Letters
LETTERS Thinking About Lebanon To the Editor: Leonard Fein is to be thanked for his analysis that the war in Lebanon is essentially directed at the West Bank ("Thinking About Lebanon,"...
...I am no apologist for the PLO...
...We reserve the right to edit for publication...
...Let someone else take up the thankless job of being a "light unto the nations...
...I concur with Dershowitz's prediction that Jews in the 21 st century are no longer going to excel in their intellectual achievements out of proportion to their numbers...
...Contrary to how the Likud would have it, within the past few years the West Bank independence option has become increasingly important within the PLO moderate mainstream...
...In fact, the PLO is an umbrella organization, a loose coalition of diverse groups...
...It does refer to an estimate by Rabbi Maurice Davis (mentioned in the article) that, of the 600 families who then belonged to CERF (Citizens Engaged in Reuniting Families, an anti-cult organization), "less than ten percent of them are Jewish...
...Of course we should seek to be just, to be as moral as we can afford to be without sacrificing our security either individually or collectively...
...But we are emoting, not thinking, when we view the PLO and Nazis as indistinguishable...
...For Begin, the demonization of the PLO serves two purposes: 1) it helps justify excessive measures in Lebanon and the West Bank and 2) it ensures that a process leading to serious negotiations toward a political settlement with the Palestinians cannot even begin...
...However, all authorities acknowledge that much, if not most, of that revealed knowledge has either been lost or forgotten...
...Jewish scholarship throughout the ages has therefore been dedicated to the process of recovering and rediscovering that which has been lost...
...Interested readers desiring further information on this subject should write to Mrs...
...there has never been a more contemptible collection of nationalist leaders . . . who would rather kill than win, who send small children to the front and abandon them there") you promote Begin's attempt to demonize the PLO: to portray them as inhuman devils, incapable of human motives or change, indistinguishable from Nazis, deserving only of death...
...No one can dispute the degree of suffering that afflicted each of the participants in this dramatic report...
...It is hardly likely that today's Jewish parents, who fall asleep over Johnny Carson, rather than over the withered Talmud pages, will be able to transmit that legacy effectively...
...As Abba Eban stressed recently in The Jerusalem Post, it denigrates the Holocaust...
...Anti-Semitism and Feminism To the Editor: Yasher koach to Letty Cottin Pogrebin ("Anti-Semitism in the Women's Movement," July-August 1982...
...Edward Tamler San Francisco, California To the Editor: Former yeshiva bocher Alan Dershowitz's (moment, July-August 1982) characterization of the talmudic method as a "closed system" which stifles creative and original thinking is unfair and inaccurate...
...Viewing the PLO as homogeneous devils obscures our vision and distorts our thinking...
...The original Zionist goal was to be a normal nation where Jews could determine their own destiny...
...Sartawi invited members of Knesset Mordecai Gur, Yossi Sarid (Labor), Muhammed Watad and Victor Shemtov to a meeting, but unfortunately they declined the invitation...
...It is Israel's moral obligation to destroy the current Jew-killers, called the PLO, and all who assist them and shelter them in Lebanon...
...They are very different—in motives and goals, in history and ideology, in degree and form of anti-Semitism, and in their size and power...
...Thus, he would be thwarting justice, one of the highest values in Judaism...
...Many of us are now as frightened by what kind of a country Israel is becoming as by the external threat...
...Tom Smerling Minneapolis, Minnesota Jews, Judaism, Justice To the Editor: I was surprised to see that Alan Dershowitz would try vigorously to get his client to go free even if he knew that the client was guilty of the charge...
...It is certainly unfortunate, perhaps tragic, that Dershowitz was left with the incorrect impression that his "original" ideas were of no value since they were not recorded in the Talmud...
...That is sufficient for me...
...Other important factions—including Issam Sartawi and some West Bank mayors—are realists who have publicly stated their readiness to live in peace alongside Israel in a demilitarized state of their own...
...Those who have followed the pages of the Israeli journal, New Outlook, know that there is a positive history of meetings between members of the Israeli peace movement and non-rejectionists of the PLO...
