ThcCanadian Jewish News, Thursday, October24, 1985-Page 11
Opinion
But uncle EUezer and his buddies are safe
By
J. B. SALSBERG
I pray for your indulgence, itiy trustworthy' readers. I'm at pain to report to you that the oppressive autumnal mood, the posl-Succoth syndrome ofwhich I wrote a week ago, still clings to me and is, I'm afraid, coloring my' views of the world and what happens in it.
So what, some will say, who cares? To such ... irregular sample.^; of what is' said in this corner I can t)nly say: I'm. sorry that f failed to please you but this' paper has. thank heaven, become quite extended and quite varied to satisfy all manner of tastes and wants. ; ■
On the other hand, there are others, and very thoughtful, readers who in very solicitous or very angry tones, register their exceptions to what I may have conveyed or to what Kailed, in their view;, to convey. This is a. quite legitimate and even welcomed reaction from concerned readers. .
For instance:
. • A reader, without a return address/and with an illegible signature, forwarded a letter. full of lamentations. He bemoans the fact that
J.B. Salsberg
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I. who iti the 30s fought the good fight for social good and for peace, now waste my time on inconsequential and "dream-world" issues. He wants mc to be hitting hard at the evils that beset; the world;
• Another reader (al.so without an address and an unreadable name), didn't l6.se a minute after reading the column ''Politics of Mes-, : s i a n i s m ca n h u rt (s rae 1," i n w h i c h I p re sent cd some worrying thoughts about an aspect of the Lubavitch movement's public activity.
.. Well, this reader hastened to expres.s :his satisfaction with that column,, and pleads that Ipress on with the ;'fight" against Lubavitch. To make, sure that I. have ammunities for the' battle, he enclosed/a 2-pagc reproduction of Emuna' Umada of 1980, issued by Machon-Lubavitch. The fact is that other readers sent me those pages a number-of times-already.—^ . usually after I mention Lubavitch. . ...
Anbther reader chose to phone me to air his displeasure with the frequency that.I allow niy good uncle Eliezer and his shvitz buddies to occupy the space of this column.
To.all of them .1 want to.say that a columnist (or as it is known in France, a Feuilletonist, and once very popular, in the Yiddish press) is not a reporter, whose task is to report honestly, .and fully events that took place. Nor is that genre useful to editorialists.
It is, or should be, one human being's reaction to what happens around him. In this
field, the writer with life's experience resorts to irony, satire, sarcasm and just plain good humor as means of commenting on events and people.
Have some of the complainers ever laughed at human foibles, or the human comedy? If not then they must live in terrible isolation of the real world and, I suspect, of their immediate environment.
As for my uncle Eliezer and his buddies, they are inorc sensitive to what happens around them and much', much wiser in their rernedial conclusions than all their joyless, 'tight-lipped detractors who;prefer\to .sulk in their self-imposed, social isolation. . . So, don't woi"ry, my dear readers: uncle Eliezer and all his loyal band of .shvitz buddies are safe and secure in this corner for as long as they wanl^ (Subjeqt, of course, to the whim of the editor. But he.woQid be ousted from his hoiTie if he attempted such an inhuman deed.)
Let's close with my lingering autumnal (po.st-Succoth) moods.
The PLC's hijacking of the Italian cruise liner and the sinister murder of a di.sabled American Jewish passenger . whose dead body they dumped into the sea has by now created an ever-widening political crisis in the world. That reaction is to be welcomed and, may also be helpful in the battle against infernational terrorism. But:.
AU.the shouting of "Arab Nationhood" and "Islamic Brotherhood" notwithstanding, two powerfuMslamic nations are engaged in.one of
the bloodiest, dirtiest wars with each other.
More professed Palestinians have been killed by other members of the "Arab Nation" in the last couple of yearis than had ever fallen in ail battles with the Israel Defence Forces. What "brotherhood!" What "nation!"
Religidus fanaticism feeds the madness of self-distributiori. After killing a member of the Soviet embassy in Beirut, the killers announced: "We have carried out God's .sentence against one of the hostages. . . ." (Globe and Mail, Oct. 3, 85).
On Oct. 1, the.same paper reported that in the slaughter between tw'o'Arab, Islamic factions in Tripoli, a spokesman for one of the fac-■ tions told the Associated Press, "We shall fight to the last dropofblood. . . . Our dead, go to heaven and theirs to hell."
