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Reading Michael Slackman’s Memo From Cairo in the New York Times today was an exercise in futility and despair for anyone who believes that morality and humanity should be a factor in international relations. (”Disentangling Layers of a Loaded Term in Search of a Thread of Peace,” Feb. 26)

The Times correspondent tackles the issue of what terrorism means to the Arab world, and finds that it is 180 degrees apart from those of us in the pro-Israel community.

To Egyptians, and other Arabs, the recent war in Gaza was Exhibit A in the case against Israel, with the Jewish State guilty of terrorism in its military conduct, which resulted in the deaths of civilians. And Hamas, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, are perceived as groups “trying to liberate their countries,” according to a former Egyptian ambassador to Britain.

Slackman mentions that Israelis argue that it is not their army’s intent to harm civilians. But he does not extend the point to say that while Israel pursues militants who place themselves among civilians, the goal of groups like Hamas is to kill any and all Israelis - and according to their truly frightening charter, to destroy all Jews, everywhere.

Hamas militants who hide behind their own civilians to kill Israel civilians are deemed heroes; Israeli soldiers who jeopardize their own lives to avoid killing Palestinian civilians are considered monsters.

The timely element of the Slackman piece is that the new Obama administration is hoping to improve its relations in the Arab world, but he concludes that as long as Washington backs Israel, it’s hopeless. He does not explore the counterview that as long as the Arab world endorses the notion that killing Jewish women and children is a noble form of liberation, peace is a fantasy. What’s more, there is no mention that most Arabs believe Israel was responsible for 9/11, or that if Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, what is left to liberate?

And most missing of all is the belief among so many Arabs that there simply is no place for a Jewish state in the region. Period.

Slackman quotes Arabs saying that the American application of terrorism is hypocrisy, and that Americans think all Muslims are terrorists. That is not the case, but it is true that the majority of terror attacks around the world in recent years, including 9/11, were perpetrated by Muslims, most of them Arabs. Unless you insist that 9/11 was not an act of terror, or that Israel was behind it, and then, indeed, there is little room for negotiation, or hope.

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A visit to Sotheby’s during the ten-day exhibit of the Valmadonna Trust Library, which ended last Thursday, was remarkable on two levels - the contents themselves, and the outpouring of New Yorkers who came to see them.

The display of the most impressive private library of Hebrew books and manuscripts in the world was breathtaking. The tenth floor of Sotheby’s on the Upper East Side held floor-to-ceiling shelves of nearly 13,000 volumes in the collection, and many were open, behind glass, including the 16th century copy of the Daniel Bomberg edition of the Talmud, in seemingly perfect shape. (Bomberg, a Calvinist, received permission to print the Talmud in 1519 in Italy and had rabbis advise him.)

It was the first time the collection was being shown in its entirety, thanks to the man responsible for it, Jack Lunzer, a charming 84-year-old diamond merchant from London who has spent more than six decades on what he calls his “obsession,” acquiring the most rare and meaningful Jewish texts from around the world.

Lunzer, whose family is associated with the Italian town of Valmadonna, is seeking a suitable home for his collection - it has filled his sprawling London house until now. He has held negotiations with the Library of Congress in recent years and some say he brought his treasure to Sotheby’s to motivate the Library of Congress to conclude the deal with him.

Experts believe the collection could fetch $40 million, and the stipulation is that it must be purchased intact, and not divided up.

Several major Jewish philanthropists are said to be considering buying the works so that they could be displayed in a Jewish public place, like Hebrew University.

In the meantime, despite little public notice, record crowds turned out each day to revel in the books themselves, and the rich cultural history they represent.

Even a skeptic like me who wondered how seeing thousands of books could inspire found tears in my eyes at the sight of centuries of Jewish history, and I could imagine young boys from centuries past poring over the words of the Bible in front of me and hear the words of Torah being recited across the globe and down through the centuries.

When a youngster in payos and black velvet kippah asked aloud why the Chumash he was looking at did not have Rashi’s commentary on its pages, he was told it was because the 11th century scholar had not been born when this volume was written.

It was also stirring to see so many Jews who cared enough to wait in long lines - over an hour at times - and to feel a part of a family that reveres the written word.

There were Jews of all ages, backgrounds and religious affiliations in the crowded rooms at Sotheby’s where David Wachtel, an expert on the collection who is a special consultant to the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, gave a lively and erudite description of the works via a megaphone-like device.

Each volume must have a story to tell about how it survived, like the Bomberg Talmud, printed in Venice in the early 1500s; Pope John Paul IV issued a papal bull to destroy all Hebrew books in 1553, and countless thousands were burned. Only those sent out of Italy survived, Wachtel said.
Lunzer discovered a volume of the famed Talmud, which was misidentified, at Westminster Abbey more than 50 years ago. When he learned the set was intact and had been gathering dust there for four centuries, he sought to purchase it. It took him almost 30 years, but he finally gained possession when he bought and exchanged a 900-year-old charter of the Abbey for the Bomberg Talmud.

Lunzer was a presence at Sotheby’s each day, a celebrity signing autographs and delighting in speaking Yiddish with yeshiva children, and encouraging them to sing.

