Response to attack on Netanyahu

                                               Sat, 30 Nov 1996 
The Editor
The University of Washington Daily


Dear Sir:

     Lacking Beth Harris' youthful nimbleness, I cannot claim, as she did
in her letter of November 26, to have been simultaneously present at all
three demonstrations in the vicinity of the General Assembly of the
Council of Jewish Federations in downtown Seattle on November 14.
But I do know that her snide little description of the pro-Netanyahu
demonstration, in which I participated, bears little relation to
the truth. She describes its participants as "including delegates to the
convention" and local "supporters" whose message was "I love Bibi." In
fact, as anybody at all familiar with the Seattle community would have
known, this group included virtually no delegates, and at least half of it
was made up of Christians. It was addressed by the head of the Zionist
Organization of America, by an Israeli mayor, by several rabbis, and by a
leader of the Christian group Bridges for Peace. Its message, which Harris
cannot soil her tongue by mentioning, was roughly the following: Mr.
Netanyahu deserves support because he has inherited from the Israeli Labor
Party a catastrophic agreement with no historical
precedent: never before in history has a nation given up land and
authority to a group explicitly dedicated to its destruction with the
expectation that this unilateral surrender would increase its national
security. Rabin and Peres persuaded themselves that creating an armed
force of 50,000 Palestinian Arabs under the leadership of one of this 
century's major war criminals in an area where no arms had previously been 
allowed
would increase security. The results of this folly have long been evident
in the 300% increase in Arab terrorism, culminating in the pogrom of two
months ago.
     If Beth Harris read the (very professionally executed) signs of the
pro-PLO marchers, which called, in a variety of repellent slogans, for the
reduction of Israel to sandy wastes, as so many
plangent calls for "peace," then I think she is a likely customer for some
choice real estate in downtown Sarajevo. As for her lefter-than-thou
sanctimoniousness about her Jewish "pride" in "standing up for human
rights" by espousing the claims of the Arabs to the 18% of mandatory
Palestine that they do not yet control (appetite grows by what it feeds
on), it reminds me of the old saying that Jews dance at everybody's
wedding except their own. Her letter is a sorry reminder that
the most difficult struggle that Jews still face is not the struggle 
for Israel, but the struggle for self-respect. 

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