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PAGE 4 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE July 18, 1986 The Southern Israelite The Weekly Newspaper For Southern J*\yrv 'Since 1925 Vida Goldgar Editor and Publisher Leonard Goldstein Advertising Director Luna Levy Associate Editor Eschol A. Harrell Production Manager Lutz Baum Business Manager Published every Friday by The Southern Israelite, Inc. Second Class Postage paid at Atlanta, Ga (ISSN 00388) (UPS 776060) POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Southern Israelite, P O Box 77388, Atlanta, GA 30357 Mailing Address: P.O. Box 77388, Atlanta, Georgia 30357 Location: 188 15th St., N.W., Atl„ Ga. 30318 Phone (404)876-8248 Advertising rates available upon request. Subscriptions: $23.00, 1 year; $41.00, 2 years Member of Jewish Telegraphic Agency; Religious News Service; American Jewish Press Assn.; Georgia Press Assn.; National Newspaper Assn. Judicial jumble Hat’s off to Academy Many times we have used this space to call attention to the high quality of Jewish education our community provides. We are proud to be able to do so once again, this time to focus on the national recognition just accorded the Hebrew Academy ol Atlanta. The Academy was chosen as one of two private schools in Georgia and one of 60 from around the nation to be honored by the 1985-86 Elementary Private School Recognition Program. The announcement said the Academy “exemplifies important characteristics of excellence and is clearly deserving of inclusion among a select group of representative private elementary schools" and that it “is a distinctive school and one with qualities worthy of emulation.” That’s pretty high praise and all those connected with the Academy can be justifiably proud to have earned such accolades. So a tip of the TSI hat to the administration, faculty, staff, officers, board, parents and students for their ongoing achieve ments. Mazal tov! This is justice? The Italian court has labored mightily and brought forth a mouse. Last week’s sentencing of the murderer of Leon Klinghoffer to 30 years in prison is a disgrace, as is the leniency of most of the other sentences. The court’s acceptance of the argument that this was a “political crime” was another example of a policy of appeasing PLO terrorists and, in effect, sends a signal to all terrorists that it’s OK to kill innocent civilians. We join in appealing to our government to strenuously press for extradition to this country for trial. by Carl Alpert -HAIFA The dramas enacted in Israel s courts of law reflect not only the usual commercial and social con flicts, but also the numerous cul tures, philosophies, theologies and sets of ideals held by the popula tion. The following are gleaned from recent news items in the Israel press: The Rambam's close shave. A resident of Petach 1 ikvah has peti tioned Israel’s high court to stop the use of the one-shekel note which, he claims, depicts the Ram- bam in an anti-halachic manner, with a distorted beard and shaven sidelocks. Justice done automatically. To emphasize the pressure under which traffic courts operate, Judge Moshe Hasson testified that once, in sign ing a large batch of automatic con victions for traffic offenses, he had inadvertently approved conviction of himself on the basis of a traffic ticket. He did not reveal if he appealed the conviction to a higher court. An acceptable argument. A 16- year-old girl from Ofakim petiti oned the local court for permission to marry her boyfriend, though she was under age. The case dragged on for months, and when it finally came to a hearing the girl was not present. The judge ordered that she be brought to court to present her arguments, but was informed that that very morning she had given birth to a baby girl at the Soroka Hospital. The petition was granted. A matter of language. Shimon Barak objected to the traffic ticket which he received for parking in a reserved area outside the French Embassy in Tel Aviv. He showed the police officer a letter from the embassy permitting him to park there because he had come to repair the embassy’s elevator. The police man could not read French, and insisted on the ticket. The court of first instance imposed a fine, but on appeal a higher court reduced the fine to the equivalent of less than a cent. Guilty plea rejected. Zion Adari, 19, of Lod, was charged with 33 counts of property offenses, and requested that an additional guilty plea be appended for a drug offense. The prosecution objected on the grounds that Adari was taking the rap for his brother, in the belief that his overall penalty would hardly be affected. The court did not accept the guilty plea. Houdini in court. Yehezkel Weizman, 26, from Dimona, was charged by the police with damag ing a pair of handcuffs placed on him during his arrest. Weizman denied