Behind the Headlines: to Go or Not to Go to Israel; Some Display Angst, Others Resolve

For months, Dr. John Stephens had been trying to recruit other families to join him and his pre-teen son for a summer kibbutz program in Israel.

Now, after the recent series of suicide bomb blasts, he is reconsidering his plans for a “pre-Bar Mitzvah experience” for his son.

“I have serious reservations,” said Stephens, of Palo Alto, Calif. “I think I’ll wait a year.”

“You can stay off buses,” but suicide bombers “roaming the streets in a major city is something else,” he said, referring to the March 4 attack outside a shopping mall in the center of Tel Aviv.

Stephens is not alone in his concern.

Although airlines report that new bookings have been made for trips to Israel since the wave of mortal violence, Israel’s Tourism Ministry last week reported 2,000 cancellations, threatening a tourism industry that just saw a record year of 2.5 million visitors.

For these tourists, such as Stephens, the clincher seemed to be the Tel Aviv bombing, according to reports from the Israeli ministry.

At the same time, calls have gone out by American Jewish leaders not to give in to fears and cancel scheduled trips.

“To do otherwise would be to give the terrorists a victory,” said Leon Levy, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

Several American Jewish organizations, in fact, have organized missions to show solidarity with Israelis, heeding a call last week by Itamar Rabinovich, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, and others to demonstrate their support.

A delegation of the umbrella National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council headed for Israel over the weekend for a brief visit to express solidarity.

And a small delegation of the Conference of Presidents was scheduled to join President Clinton for a speech in Tel Aviv after this week’s international conference on terrorism in Egypt.

A group of 15 college students, all past participants of Nativ, a United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism program for college study in Israel, decided to head to Israel Tuesday to express solidarity with fellow students studying in Israel this year.

Indeed, it is those involved with youth programs in Israel who are being deluged with calls from worried parents of children currently enrolled or registered for the summer.

Program heads say they have managed to reassure parents they have tightened security in the wake of the attacks and that their children are safe.

“Probably, virtually every parent has called to ask about the situation and safety arrangement,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president-elect of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which oversees the Reform movement’s semester program of 50 high school juniors and seniors, now housed in the heart of Jerusalem.

But “no child has come home and at this moment there are no plans [for any] to come home,” he said.

However, there have been adjustments in the program, Yoffie said.

Since the attacks, students have not been permitted to ride the city buses and plans to send them to live with Israeli families for three weeks have been scrapped in order to keep them together on a kibbutz, where there can be tighter supervision.

At the same time, Yoffie said, registration for UAHC summer programs, which usually attract between 1,000 and 1,200 students, is now at a peak. He does not expect fewer students.

Local emissaries of the Jewish Agency for Israel have also been in the hot seat, fielding calls from concerned parents.

The agency runs dozens of Israel youth programs and keeps tabs on all the roughly 10,000 North American youths who participate in organized programs in Israel in the course of a year, except for those in yeshivot.

Gad Ben-Ari, the head of the Jewish Agency’s North American delegation, called together the emissaries last week to help them assuage people’s concerns.

He said some parents had called to discuss cancelling summer enrollment, “though so far this is a minor phenomenon,” and some have inquired about bringing their children back, reflecting “despair and fear and helplessness.”

He said he told the emissaries, “Our duty is to be strong and to try to calm people.

“There will be those who won’t to send their children and that is their right, but for those who hesitate, we have to tell them Israel is home and you don’t desert home.”

Ben-Ari said the agency had implemented a series of measures since the attacks to tighten the security of the programs.

Overall supervision has been stepped up, free days have been reduced to a minimum and communication centers have been set up to enable participants to keep in touch with their families more easily, he said.

Lois Goldrich has been wearing two hats as recent events have transpired.

As the director of public affairs for the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, she is privy to calls that having been coming in daily from concerned parents of the roughly 80 youths now participating in two USCJ youth programs in Israel.

At the same time, Goldrich has two children of her own in programs in Israel – Zev, an 18-year-old now on a kibbutz, and Keren, a 22-year-old in Jerusalem, who habitually takes Jerusalem’s No. 18 bus, the one that exploded two Sundays in a row.

After the bombings, “we were extremely nervous until we heard from them,” said Goldrich.

Nonetheless, Goldrich said she would not think of asking her children to return early.

“I rely on their judgment and on the Israeli government to take the appropriate steps to end this” violence, she said.

Barbara Bahny, public relations director for Israel’s Ministry of Tourism in New York, said anxious callers are being told by the ministry that “Israel continues to be a safe destination.”

“Terror tactics are being applied in major cities” around the world, she said. “Israel is not alone.”