...And while it's true, as he says, that the PLO would have "opened irreversably the door to self-determination" by participating in the autonomy talks, an Israeli government less bent on incorporating the West Bank might have been able to take advantage of trends within the PLO to create a new opening to peace...
...A recent issue of the CCAR Newsletter speaks of "60,000 young Jews...
...And, as others have suggested, it is precisely our enemies, not our friends, with whom we must someday make peace...
...Shloime Perel Montreal, Quebec To the Editor: It is a recurrent theme of Jewish history that our worst enemies come from our own camp...
...Like most American Jews, I am anguished by Israel's continuing agony—which seems to be deepening with the invasion of Lebanon and the de facto annexation of the West Bank...
...Another victim of Jewish miseducation...
...It renders us less capable of understanding and coping effectively with this complex adversary, either on the battlefield or at the negotiating table...
...I am reminded of this unfortunate truth by Leonard Fein's unbalanced, incomplete and dangerous essay, "Thinking About Lebanon...
...However the content and conclusions of the article cater to those Jews who, for a variety of reasons, seek to apply the most unrealistic and emasculating standards to Israel and to Jewish conduct in general...
...Our enemies are getting bolder every day...
...20036...
...Would it not be more moral to recommend that his client plead guilty and then do his best to see that his client receives an appropriate sentence to fit the crime...
...Aaron J. Sarna Ottawa, Canada To the Editor: I was relieved to find your essay, "Thinking About Lebanon," in the July-August moment...
...No one knows for sure how many Jews are caught up in the Moonies or other cults, but the numbers that are bandied about are fantastic...
...These inhabitants were: Philistines, Canaanites, Amorites, Jebusites, etc...
...If the present generation, no matter how assimilated, has achieved such outstanding success, it is because it bears the "residual legacy" of grandfathers and grandmothers who pored over the holy books (or at least revered those who did) and instilled in the Jewish family an unusual reverence and love for learning and education...
...Addenda The cookie sculpture on page 46 of the July-August issue was made by Judith Taylor, Brookline, Massachusetts...
...The annexation of the territories is thus safe from the threat of political compromise...
...It is understandable that Ma'alot conjures up Birkenau...
...LETTERS Thinking About Lebanon To the Editor: Leonard Fein is to be thanked for his analysis that the war in Lebanon is essentially directed at the West Bank ("Thinking About Lebanon," July-August 1982...
...Our moral code does not extend mercy or humanitarian gestures to Jew-killers...
...The anti-Israel diatribe, "Thinking About Lebanon," reflects the treacherous attitude that you manifest for the welfare of Israel...
...This, as opposed to the Begin-Sharon government, is what deserves support from other Jews...
...As Jews, we are imprinted with the images of the Holocaust, still not fully digested within us...
...Ephraim Z. Buchwald New York, New York Cults To the Editor: The story of the encounter with the Unification Church ("Heavenly Deception," June 1982) is moving testimony to the devastation that this body can wreak upon a reasonably well-adjusted Jewish family...
...The photographs that accompanied "Andres Amutio's Minstrels, Jugglers, Bell-capped Fools" (moment, September 1982) were taken by the author, Frederic Grunfeld...
...I do not understand why Jews like Fein seek to impose absurd moral and cultural burdens on Israel...
...Esther Dietz, Consultant on Cults, Commission on Adult Jewish Education, B'nai B'rith International, 1640 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C...
...Thoughtful people recognize that the current war is totally justified, that German babies, mothers and oldsters were destroyed in Dresden and Hamburg, that Japanese civilians had to be obliterated at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, that cold analysis indicates that innocents who give sanction and sanctuary to murderers of Jews are no longer innocents...
...Rabbi Davis later raised his estimate to 15 percent...
...Reuben Vabner West New York, New Jersey To the Editor: I am returning your awful anti-Israel magazine to you...
...Equating Arafat with Hitler is not only muddled thinking...
...I am certain it had never occurred to many of us...
