editorials
P resident Biden’s announcement last month that
the Department of Education would cancel up
to $10,000 in student loan debt (and up to $20,000
for Pell Grant recipients) for each borrower earning
less than $125,000 has stirred mixed reactions.

Some worry that such massive debt forgive-
ness — estimated to be as high as $24 billion
per year for the next 10 years — would further
enfl ame still-raging infl ation and force the raising
of taxes. Others argue that the debt forgiveness
just isn’t fair — particularly to those who paid
off their loans or arranged alternative fi nancing
for their education other than through a federal
program. Similar “fairness” questions were raised regard-
ing people who didn’t attend college at all —
either because they couldn’t aff ord it or because
they chose not to. And, most basically, critics ask
why should Uncle Sam favor college-educated
elites and force hardworking men and women to
pay off other people’s higher education debts?
While we recognize the legitimacy of many of
the questions raised regarding Biden’s student
debt plan, we applaud it. We do so because we
believe the plan can help transform the lives of
millions of young Americans who are burdened
with college debt by giving them a chance to pay
down their loans, buy homes for their families and
Joe Biden
one day send their own children to college.

Critics harp on the image of the struggling
American worker being forced to subsidize the
college debt of a household making six fi gures.

While there will be some wealthier benefi ciaries of
the program, the overwhelming majority are not.

More importantly, that’s what being part of an
orderly society is all about. Some people pay
more in taxes, others pay less. But we all get our
mail delivered the same way, every neighborhood
gets its trash collected on the same schedule,
and myriad other government programs and
services are made available to all, irrespective of
how much each person pays in taxes.

And we pay for those services even if we don’t
use them. Thus, for example, revenue from your
federal gas taxes may go to improve an interstate
highway in a distant state, and you are obligated
to pay property taxes even if you don’t have chil-
dren in the public schools and have no occasion
to use other tax-funded government services.

The point here is that neither tax payments nor
government programs are a zero-sum game. We
support a “social compact” designed to achieve
a greater good. Orderly society needs eff ective
police and fi re protection, well-maintained roads
and quality public schools. And we also need
eff orts to remedy elements of wealth inequality
that are particularly burdensome on lower-income
and minority families.

The president’s student debt forgiveness plan
will alleviate some student debt, but not all of it.

The plan strikes a good balance, even as critics on
the left argue that far greater amounts should be
forgiven. Unfortunately, the plan does not address
the ongoing, crushing cost of higher education
and its lasting impact. That is a serious problem
that needs to be addressed. JE
Beinart Blathers On
W e expect a public intellectual to take sides,
frame arguments, articulate thoughtful
analyses and help shape our thinking.

Liberal journalist Peter Beinart is a public intel-
lectual who fi lls very few of those expectations.

Instead, he has shown himself to be overly focused
on arguing against Israel as a Jewish state. His
periodic provocative pronouncements keep main-
stream Jewish organizations awake at night.

Last month saw the publication in The New York
Times of Beinart’s op-ed “Has the Fight Against
Antisemitism Lost Its Way?” Beinart’s answer is a
disturbing “yes,” based upon a fl awed argument.

Beinart maintains that the expanded defi nition
of ‘antisemitism’ to include attempts to delegiti-
mize the state of Israel has led to use of the fi ght
against antisemitism as “a vehicle not for defend-
ing human rights but for denying them.”
Here’s Bienart’s reasoning: Israel denies human
rights to the Palestinian nation. If every criticism of
Israel is viewed as antisemitic, then the shield of
antisemitism is being used to promote deprivation
of human rights. And that, he says, is what orga-
12 SEPTEMBER 8, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
nizations like American Jewish Committee are
doing when they criticize Human Rights Watch for
accusing Israel of “crimes of apartheid and per-
secution,” and calling the accusations antisemitic.

But he doesn’t stop there. He also accuses AJC
and others of not just denying Israel’s repression
of Palestinians, but of stifl ing human rights around
the world.

Similarly, Beinart is critical of U.S. support for
Israel’s eff orts to expand the Abraham Accords.

Beinart claims that there is some kind of agree-
ment between American Jewish organizations and
the U.S. government to ignore human rights viola-
tions in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates,
for example, and to reward those countries for
their bad behavior because it benefi ts Israel.

Thus, he argues: “As relations have warmed
between Israel and the monarchies of the Persian
Gulf, American offi cials have begun using the
struggle against antisemitism to shield those
regimes from human rights pressure.” And just to
be sure that you get his point, Beinart tweeted:
“The fi ght against ‘antisemitism’ as waged by the
American Jewish establishment and the US gov-
ernment, has become a threat to human rights.”
Beinart’s paranoia is disturbing. His accusations
are outrageous.

No one denies that the Persian Gulf states have
horrendous human rights records. That has been
the focus of much commentary and discussion as
eff orts to bring those states closer to Israel and
the West have been pursued. No one is accepting
of those violations. No one is encouraging those
violations. And it is naïve or worse to believe that
violations of human rights are being tolerated in
the Middle East and around the world in order to
benefi t the state of Israel. As the old joke goes:
We wish Israel had that much power and infl u-
ence. While we can ignore Beinart, we worry that his
tortured imaginings give cover to those who are
trying to separate antisemitism from anti-Zionism
and hammer the Jewish state. Beinart is Jewish.