the charge, claiming that he could free himself from the police handcuffs without damaging them in any way. Under challenge by the judge, he proceeded to do so, once with his hands in front of him, and once with his hands locked behind his back. The charge was dismissed. Good deeds of the fathers. Two Arab members of the Kurdayeh family in Jerusalem were charged with large-scale tax evasion and faced long prison terms and fines. When it was revealed in court that in 1929 their family had at great personal risk saved the lives of 24 Jews in the face of Arab rioters, an act for which they were later ostra cized by their neighbors, the court accepted an agreement between the two counsels, whereby the ac cused pleaded guilty as charged, and the prosecution waived the demand for imprisonment. My best friends... by Stanley M. Lefco In its June 1986 edition, Atlanta Magazine highlighted eight indi viduals “who changed Atlanta.” According to the magazine, these people “through their achievements and spirit, have helped usher in Atlanta’s emerging greatness.” One of those spotlighted was Dillard Munford, who heads up the Majik Market chain of some 875 stores plus the World Bazaar and Lee wards Craft Bazaar stores. Born in 1918 in Cartersville, he was described by the magazine as exemplifying the “Old South.” Munford also has apparently gar nered a reputation as a rascist, which the magazine clarifies as a “simplistic view”: His world may “indeed, (be) black and white but in a sense that is not restricted to Justice 18 Set©.' ~2S race.” His directness is noted, and Munford is quoted as having said, “I don’t say anything behind some one’s back that I don’t say to his face.” The article is devoid of Mun- ford’s views towards Jews and Is rael, but as a regular columnist in the Northside Neighbor, he has made his position pretty clearly known. Our first encounter with him was a letter we wrote in re sponse to an article he had written a little over a year ago on President Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg ceme tery. Munford had charged the Jew ish community with overreaction. By his analysis, the “Jewish lobby” controls Middle East policy. He explained the Bitburg protest as an attempt on the part of American Jewry to change U.S. foreign pol icy in Europe or at least with West Germany. He found it sad that Jews, who have reached a “pinna cle ot linancial success and politi cal power,” would waste their ener gies on this issue instead of “work ing to stabilize and cement the capitalistic system....” In response to our challenge to his explicit assertions and their dis turbing implications, Munford ve hemently answered that he is “not anti-semitic (sic), have never been anti-semitic, and don’t ever expect to be anti-semitic.” He informed us that he and 1 in our own ways were both simply trying to preserve our heritage: his identified as “completely American” and ours a mixture of “American, European and Israeli.” He also advised us that our letter was the only one he had received on his Bitburg article and two of his Jewish friends even complimented him on his column while not agreeing with it totally. Our follow-up letter, which ad mittedly posed a number of ques tions, went unanswered. He did suggest in his first letter that we meet, but we declined in the hope that we could further define the issues. On Oct. 16, 1985, Munford once again went after the Israeli lobby by which he surely must have meant in large measure the Jewish com munity. This time it was the oppo sition to the sale of fighter planes to Saudi Arabia. Through the lobby, the U.S. is “led around by the nose by its little friend (Israel).” For all its aid to Israel, the U.S. gets nothing in return. Israel, for ex ample, “still refuses to trade its acquired territories for peace.” On June 4, 1986, Munford took the offensive again and attacked the Israeli lobby for its opposition to the sale of “defensive arms” to Saudi Arabia, “one of America’s few friends in the Arab world.” The reason certain congressmen voted against the sales, he wrote, was “to pay off their debts to the Israeli lobby, safe in the knowledge that the president would exercise the veto.” American Jews and Is raeli friends “must allow our State Department to control Mideast policy with Israel as our first thought...but it shouldn’t be our last thought also.” We don’t know Munford'sgame, but we seriously question his orien tation. He could use a good course on foreign policy, history of the Middle East, and let’s not forget some lessons on the Holocaust. Maybe just a tour of the Zachor Holocaust Resource Center. We anxiously await the day he does a story on lobbying as part o! the democratic process. We’d wel come a story on the PLO or Syria or even Saudi Arabia, the real Saudi Arabia that is. We’re not holding our breath, but we’ll be patient.