On Oct. 15 The Globe, in its New York Times reportage from Cairo, tells us that "a senior Egyptian official," in his ieffdrt to explain the conflicting statements made relative to the hijackers, said: "A lie here is simply not the same as a lie in your country. ..."
Of course 1 know that in the^diplomatic woi-ld lies are not limited to one country or one cuJture but is practiced universally. And, of course, 1 know that religious fanatiCisrii is not limited to any one of the worjd's religions, but it is a shattering, phenomenon to encounter nevertheless:. . It is especially saddening when one receives it in the autumnal,.post-Succoth days.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
. Letters are welcorrie if tHey are in English or^ French, no more.than 250 words, typewritten with . lines double spaced, and of interest to our reading public. Readers are cautioned not to make sweeping claims against persons or institutions which they cannot verify, as libel laws are very stringent. We reserx'e the, right to edit letters, which must.bear the sender's address and handwritten signature. '.
passenger wa.s killed and thrown overboard. (Please note that this man was in a wheelchair and Jewish.)
According to the 20-20^ TV news show, Egyptian President Hostii Mubarak knew that the ''plane carrying these terrorists was heiaded for Algiers, but told the Americans that he didn't know where they were."
So much for the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of March, 1979!
A leopaifd never changes its spots! Paula Feigelsohn Toronto
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Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ... Does a leopard ever change its spots? ,
EGYPT Vs. HUACK LIES
. -Re the recent '.lies told by various government leaders when dodging the issue of bringing Arab hijackers to justice:'
Mazcl tov to the Americans for, intercepting the Egyptian plane that was carrying the founArf-" rorists who hijacked an Italian ship on.which one
KAHANE Vs. ISRAELI ARABS
.Jon Bayer's Oct. 3 letter,- "Calls Kahane Pure Racist,;,'' is typical of those who are unable to muster even a slightly coherent answer to a question as basic as: "How is Israel to survive with a profciundly hostile Arab majority?" And so they mvariably resort.to juvenile name-calling and attempting to; shout down the voices of reason.
Consider the following statements'by.young, . well-educated, intelligent Israeli Arabs:.
"The state is democratic, who says that in the year 2000 we Arabs will still be the minority? Today I accept the fact that this is a Jewish state with an Arab minority. But when we are the majority, I will not accept the fact of a Jewish state with an Arab majority." (Na'ama Saud, school teacher. May 28, 1976.)
"Arab Palestine is the land of our struggle. We have seen the path from the Negev to the Galilee. Our front will be triumphant." (Arab rally, Hebrew University, Jan. 28, 1980.)
It is not Rabbi Kahane, but thewords and ac- . lions of Israeli Arabs and the population censuses showing the steady proportional decfine of Israel's Jewish population which provide the most compelling testimony to the utter necessity of the: humane, compensated expulsion of Arabs from Israel.
Thankfully, a rapidly growing number of Israeli and. Diaspora Jews,.and even non-Jewish friends of Israel, are becoming aware of this; Ken Habermah
Toronto
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"PALESTINIANS" Vs. ISRAELI JEWS
Re the so-called Palestinians who have been hijacking the headlines recently:
Who are "Palestinians?" . They ceased to exist in 1948, when Palestine was. finally partitioned.
In 1922, Palestinians.on.the east bank of the Jordan became citizens of "trans-Jordan." which became "The Hashemite .Kingdom of Jordan" in 1948, when it illegally took some, of the western part.
In fact. "Jordan", is not a.legal entity, but, is really part of the Land of Israel. The .Bedouin. (if Hejaz. and the Arabs of eastern Palestine became "Jordanians.
Jews in Israel were Palestlnlan.s under British rule, just as, until 1922, were Arabs cast of the Jordan. When Palestine ceased to
exist after the UN-approved re-establishment of Israel, there were no longer" Palestinians.
Christians, Moslems and Jews in the newly re-established Israel became Israelis; the Arabs in the area just occupied by Jordan were Jordanians.