But that doesn’t give him license to invoke and
promote hateful antisemitic tropes. His ramblings
jeopardize Jewish lives. JE
FLICKR / toddjacobucci
Student Debt Forgiveness



opinions & letters
Praise for Gorbachev?
BY BERNIE DISHLER
A s the world mourns the passing of Mikhail
Gorbachev, many Jews are heaping praise on
the former Soviet leader, crediting him with freeing
the Soviet Jews.

I would compare praising Gorbachev with prais-
ing Pharaoh for freeing the Hebrews from Egypt.

With time passing, our memories might need to
be reminded of the decades of pressure put on
the Soviet Union by the world’s Jewish community
and many other supporters.

A look through the Exponent archives will make
readers aware of the myriad of activities that
started in the early ’70s and continued into the
early ’90s.

The Soviet Jewry movement constantly made
the world aware of the situation of Jews in the
Soviet Union. Whether they attended a visiting
Soviet opera company, a concert or a hockey game,
attendees were met with demonstrators educating
them about the plight of our Soviet brethren.

that Gorbachev was coming to the United States
to meet with Reagan to sign an important arms
agreement. Reagan had promised Jewish lead-
ership that the meeting would not go forward
without the freedom of emigration for Jews being
on the agenda.

The Jewish community mobilized like it never
had before. Every bus in the tri-state area was
rented, and 15,000 Philadelphians went to join the
rest of the 250,000 protesters on Dec. 6, 1987. We
gave backing to Reagan’s words.

Gorbachev was meeting with the president
the next day. He could not ignore the pressure
anymore. Natan Sharansky, the former Israel Cabinet min-
ister and chair of the Jewish Agency who spent
nine years in Soviet prison for Jewish activism,
said, ”Without the pressure and the struggle of
the Jewish world for Soviet Jews, supported
by Reagan and other world leaders, Gorbachev
would probably never have done it.”
My message is not a question of whether
Gorbachev deserves praise. It is a message of
I would compare praising Gorbachev with praising
Pharaoh for freeing the Hebrews from Egypt.

Congressional leaders were encouraged to
constantly raise the issue of individual refuseniks
and the millions wanting to emigrate. Some of the
members of Congress who went on official visits
to the USSR took time out of their meetings to
meet with Jewish refuseniks.

Hundreds of Jews and non-Jews from
Philadelphia traveled to the Soviet Union to visit
with refusenik leaders, bringing moral support as
well as helping them with their goal of spreading
Jewish identity. This was their only means of
communicating with the world beyond the Iron
Curtain. We established a lifeline. Bar and bat
mitzvah pairings in area synagogues brought
home the plight of teens in the USSR who could
not celebrate the same rite.

President Ronald Reagan was asked to talk
about the issue at every meeting with Gorbachev.

And then, with short notice, it was announced
learning from history. In the 1930s and 40s, most
Jews, for whatever reason, did not do enough
during the Holocaust, and 6 million of our breth-
ren were slaughtered.

In the ‘70s and ’80s, the organized Jewish com-
munity supported efforts in many different ways
to raise the pressure on the Soviet leadership.

More than 2 million Jews left the USSR, and oth-
ers continue to leave.

The next generations must know about this his-
tory, and they must learn from it. I have been told
by many Jewish emigres from the USSR that they
do not know the story. And their children certainly
do not.

My plea to Jewish educators and parents: Tell
the story! JE
Bernie Dishler is a former co-chair of the Soviet
Jewry Council of Philadelphia.

letters Op-ed Spotlighted Parent Alienation
Syndrome I applaud Amy Neustein’s Sept. 1 op-ed for high-
lighting the highly destructive, often irrepara-
ble harm caused to children by family courts
(“Mothers Who Report Abuse Still Losing Custody
‘at Staggering Rates’"). Parent alienation syn-
drome has been debunked as junk science, yet
courts continue to rely on it and discriminatory
stereotypes of women as “hysterical, vindictive
and manipulative” to disbelieve mothers and
place children with abusive fathers.

Research shows that when fathers claim paren-
tal alienation, courts are more than twice as likely
to disbelieve claims of abuse by mothers and
nearly four times more likely to disbelieve allega-
tions of child sexual abuse. The consequences
are dire: Children are placed with an abusive
parent and deprived of a foundational relationship
with their loving mother.

Mothers are now told not to raise allegations of
violence or abuse for fear of losing their children,
and once parent alienation is invoked, there is no
way out except to deny abuse that is real. This has
a lifelong impact on children, who should be the
center of every custody decision.

As a pro bono lawyer who has tried to assist
mothers seeking custody of their children, I urge
others to join this important fight to give a voice
to these children and their resilient, devoted
mothers. JE
Maura McInerney,
Wynnewood Letters should be related to articles that have run
in the print or online editions of the JE, and may
be edited for space and clarity prior to publication.

Please include your first and last name, as well your
town/neighborhood of residence. Send letters to
letters@jewishexponent.com. www.jewishexponent.com
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