Israel rejected the list. -Another ITurry of diplomatic activity occurred, in August, when U.S. As.sistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Richard Murphy spent six days in Israel, Jordan and Egypt.
Murphy wanted to .meet with a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation in Amman, but onlyif he were assured that direct.talks with Israel would result from the preliminary session. Jordan's King Hus.sein was unable, to make Such a commitment.' and the meeting never, came off.
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Late summer polls showed that an overwhelming majority of Israelis supported the austerity prpgram. . .
Biit the unity of the national unity government was threatened by other internal developments — the gravest of which was a new wave of terrorism.
In January, military soiircesreported that in' 1984 terrorist attacks on civilians inside Lsrael; rose to the level of 1980-1. the year before Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy the Palestine Liberation .Organization.
in May. in a controversial exchange; 1,150 . Palestinians and other prisoners were freed to obtain the release of three Israeli soldiers captured in the Lebanese war. ... .Six hundred ofthe.se were allowed, to return to their homes in the administered territoi-ie.s and Israel. .,
The debate over whether they should have been freed, became bitter when, in June, Shiite Moslem hijackers boarded a TWA Boeing 727 in Athens. Demanding the release of more than 700 Shiites then held in an Israeli prison, the'hijackers shuttled the plane between Algiers and Beirut in an . 18-day marathon. .
The majority of the passengers'were American, including a navy serviceman beaten to death by the hijackers. .
Complicated negotiations involving the U.S., Syria and Lebanese Shiite leader NabihBerri strained U.S.-Israeli relations — but eventually the hostages were released. During subsequent weeks, the Shiite prisoners were also freed/in groups.
Within the territories, the summer brought a series of murders of Israeli civilians. Their funerals became settmgs for angry demonstrations, with supporters of Kach party leader Rabbi Meir Kahiane often participating.
Amid calls for the return of the death penalty for terrorist murderers and growing support for Kach, the cabinet reinstituted deportation and detention without trial for Palestinians suspected of anti-Israel or terrorist activities.
Against this background of increasing fear and anger, Deputy Premier and leader of the Likud Yitzhak Shamir was among those demanding that President Chaim Herzog pardon 15 Jews — part of an original group of_27 — conyicted-Df terrorist activities in the territories. Three received -mandatory life sentences for; their part in the murder of three Palestinian students at the Islamic College in Hebron. _
To combat increasing anti-Arab feeling, the Knesset passed on first reading two government- .
On the broader peace fronts the year saw two initiatives flounder on the issue of Palestinian representation.
In March. Egypt's President HosniKlubarak, Visited Washington with a 3-tier peace proposal envisaging preliminary.talks between the U.S. and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation .then, direct talks involving Israel. Jordan and the Palestinians, and finally an interhational' conference.
Mubarak initally discounted PLO participation in .such. talks, but later changed his mind. Although Premier Peres..over Likud objections, welcomed the initiative when it was first mounted. PLO participation, in peace talks is unacceptable.to all parties in the national unity government and Mubarak's proposal appeared to die. ■.
In July. Peres tried to breathe new life into, it by meeting: with two prp-Jordanian Palestinian leaders, Elias Freij, mayor of Bethlehem, and Hikmet al-Masri, a wealthy bu.sine.ssman from Nablus. .
But when a list of proposed Palestinian negotiating partners was conveyed to Israel by
.'Even though the; past year was filled with difficulties for Israel, the prpmi.se of its national an-them, Hatikva — The Hope — was fulfilled for a remnant of its pepple.
Between November and January, in a secret airlift dubbed Operation Moses, an estimated 7,000 Ethiopian Jews were brought by Israel out of refugee camps in the Sudan. Like thousands of their non-Jewish compatriots, they had fled across the Sudanese border from Ethiopia during the famine that is estimated to have killed 5 million in 1985.
The plight of Ethiopian Jewry has been a source : of controversy in North.America, as sonie groups claimed that the organized JeVvish community and Israel itselfwere doing little to help the estimated 26.000 remaining Ethiopian Jews.
Before: the airlift, approximately 7.000 had been brought to Israel. Another 8,000 were believed to be still in Ethiopia; with anywhere from 8.000 to 11,000 in the Sudanese camps.
