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Contact: H. Glenn Rosenkrantz, UJC Media Relations
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ABC News Anchor Cokie Roberts Moderates Expert Panel on "The New War on Terrorism" at UJC National Young Leadership Conference

Washington, DC - February 11, 2002 - Cokie Roberts, ABC News' chief congressional analyst and co-anchor of the Sunday morning news show This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts, moderated a panel titled, "The New War on Terrorism: At Home and Abroad" at UJC's National Young Leadership Conference today.

The panel featured government, legal, and intelligence experts on terrorism from both the United States and Israel, including Michael Chertoff, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice; CNN Correspondent and author Peter Bergen; Shabtai Shavit, former director of Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence Agency; and Victoria Toensing, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General and founding partner of the law firm of deGenova & Toensing.

Panel members discussed the challenge Americans face -- getting back to normal life when normal includes recognizing the threats of terrorism.

"With the mixed signals we as a population have been getting" from government leaders, Roberts asked, "What should we be doing? Is there terrorism that we should be fearful of in our everyday lives?"

Chertoff said, "We need to find a balance...that makes reasonable adjustments to enhance our own security, but that also allows us to continue to live our lives so that we don't actually give terrorism what is its ultimate victory: to so impede our daily life that it really destroys our culture and our economy."

Said Shavit, "The terrorists main aim is to make us afraid. We should be vigilant, but we should learn to live with it and learn to overcome it."

The panel went on to discuss the nature of terrorism itself, how the U.S. government should handle the war on terrorism and the legal questions of prosecuting members of the Al Qaida network, to the motivations of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida.

"It took September 11 for Americans and for the rest of the world to realize that there is only one terrorism," Shavit explained. "Any violent action taken against a civic population in order to enhance political ends should be considered as terrorism."

Shavit's definition matched Bergen's opinion of the impetus for Bin Laden and Al Qaida's actions: "I think their motivation is belief - I take that at face value. This is a group that makes no distinction between the political and the religious."

Toensing, who was involved with the Justice Department's first pursuits of worldwide terrorism in 1985, notices a stark difference from the department's focus today and its previous efforts. "We're not as concerned about punishing the perpetrators as preventing the next act. You can't say, 'We've got all the Taliban and Al Qaida together, we're only going to ask their name, rank, and number.' You can't do that when the nation's primary responsibility is to protect its citizens."

A common theme that each of the panelists recognized is that the world, from governments to citizens, has entered a new paradigm of dealing with terrorism.

"We are moving from the old 'it is none of my business mentality' to 'it's everybody's business' - that is the number one way to fight this," Chertoff said.

The UJC National Young Leadership Conference brings together nearly 2,000 young Jewish leaders from throughout North America, and is the single largest gathering of its kind. Conference attendees are hearing from top American, Israeli and Jewish political, media and community figures; meeting other actively involved Jews from across the continent; and discussing critical issues with their representatives on Capitol Hill.

More information on the UJC National Young Leadership Conference can be found at www.ujc.org/washington13. Photos are available at the Washington 13 virtual press packet at www.ujc.org.

United Jewish Communities (UJC) represents 189 Jewish Federations and 400 independent communities across North America.  Last year, 700,000 people contributed more than $826 million to the UJA Federation Annual Campaign and another $1.2 billion to endowment funds, capital campaigns, foundations and other special projects.  UJC provides life-saving and life-enhancing humanitarian assistance to those in need, and translates Jewish values into social action on behalf of millions of Jews in hundreds of communities in North America, in towns and villages throughout Israel, in the former Soviet Union, and 60 countries around the world.