Ohio Jewish Chronicle, 1993-01-21

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The Ohio Jewish Chronicle
Serving Columbus and the Central Ohw
,/pu'iih Community stme 1922
VOLUME 71
NUMBER 3
JANUARY 21, 1993
28 TEVET 5753
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Schottenstein, Fisher to
be honored by Bonds
Mtercongregational Sabbath
to be held at Temple Israel
Melton Center announces
upcoming guest speakers
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Russian performers to
entertain community
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Parents invited to learn
more about Torah Academy
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'Journey to the Occupied Lands9 — Two views
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On Tuesday, Jan. 26, at
9 p.m., WOSUrTV will air
FRONTLINE — "Journey to
the Occupied Lands." This
90-minute special by Producer-Correspondent Michael
Ambrosino examines the Israeli-occupied territories, of
the West Bank and Gaza.
Ambrosino spent nearly
three years interviewing Palestinians and Israelis: farmers,
settlers, planners and military
authorities .—• for this program. Together with Producer-Director Gillian Barnes, he
filmed throughout Israel and
the occupied territories to
piece together a story of conflicting claims fought acre by
acre and sometimes even room
by room.
"These people live in separate communities that are so
close to each other, they have
to co-exist as neighbors if not
as friends," said Ambrosino.
"1 wanted to know how the
issues that really concerned
people living in the occupied
territories would be affected
by the peace talks."    . ,
Because the issues raised in
the program arc complex and
because such endeavors, by
their very nature, contain a'
bias, the OJC. and the Community Relations Council of
the Columbus Jewish Federation, in an effort to give community members the information necessary to evaluate the
program fairly and analytically, have asked two members of
the community with widely
divergent views on this issue
to preview the episode and
share their opinions on it.
The first essay is written
by Rabbi Howard Apothaker,
spiritual leader of Temple
Beth Shalom and a member of
both AIPAC, an organization
which represents Israel's views
in Washington, D.C., and
ARZA, the Association of Reform Zionists of America.
The second essay is by Larry
,Pollak, an attorney with the
local law firm of Abroms and
Weisz and special counsel to
Ohio Attorney General Lee
Fisher. He is the president
of the Columbus chapter of
Americans for a Safe Israel,
which believes that Israel has a
historic right to the territories.
RABBI HOW ARD APOTHAKER
Isaacson Dorms on Mt. Scopus, 1973. A multi-storied,
spanking new student housing
unit down the hill from what is
now the main campus of the
Hebrew University. Thai is
where 1 lived during the first
of my summers in Israel.
As I got off the elevator and
exited the door, I was unavoidably confronted by a
small fence in the side of an
old Arab house, where once, in
private, children used to bathe
with drawn well-water and do
so still in the peripheral vision
of foreign students. The goats
which this family herded on
the hillside now dodge traffic
in search of even thinner pickings. And a house on the other
side of this, dormitory, now
isolated from its neighbor, sat
in the looming, afternoon
shadow of a Jewish pillar of
success. Six years earlier this
had been an Arab pasture.
Th(? FRONTLINE commentary inaccurately portrays the
effect of Israeli housing on indigenous Arab populations; It
is worse, especially •iriJerusa;
lem. Small villages are encompassed by the buildings, roads
and infrastructure of the
"new" Jerusalem. Living
"with," living "among," is a
cruel hoax when Arabs have to
pass with heads down through
new developments just to get
from friendly place to friendly
place. I have ridden on Arab
buses and felt the same pain of
scorn and derision.
Yamit, 1978. Last chance
for me to visit Yamit as an
Israeli territory. It is a thriving
planned community on the
Mediterranean-Sea and also
on the verge of extinction. The
schools are full, the parks are
ready for parents and toddlers.
Soon people who have sunk
their roots, not just into a city,
a home, but also into an idea,
will have to be deported. Israelis take great pride in their
communities and don't move
at a momentV notice. They
won't be moved from the territories so easily. Some Israelis
speak of living in a neighborly
fashion; most really hope to
live with their own.
Motsa Hit (outside Jerusalem), 1979. My sister, Lisa,
wants to expand her house but
has been refused a permit by
Israeli authorities. When the
house was located in "no
man's land" in the late '40s,
her father-in-law squatted
right near Arab villages occupying the same hillside. No
one cared. Now that the land
has become valuable as a suburb of Jerusalem, Lisa is de-
. nied a permit to build. Jews,
no less than Arabs, suffer the
indignation of governmental
red tape each day, especially
see VlCWft pg. 3
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