...On July 20 in Paris, Mati Peled, a leader in the Israeli socialist Sheli Party, and Dr...
...Rabbi Samuel Z. Fishman B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations Washington, D.C...
...But by ferociously painting the PLO so uniformly black...
...To those Jews who feel that 2,000 years of suffering and abject humiliation are quite enough and that a little strength feels good for a change, he tells us that he is right with us...
...in destructive cults"—one-tenth of America's Jewish youth population...
...Rabbi Spielman (also mentioned in the article) once claimed that 45 percent of the Moonies were Jewish...
...That report, published in 1976, made no such statement...
...The response to the cults must be based on human needs, not scare tactics...
...Beverly K. Snyder New Hyde Park, New York Letters to the Editor moment welcomes letters from readers...
...Only signed letters with a complete return address can be considered...
...The article makes a passing reference to a "1979 research report" of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations that allegedly states that a "ten-percent membership of Jews in cults is not serious...
...It is often overlooked that the very worst terrorists—the renegade "Black June" group responsible for the Vienna synagogue bombing and the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov—are not only not part of the PLO but are at war with them, having sworn to kill Arafat...
...Yet it is a sign of hope and optimism that there is opposition to the war in different Jewish communities and in Israel...
...In his essay, Fein makes an obvious attempt to justify his feelings and conclusions to both poles of Jewish thought...
...I am grateful to moment for printing it...
...All letters should be typed, double-spaced, and sent to the moment Editorial Office, 462 Boylston Street, Suite 301, Boston, MA 02116...
...I feel that her article is one of the most important I have read in the last 25 years and I shall call it to the attention of my fellow congregants and rabbi as well as my friends and family...
...Another apt analogy was Hashem's instructions to annihilate the Jew-killer inhabitants of Israel as soon as General Joshua Bin Nun brought the Jews into the Promised Land...
...It is not inconceivable that we will again see the day when we stand utterly alone in the world...
...The Almighty ordered us to obliterate this people and this was done...
...That is the extent of it...
...Your citation of the biblical Sodom story is woefully inapt inasmuch as at Sodom, it was a question of corruption and immorality and not a question of Jew-killers threatening the survival of the Abrahamic population of Canaan...
...For your edification, our holy Torah provides a direct analogy to the issue at hand in the case of Amalek, the biblical PLO which terrorized the Jews in Sinai...
...It is gratifying to hear some Jewish leaders speaking out...
...It is this group that shot Ambassador Shlomo Argov in London on June 3 and that is also responsible for the deaths of PLO diplomats in various countries...
...Hence, Jewish libraries and houses of learning are to this day filled with chidushei Torah—novel ideas— "recovered" by the most original, creative, profound, at times obtuse and pilpulistic, thinking...
...Some—the rejectionists—are fully as vicious and single-minded as you suggest...
...The further away the Jew is from tradition the less likely he/she is to be imbued with the traditional values of reverence for scholarship, love of charity and chesed and a passionate distaste for violence...
...How infinitely wise she is to point out to us that anti-Semitism is a feminine as well as a masculine problem...
...I share both your rage at their senseless terrorism and your frustration at their lack of political vision...
...I agree, and thus was surprised to find such an emotional condemnation of the PLO appear in the middle of your article...
...True, the tragic invasion of Lebanon sets back the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation...
...A turning point occurred as far back as 1972 with the expulsion from the PLO of the group centered around Abu Nidal, which was opposed to any negotiated settlement that would allow Israel to exist...
...It is true that traditional Jewish scholars have always remained loyal to the proverbial dictum, "There is nothing new under the sun" (Kohellet 1), and subscribed to the premise that all creative and original thought was revealed at Sinai...
...You suggest it is time for thinking, not just emoting...
...Please stop the subscription henceforth...
...There is a vital issue to be addressed, but we are not dealing with massive defections...
...But, I would attribute its cause to other factors...
...Issam Sartawi of the PLO held a joint press conference in which they urged immediate direct negotiations (The Jerusalem Post, July 25-31...
Vol. 7 • October 1982 • No. 9