Because, of the extreme .sensitivity of Sudan's Moslem president, Gaafer al-Nimeiry (deptxsed in a coup later in the year)., the airlift had to be kept secret.
It had been first.hinted at by Jewish Agency prcisident Leon Dulzin in November in a speech in New York reported by some Jewish media.
Then,.in January, the head of the Jewish Agency's immigration department in Israel broke the secrecy in an. interview with a Gush Emunim magazine not under Israel's censorship regulations. ~
The story, leaped onto: front, pages in Europe and North America— and Nimeiry stopped the airlift,
In another secret operation in March, the U.S. air force, the CIA, and the U.S. state department managed to get another 1,000Jews out of the Sudan. How many died in the ciamps is unknown — but 8,000, mostly women and children, remain in Ethiopia.
The response of the Diaspora and Lsrael was immediate. Special campaign.s wereniounted to help Israel with the co.st of the operation, estimated by the Jewish Agency at $82 million. ;
While hospitals and absorption centres coped with the problems of immigrants who had crossed centuries as well as miles, and who.se physical condition was far from good, one unanticipated ; complication caught the headlines. ; The. Chief Rabbinate in Israel,, which has jurisdiction over defining who is a Jew, insisted that Ethiopian Jews undergo a form ofconver-.sion ritual.
A young Ethiopian Jew listens to an explanation on dental care.
Many Ethiopians refused, and some even marched back to the site of their first step onto the .Promi.sed'Land — Ben Gurion airport — demanding to return to Ethiopia."
A compromise was reached, leaving the deci-,sibn on the need for conversion.to local, rabbinical councils.
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The religious status of other would-be immigrants was also the focus of bitter debate within, and without Israel.
A controversial amendment to the Law of the Return supported by Israel's Orthodox religious establishment was defeated on first reading in the Knesset in January.
The Law of the Return defines a Jew as one born of a Jewish mother, or a convert. By inserting the words "according to halacha" after the word'"convert," the amendment would have invalidated^ conversions performed by non-Orthodox rabbis.
The. propo.sal drew strenuous oppo.sition from non-Orthodox Jews abroad.
American Jews had other concerns during the past year. President Rpnald Reagan won a landr slide reelection victory, but exit polls indicated that as much as 70%'. of the Jewish vote went to . Reagan's Democratic opponent, Walter Mondale.
Five months later, many of those Jews who had voted for Reagan must have had second thoughts. In an incredible blunder, the U.S. President and his aides decided, first of all, that he should avoid a visit to a cpricentration camp during his trip to West Germany in May, and then subsequently included a wreath-laying ceremony at Bitburg, a German military cemetery where a number of SS troops are buried. •
Reagan's eventual decision to add a trip to" Bergen-Belsen to his- itinerary didn't help when he explained that he originally avoided it in order not to embarras.s his host, West German Chancellor Helmut Kojil.Kohl apparently did not worry about embarrassing Reagan,. Who said he. didn't know about the SS graves in Bitburg when it was selected for the cerernpny. -. Reagan stubbornly went ahead with the visit,. tlyihgby helicopter from Bergen-Belsen to Bitburg, and then going by motorcade to a. nearby U.S. air force base — along a route.lined with hundreds of chanting protesters,
U.S.-Israel relations ended the year on a high note, as a free trade agreement between the two countries went into effect this month: '
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U.S. President Ronald Reagan's visit to Bitburg prompted this demonstration by the Citizen's Rights Moveiment at the U.S. embassy in Israel.
On (he international scene, the presence of 300 Jewish wprrien from 12 countries at the United Nations End of Women's Decade Conference in Nairobi and/or the unofficial forum which began earlier helped, Canadian Jewish delegates .saiid, in the successful effort to have the "Zionism is racism" reference deleted from the conference's concluding document.
The conference was disrupted frequently by pro-Palestinian delegates. Israeli speakers were frequently subjected to walkouts by other delegations. .
Canadian Jewish participants gave high marks to the work of the deputy head of Canada's official delegation, Maureen O'Neil, in stopping the anti-Zionist campaign.
The "Zionism is racism" resolution was formulated at the first Women's Decade conference in Mexico City in 1985 and subsequently adopted by the UN General Assembly.