Some News Items Most US Newspapers Overlooked

(Mainstream American "newspapers of record "frequently put good news about Israel along with bad news about the Arabs on Page 1, and their opposites on Page 65. If your hometown newspaper didn't carry any of the news items below, perhaps it's only because it had no Page 65 on which to put them.)

Colombian President Barco Asks Bush to Curb Israeli Weapons Sales

" . . . Colombian officials also objected to the continued flow of illicit US chemicals and semi-automatic assault weapons to the traffickers ... Because of US political sensitivities on gun controls, Barco is likely to press Bush only for stronger export curbs, rather than any new control measures, but will also ask for US pressure on Israel to restrain its gun exports, which are another major source of traffickers' weapons." (Final two paragraphs in report on upcoming Cartagena meeting in Feb. 13, 1990 Washington Post.)

Why Thatcher's Britain Is Israel's Last Political Ally in Europe

" . . . It is not altogether surprising that Britain's tough and hugely successful prime minister should have close ties with the Jewish community. Her parliamentary home district is the heavily Jewish London borough of Finchley, and political good sense would dictate that she demonstrate friendship toward Israel and work hard for Soviet Jewry. But Thatcher's affinity for Jews has transcended political expediency.

... It is not so much a matter of [Margaret] Thatcher leading and the Jews following,' one Jewish banker in London told The Jewish Week. On the contrary, the Jews have set the pace for Thatcher ...

"Thatcher was not content, as were her predecessors, to hide her retinue of 'court Jews' in government think-tanks and policy committees, carefully shielded from the public gaze. Thatcher has brought 'her Jews' out of the closet. No less than five of her most senior ministers and closest advisers have been Jewish ... It was a phenomenon that moved one former British prime minister to remark that there were more Old Estonians than Old Etonians in Thatcher's cabinet ... Moreover, according to One of Us, the much-admired, much-quoted biography of the Iron Lady by journalist Hugo Young, Britain's Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovitz has replaced the Archbishop of Canterbury—head of the Anglican Church—as 'the spiritual leader of Thatcher's Britain.'

"Historically, British Jews were identified firmly with the mildly socialist Labor Party ... Most of the Labor Party's leaders were staunchly and warm-heartedly pro-Israel and well-disposed to the Jewish community, during many long decades when the Conservative Party was distinctly cool ...

"Time and Thatcher broke the mold. The immigrant tailors and shopkeepers in London's impoverished East End gave birth to a generation of doctors, lawyers, accountants and bankers ... For this new generation, the top priorities are not welfare benefits, socialized health and state education, but the creation of wealth, a favorite theme of the anti-socialist Tories... A list of Britain's 200 wealthiest citizens, published ... by the prestigious Sunday Times newspaper in London, included no less than 30 percent who were identifiably Jewish." (Excerpts from article by Helen Davis, The Jewish Week, Inc., Queens, NY, May 5, 1989)

Child-Killing "Devices" Reported from West Bank Villages

"Occupied Jerusalem, Feb. 15 (Agencies)-A four-year-old Palestinian girl died today of head injuries suffered in a mysterious explosion ... The death of lktimal Abdullah of Tayasir village in the occupied West Bank came three days after she was injured when a device she found near her home exploded, reports said. Her 10-year old brother Naim also was wounded in the blast. The fatality was confirmed by doctors at Makassad Hospital in East Jerusalem, where she was taken for treatment.

"The army has launched an investigation into the blast in Tayasir and into two other Palestinian deaths linked to explosions of unidentified devices on the West Bank."

"Palestinian activists have charged that Israeli soldiers have thrown explosive devices out of jeeps to lure unsuspecting children, but the army has denied the reports." (The Saudi Gazette, Jeddah, Feb. 17, 1989.)

"Jewish Blood Is Not the Same as the Blood of a Goy."

"Jerusalem—When Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg of the Joseph's Tomb Yeshiva in Nablus said recently that 'Jewish blood is not the same as the blood of a goy,' the comment had widespread repercussions in religious circles, especially because he said it after a court hearing in which several of his students were remanded on suspicion of murdering a teenage Arab girl…

"The Jerusalem Post asked two innovative religious thinkers on either side of the political fence, Prof. Ze'ev Falk and Prof. Uriel Simon, to discuss the issue. Falk, a Hebrew University law professor [and] spokesman of the rightist group, Rabbis on Behalf of the Victims of the Intifada ... said ... some rabbis described ... imaginary situations, ruling that if a non-Jew fell into a pit, a Jew need not extract him, or that a Jew who killed a non-Jew should not receive the death penalty ... Today, with their own state and their own army, the Jewish people have no need for 'lower moral standards.' Throughout the ages, he insisted, Jewish sages have reinterpreted the Torah in terms of ever-higher moral standards...

"Ginzburg's statement, as Falk saw it, evolves from a mystical view that sees a Jewish soul as different from that of a non-Jew. The idea is not a new one; it had been expressed by a sage of the stature of Yehuda Halevi. But it is a view that Falk rejected...

"Uriel Simon, professor of Bible at Bar Ilhan University and a leader in Netivot Shazlom, the religious peace movement, is frankly scathing. . .'It is shocking that an Israeli rabbi and yeshiva head should say such things.'

"The source of Ginzburg's thoughts, Simon said, had evidently been the Tanya of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Chabad-Lubavitch chasidic sect, who wrote that Jews were born with a special soul...

"It is sad, Simon continued, that some Jews tend toward the same bigotry and injustice from which the Jews have suffered and have rationalized such impulses from the Torah ... Bigotry is a natural human state. Jews in Israel can be happy that Andrei Sakharov can fight for Jewish rights in the Soviet Union, but not understand how others can fight for the elementary rights of Arabs in Israel, he said. The Torah tells us 30 times to be just to the stranger because we were strangers in Egypt.

"Before the Six-Day War, Simon said, most religious Zionists felt as he does. The consequences of that war... caused the rise of extremism in the ranks of the religious Zionists. The only way this can change now, he concluded, is through another change in the political situation. " (Excerpted from article by Haim Shapiro of the Jerusalem Post Service, printed in the Jewish Week, Inc. of Queens, NY, June 23 1989.)