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PAGE 8 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE September 12, 1986
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‘Israeli Ralph Nader
Journalist ‘Bridging the Gap’ for Haifa U.
HOLIDAY INN'
POWERS
FERRY
by Vida Goldgar
It takes a full typewritten page to
list the books, plays, essays, child
ren’s stories, youth adventures and
documentaries Baruch Nadel has
written. But it is not his creative
writing which has earned him his
greatest fame (some say notoriety)
in Israel and abroad but his news
paper reporting career which
spanned some 30 years. Hard-hit
ting exposes of corruption, mostly
published during his years with the
Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth,
and a life long battle on behalf of
Israel’s underclass gained readers
for the papers but, more impor
tantly, resulted in many social
changes.
A series of articles in the early
1970s dealing with unsavory con
ditions in Israel’s food industry not
only earned him the nickname of
the “Israeli Ralph Nader,” but
brought him Israel’s most presti
gious journalism award, the Soko
lov Prize. A later series on sub
standard education provided to
the poor brought about the imme
diate withdrawal of inadequate
textbooks. He received the 1974
Israeli Black Panthers Award for
courageous reporting of social
problems.
But Nadel did more than write
about problems. He worked directly
for their solution as well. In 1976,
he organized nearly 4,000 volun
teers into a “One People—One
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Heart” movement and, at the re
quest of government officials, drew
up proposals concerning feasible
ways to renew poor neighborhoods.
That became the first blueprint for
Project Renewal. In 1971, he was
the main fund-raiser on the Com
mittee for the Children of Bangla
desh and helped organize deliver
ies of soya flour and penicillin to
refugee camps in India.
Now this tall, trim 60ish man—a
sabra who fought in pre-state bat
tles and post-1948 wars—has a
new cause, one which brought him
to the United States.
Nadel’s efforts these days are
directed toward acquainting Amer
icans with one of Israel’s newer
institutions of higher learning and
gaining support—both financial
and emotional—for Haifa Univer
sity, established in 1971. This
brought him to Atlanta not long
ago and will bring him back in a
few weeks for what is called, in
fundraising circles, a parlor meet
ing.
In a visit to The Southern Israe
lite, he was asked how he got
involved. Nadel speaks the way he
writes—bluntly. “I am not a lib
eral,” he said. “I don’t believe in
giving money to teenagers who
make more and more children with
out fathers around. They will never
be productive citizens or happy
human beings.” Then he quickly
added. “I do believe in one thing:
giving people a good education.”
As he often did in the course of
our interview, he drew on his own
experience. “I was raised on the
poorest kibbutz in Palestine because
it didn’t belong to any political
party. At 13 I plowed the earth
with two mules, after school. At
15, during the summer vaction, I
got up at 2:30 in the morning to
milk cows.” That brings another
memory: “I ate just enough to be
able to work but was never under
privileged because I never felt that
way. We believed we were building
a new center for the Jewish people.
We lived financially poorer than
the poorest but we were not poor
psychologically or culturally.” His
father, whom he calls a “left-wing
Zionist,” established in 1924 the
only youth movement that had
Sephardi youngsters as members,
and even some Arab youths. “I was
raised without prejudice,” he says,
but adds that in those days “Jews
and Arabs didn’t really fight with
each other unless the British wanted
it.”
And that brought us back to
Haifa University and particularly
to one of its major programs called
“Bridging the Gap.” Established in
1974, the project was begun to help
solve the concentration of social,
economic and demographic prob
lems of the Galilee where, in the
1950s, hundreds of thousands of
new immigrants, mainly Sephar
dim, were settled. As is often the
case, the strong, the professionals,
the more gifted, moved to the cit
ies. The poor, the uneducated, re
mained.
Nadel has some bitter thoughts
about that: “When we brought
most of the Jews of Yemen to
Israel, they were brought from the
13th century to the 20th century.
Later, we brought Jews who lived
in the 20th century in Iraq and
Morocco but the Ashkenazi estab
lishment still treated them as if
they came from caves in the Atlas
Mountains of Morocco or the poor
areas of Iraq.” He says these peo
ple, who had been people of means
in their home countries, were
sprayed with DDT at the air
port and sent to tent towns in the
Galilee. The way they were per
ceived, he indicates, became a self-
fulfilling prophecy. It is to the
children and grandchildren of these
immigrants that Bridging the Gap
is directed, educating them to be
community leaders, army officers,
teachers, social workers and psy
chologists of the Galilee.
Beginning with 65 students, the
program now has close to 900 stu
dents. They are chosen from among
academically promising applicants
and given free tuition and dormi
tory expenses provided they return
to their communities after gradua
tion. So far, almost 80 percent
have done so and another 10 per
cent went to other underprivileged
neighborhoods. More than 20 of
the graduates have been elected as
mayors, deputy mayors, local coun
cil chairmen or council members.
Nadel said that the Yom Kip-
pur War, “when two-thirds of the
soldiers in the tanks and infantry
who stopped the Syrians and
Egyptians were Sephardim,” was
the turning point in the attitude
toward the “Oriental Jews.”
Nadel said, too, that Project
Renewal had a major effect since
many of the neighborhoods which
have undergone transformation
with aid from American communi
ties (such as Atlanta’s Yehud) were
essentially Sephardic. “Project Re
newal,” he said, “gave hope to
people who had lost their hope. It
changed the environment."
Altogether, Haifa University has
approximately 7,000 students, and
Bridging the Gap is by no means its
only major program. There is the
Center of Women’s Studies (de
spite the image that Israel is the epit
ome of women’s liberation, facts
prove otherwise) and the Center
for Study of Psychological Stress
which not only does research on
stress in one of the most stressful
countries, but provides expert con
sultation to governmental agencies.
By the end of the conversation, it
is clear that Baruch Nadel’s latest
role is not at all different from his
journalistic efforts. He’s just going
about it in a different way.
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