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,
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