Perhaps soon his other children - the thousands of books he collected, one by one, over the years - will soon find a new home.

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Should we be rooting for the Israeli entry, “Waltz With Bashir,” to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film on Sunday night?

Many Jews, no doubt, will feel a surge of pride if the highly praised Ari Folman account of the 1982 Lebanon War wins top honors, a first for Israel. But there are many who, while praising the work for its creative and artistic merit, are deeply concerned that more attention for the film will further erode Israel’s image around the world.

Katie Green, an Israeli filmmaker, complains that “Bashir” lacks context, never explaining adequately why Israel was fighting in Lebanon in the first place. In fact, the conflict began as an effort to stop Yasir Arafat’s PLO from terror attacks on Israeli communities in the north. “Although the faces of Israeli friends,soldiers, therapists and politicians are lovingly illustrated in close-up all the way through the film, the enemy being engage has no name and no face,” Green notes in an essay on this Web site.

She argues that “the film plays into the hands of the worst of our detractors, depicting us as mindless invaders who care little for human life.”

But Marco Greenberg, a public relations expert in New York, came to the opposite conclusion after viewing the film.

In fact, he insists that “Bashir” is a more effective pro-Israel too than all of the hasbarah efforts by the Israeli government during the 22-day Gaza campaign because it depicts Israeli soldiers as real people, not a juggernaut.

In expressing their anguish over the long-ago conflict, these men express empathy, compassion and remorse, humanizing rather than demonizing them, according to Greenberg.

Which only goes to prove that we read so much into what we see, depending on our emotions and biases. Judge for yourself when you see the film, whether or not it wins an Oscar.

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Being in Israel in the days just after the national elections didn’t leave me any clearer on what the next government will look like. It could be a narrow right-tilted coalition led by Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, or a broader coalition anchored by Likud and Kadima, the party with the most votes.

Netanyahu most probably would be prime minister in that case, too.

But it is already clear that the Left took a beating in the polls, and that Kadima, the party founded by Ariel Sharon and now led by Tzipi Livni, was the prime culprit.

The once dominant Labor party received only 10 Knesset seats, and seemed eager to go into opposition and rebuild, licking its wounds.

It was the same Kadima that, in the last election, knocked out the Right by preaching peace negotiations based on West Bank concessions.

Instead, the settlements have grown and the party preaching peace talks came up empty; in fact Ehud Olmert became the first prime minister to go to war twice in one (shortened) term.

No one I spoke to in Israel this past week is under any illusion of imminent peace, agreeing that Israel’s potential partner - Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority - is too weak to risk an agreement with the Jewish State. The leaders of Hamas would pounce on the West Bank if that were to happen.

Several liberal thinkers said it would be a critical mistake on the part of the Obama administration to go forward with George Bush’s ill-conceived Annapolis plan, attempting to shape the framework for a detailed, future peace plan.

More realistic, the critics said, was Netanyahu’s concept of an economic peace plan aimed at bringing more prosperity to the Palestinians in preparation of a future Palestinian state.

But Bibi has been pretty vague about those details, as have been the other top candidates in an election campaign that shed little light on the top parties’ positions on the vital issues of the day, from Hamas rocket attacks to the troubled economy to a nuclear Iran.

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Does the resumption this week of rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, in violation of the fragile and unofficial truce between Hamas and Jerusalem, signal a Hamas endorsement of Bibi Netanyahu for Israeli prime minister?

That’s the likely effect of renewed attacks on Israel on the eve of next Tuesday’s national elections. The rockets underscore that despite the beating Hamas took last month, the terror group still rules Gaza and can still make life miserable for Israelis, especially those living in the south.

Netanyahu supported the war effort but has been saying, before and after the three-week conflict, that he would topple Hamas from power. It’s likely that many Israelis will want him to try to do just that. And in the crazy-quilt world of Mideast politics, such talk makes him more — rather than less — appealing to Hamas, a group that opposes peace negotiations. And those talks would be that much more unlikely with Netanyahu in power.

Israelis tend to vote to the right when they are feeling insecure, and are inclined to “give peace a chance,” as John Lennon put it, when their lives are more at ease.

Netanyahu has been enjoying a comfortable lead in the polls for months, and even though Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is running as the head of Labor, gained ground on the strength of the IDF’s performance in the Gaza conflict, it’s more likely that most Israeli would prefer that he keep his present post.

Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and Kadima leader, didn’t really improve her standing among an electorate that credits her for being honest - no small thing in Israeli politics, especially when your opponents are Netanyahu and Barak. But she still appears to lack leadership qualities for the country’s top office.

This would not be the first time Palestinian terror played a significant role in an Israeli election. In 1996, Shimon Peres seemed likely to succeed the slain Yitzhak Rabin until a spate of PLO suicide bombings just before the election turned Israelis to Netanyahu, who won handily.

And in early 2001, incumbent Barak, who was ready to make major concessions at Camp David a few months earlier, was voted out of office by a wide margin with the onset of the second intifada. Ariel Sharon, Israel’s tough guy, was the big winner then.

All of which indicates that Israel’s enemies have a history of playing a pivotal role in the Jewish State’s elections.