Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 12 November 2003 — Page 15

November 12. 2003 NAT 7

Opinion

Demanding religious fairness

Cowardice that knows no limit

By MARVIN MIGDOL What do you do if you go to your child's or grandchild's graduation at a public school and praise of Jesus comes into the act? If you choose, you can bite your lower lip and bear it. However, if you take some action, perhaps it will result in a change of policy, with commencement speakers reminded that it is a public school and separation of church and state is properly the law of the land. On May 25, 2001 I attended the graduation exercises of Yazoo City (Miss.) High School. It was the long-awaited commencement for my daughter, Honi Faith Migdol. Family and friends intently watched and listened. Some of us didn't like what we heard. Juan R. Thomas, labor counsel to the Illinois secretary of state, was the keynote speaker. Surely a lawyer is aware of the law, but if he were not, he should have recognized how glorifying Jesus could be offensive to those who do not praise Jesus. Honi was the only graduate of the Jewish faith, but surely there were people present who would feel discomfort and even outrage. Finally, Thomas closed his speech, sprinkled with Jesus, "through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen." The salutatory address, or valedictory address, also glorified Jesus. I want to make it clear that if it were a Christian school, 1 would expect it. Like many non-Christians, I respect the Christians' right to praise their Lord. Further, who can fault much of Jesus' teachings, such as the Golden Rule? A few days following graduation I sent courteous, tactful, identical letters to the superintendent of schools, high school principal, Illinois secretary of state, and the speaker, Thomas. Then came magnificent replies from all but Thomas, wlio chose not to say anything. Some highlights of the letters: The first one received was from the superintendent of education: "I too was quite surprised [at the Jesus references]. I do welcome your letter. It alerts me to the fact tliat a better job of screening must be done. We will ensure that in

the future, no parent or child will leave our graduation feeling disappointed, disturbed, or offended. Again, my deepest apologies." Signed Daniel Watkins, Ph.D. An eloquent, heart-warming response came a day later from the school principal: "I wish to convey my sincere apologies to you and any others who were in any way made to feel uncomfortable or offended. We have learned from your letter and will use this experience as a guide for how this specific issue might be handled in the future. Perhaps we can relate this experience to our future invited guests with the intent that everyone becomes more sensitive and preventive in order to avoid a recurrence of this type. We thank you for bringing this issue to our attention." Signed Brenda S. Smith. The most apologetic and most understanding letter came from Jesse White,

Thomas's boss: "It is indeed unfortunate that you and others in the audience were subjected to certain inappropriate statements / verbiage contained in the aforementioned speech. Please accept my deepest apology for any offense and displeasure that you suffered. It is quite understandable to see how you were disturbed and offended by Mr. Thomas' transgression in his remarks that did not reflect an apparent separation of church and state. I appreciate your concern in raising public awareness in this matter." Signed Jesse White, secretary of state. It is significant that none of the letters made any excuses. None were the least bit argumentative. None had a "Yes,

can work but..." tone. All three regretfully acknowledged a fault. Anne Sweeney, president of a New York City PR firm, had a letter appear in the September 2001 issue of Meetings & Conventions. I like the way she put it: "I don't care to go to a meeting to be blessed by some self-righteous 'Christian' who believes that I am going to hell, along with people like the Dalai Lama and Gandhi. This is true bigotry and really offensive. It is also why religion, unless it can be truly inclusive, has no place in meetings unless they are convened specifically for religious purposes." Isn't a graduation for everyone who is graduating? Don't we need to respect differences of beliefs? Some call Him God, some call him Jesus, and some don't call. Bringing religion into public school graduations sets the stage for religious conflicts and uneasiness, for example, when Jesus is hailed

as the Lord. The right to voluntary prayer does not include the right to have a captive audience honor one part of the religion spectrum. This is pointed out in a joint statement of current law in a pamphlet chaired by the American Jewish Congress on Religion in the Public Schools. Muslims were among the 38 religious organizations endorsing this point of view. A salute to Jesus encourages all at the commencement to accept and worship Him. But what about non-adherents to Christianity? Public school officials, using taxpayer money for graduations, are like public servants and should be prohibited from pronounceContinued on page 15