Arabs who have lived in land now part of Israel and had fled to Lebanon or Jordan or the."West Bank": were-either refugees, or. in one way or another, acquired other citizenship.
throughput history, war ha.s created refugees.. In 1921, the famous Norwegian, Nansen, had established the Nansen Passport for such people and the bid League of Nations had set up a refugee organization to resettle such people;
the UN has donethe.same, and over the years has resettled many millions, culminating lately ' with Vietnamese. Almost none has evergone back to the original homeland. ; Canada has 120. varieties of ethinic cultures today: refugees from all lands. . Only a million or so Arabs have remained in, refugee.camps for 37 years, at high co.st to the West, in the hope of returning. In the .same years, more than a million Jews have fled Arab lands to move to Israel and have left their wealth behind ■in Arab lands — either confiscated by the Arabs or left behind because of restrictions. .
The Arabw'orld has spent billions to fight Israel, and used its brother refugees as pawns in, its power-play to embafass Israel. Charles Anthony Toronto
KIDS ARE THINKERS
In Lou Seligson's Sept. 9 article in the Mont; real edition about Prof. Fred Rosenzveig, he stales: "Schools have nq coherent program for teaching people to think."■
In fact, at Edinburgh Sch(K)l, a PSBGM elementary school, a program called Philosophv for Children has been taught since 1981. ■:..'/
. The program recognizes that children are thinkers. •
While it does not need to teach children to think, it does provide them with specific, intenr siye training in a wide variety of rea.soning skills and many opportunities to exercise and develop those skills.
It is a program which is now offered to all children at. Edinburgh from grades 1 to 6. Debby Hochstein Montreal
WRITER A "MYOPIC RACIST"
I was very upset by Ron Csillag's Oct.. 3 arti-. cle, "Trick of living in Toronto is not to look back," written as an ex-Montrealer, with his legitimate longings for his old home town.
However, Ron .seems to be suffering from a myopia, not only here in Toronto, but when he lived in Montreal as well.
Any careful observer of this city will realize that it is not the same throughput, but is a city of neighborhoods (Moore Park, Rosedale,
Forest Hill, Kingsway), each one having its own distinctive character.
The same myopia seemed to have infected him and the anglophones who came before him in Quebec. He still wonders whether "there is any life beyond St. Lawrence Blvd." (it's Boulevard Saint-Laurent now, Ron).
If he and his fprebearers had the sense to realize that Quebec was fundamentally a French-speaking province, and.had become fluently bi^ lingual, perhaps there would have been no necessity for Bill 101.
The racism of Bill 101 was matched by his own my optic racism in ignoring the existence of one of Canada's founding peoples. Marvin Fremes Toronto
Exiitor's note: Ron Csillag replies: ''HadMr. Fremes not been so myopic himself, he would have recognized the article as a tongue-in-cheek look at anglophone.paranoia. I happen to be fully bilingual. Yet anyone with even the severest myopia can see that opportunity and life for young people lie in Toronto.
"As for beinglabeted a racist. 1 was once called that personally by Pierre Bourgault; the father of Quebec separatism. So at least Mr. Fremes is in good company. And his unfamiliarity with the issues shows in stating that there would have been, no need for Bill 101 if everyone had been bilingual. .The intent of Bill 101 was to make everything unilinguai French. ThaVs racist and. myopic. "
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LAUDS BRIDES COLUMN
As a result of reading your excellent columns .offering tips to Jewish brides, I contacted one of •its co-writers, MyraFcldman, and asked for. guidance concerning the upcoming marriage of our daughter. ; 1 thought you'd like to know that Mrs. Feldman helped us a great deal and made pur simcha a wonderful affair.
Margaret Breslove
Toronto
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JB AFRAID OF MESSIAH?
■ I'd like to comment on.J.B. Salesberg's Oct. 10 column, headed "Politics of Messianism.can hurt Israel" and subheaded "A need for open dialogue."
A noted Lubavitcher has said: "I believe firmly in the conning of the Messiah, and although He may be delayed, 1 daily await His coming.!'
Maybe, Mr. Salsberg, you are afraid of the dramatic changes' in your own life when He comes?
[ suggest you read The Real Messiah written by Riibbi Aryeh Kaplan of blessed memory. He •points out that, at no other time-in history, has the possibility of the Messiah's coming been made a reality than in our own time. . A^carcfuf stutiy ofhis thesis, JB, will .set the. record straight.
David Aharon Lindsay.
Toronto