By LOUIS RENE BERES On Rosh Hashanah eve, at around 9:00 p.m., a very heroic Palestinian "freedom fighter" knocked on the door of a trailer home in Negahot, where 30 religious families live quietly on two barren hilltops, and jubilantly murdered a seven-month-old girl. Planned precisely for the start of the Jewish New Year, this deliberate attack on a Jewish infant with an M-16 assault rifle was subsequently described by both Hamas and Islamic Jihad as a "successful military operation against the criminal Zionist occupation." Not surprisingly, Palestinian terrorism is now unchallenged as this long-bloodied planet's purest form of organized human cruelty. Israelis have endured nearly one terror attack every hour of every day for 31 consecutive months. These attacks, with knives, guns, hatchets, acid bottles, and bombs filled with razor blades dipped in rat poison, have had absolutely nothing to do with Palestinian "self-determination." Rather, they have expressed barbarism as an end in itself, targeting always the most vulnerable Israelis, often on Jewish holidays when pious families sit down to eat and pray together. Most notable in this regard was the Palestinian suicide bombing of the Park Hotel in Netanya on March 27, 2002, an orgy of annihilation which killed 29 people and maimed many others as they took part in the ritual Passover celebration of Jewish freedom. Palestinian propaganda, funded heavily from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Europe, still seeks to suggest equivalence between Arab terror and Israeli counterterror, but there is an obvious and meaningful difference between premeditated murder and the unintended casualties of essential self-defense. What is perhaps most striking about Palestinian terrorism is that it is gratuitously cruel, employing violence against the innocent that is not only legally and morally inexcusable but that is also self-evidently counterproductive. If it is a recognizable national state that the Palestinians allegedly seek, do their leaders really believe that burning and

dismembering Jewish children will best incline Israel toward an agreement? And what sort of state could expectedly be built by the Arab perpetrators of such exceptional defilement? The State of Israel is less than half the size of San Bernardino County in California. It would fit more than two times into Lake Michigan. Yet, the world still begrudges this tiny place for the Jews. First the terribly civilized British, in undisguised defiance of their own explicit policy declarations and commitments, penned up surviving remnants of the Nazi death camps in Cyprus to prevent immigration to the ancient Jewish homeland; now most of the rest of the terribly civilized world abhors even an encircled microstate for the Jews, determining self-righ-teously that even Israeli selfdefense against Yasser Arafat must be condemned. For this terribly civilized world, the blood of Arafat is evidently much redder than the blood of Jewish children. Little, it seems, has changed since 1945. For the civilized global community, the post-Holocaust world's most ardent terrorist - one who remains unashamedly genocidal in his verbal and cartographic depictions of "Palestine" - has been transformed into the embodiment of "national liberation." This perverse view of Arafat often finds special favor in the universities, even in this country, where learned professors routinely teach their students that Palestinian terrorism is much like the 1960s civil rights struggle in America's segregated South. Yet it takes quite an intellectual stretch to equate Arafat, the Arab murderer of Jewish children, with the gentle Gandhian pacifist Martin Luther King. Dr. King, it might also be recalled, was himself always a strong backer of Israel in its early struggle against Palestinian terror. At best, our American universities are unmindful of what is happening in Israel. The industrious scholars are generally busy with more weighty matters, especially those that do not pertain to real life in any way. In academe a truly fashionable concern is now for converting the structure of Continued on page 15

Isn't a graduation for everyone who is graduating? Don't we need to respect differences of beliefs? Some call Him God, some call him Jesus, and some don't call. Bringing religion into public school graduations sets the stage for religious conflicts and uneasiness, for example, when Jesus is hailed as the Lord.