THE JEWISH NEWS The New Pharaoh Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1931 Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association. Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co, 17100 West Seven Mile Road, Detroit 35, Mich., VE. 8-9364 Subscrption $4 a year, Foregin $5. Entered as second class matter Aug. 6, 1942, at Post Office, Detroit, Mich., under Act of March 3, 1879 PHILIP SLOMOV}TZ Editor and Publisher VOL. XXVI, No. 8 SIDNEY SHMARAK Advertising Manager Page Four FRANK SIMONS City Editor October 29, 1954 This Sabbath, the third day of Heshvan, 5715, the following Scriptural selections win: be read fn o'ur synagogues: Pentateuchal portion, Gen. 6:9-11:32. Prophetical portion, is, 54:1-55:5. The Arab Refugees:Some Very Pertinent Facts Recurring emphasis placed on the statue of the Arab refugees, the perpetuation of whose problem continues an aggravating is- sue f o r Israel, places emphasis on a very significant communication sent to the Chris- tian Science Monitor by John Bruce of Bos- ton. Expressing chagrin over the importance that is being given to Arab viewpoints, Mr. Bruce calls attention to the following edi- torial from The Church of England News- paper: "When the new nation of Israel is under severe criticism, particularly with regard to the Qibya incident, it is worth recollect- ing some of the circumstances in the back- ground of recent events. .. According to the favorite mythology these raids are the work of refugees whom the Israelis most unjustly and cruelly dispatched from the country in 1948.... From Arab sources we know how the Arab leaders themselves ordered villagers out of their houses and out of their own territory. They deliber- ately started a panic movement. It is true that ultimately the Israelis helped it along . . . But the initial movement of the refu- gees came about on Arab orders and it is the Arab leaders who are to blame for it. "Ever since, these refugees have been living in abject misery. Their place in Palestine was taken by Jews whom the Arab states sent there. Expelled from their Arab home lands they naturally occupied the room the Arabs themselves had vacated. "These Jews received a welcome from their co-religionists. Did the Arabs receive a similar welcome from theirs? On the contrary: the Arab governments who or- dered them out have left, them to wallow in their wretchedness. Attempts by the agencies of the United Nations Organiza- tion to find a solution of the problem have • met with little response. Christian mis- sionary societies have done all they could to help and have been liberal in the dis- tribution of material aids but at the best this can only be paliate "Perhaps the Arabs are tumble to solve the problem. It is difficult to believe this, however, considering that tens of millions of . . . money are pouring into the Mid- dle East in return for the oil which British and American companies are finding there. It should be possible to absorb these refu- gees into irrigation schemes, agriculture and manufactures. Yet nothing is done, although the money continues to pour in... "Meanwhile, the Jews are under boycott from the Arab nations. Their own oil re- fineries at Haifa are still closed down. They see the British preparing to hand over the Canal bases, with all they signify, to their enemies, the Egyptians. They are aware of British help in arms and finance to the Arab governments. Their own eco- nomic plight is dire. Is it really astonishing if they, too, feel desperate? "There is only one answer. That is for Britain and the United States together, acting, if possible, with the United Nations, to insist upon a Middle East settlement that will cover all these poisonous prob- lems. If we depend upon the Arab states for oil, they depend upon us for the use and exploitation of it and for finance, as also for defence against Russian threat. There should be adequate material here for a bargain." Mr. Bruce's personal comments on the Issue, with relation to this editorial, are equally important, representing as they do the opinions of an interested American. He stated in his communication to the Christian Science Monitor: "In another periodical on the Near-East it is related that of the number of Arab refugees, a large part of those in Trans- Jordan, have always lived in their pres- ent home, right in Trans-Jordan. Yet, to bolster the Arab case, the population of the refugee camps includes thousands of natives of Trans-Jordan. No Arab spokes-. man mentions that living conditions are so wretched that many Arabs have gone into the refugee camps, where at least they can get regular meals. "As for compensation for the abandoned property of the Arab refugees — which claim Israel has offered to settle at the peace conferences — has any Arab or Christian ever mentioned any compensa- tion for the lives and property of the Jews, confiscated on the excuse that these unfortunates were Zionists? Has any Egyp- tian mentioned compensation for the Jew- ish lives and property lost on that 'Black Friday' when a third of Cairo and Alex- andria not long ago were destroyed? "Today Dulles and Churchill are sending arms to those great lovers of freedom, the Arabs. Against whom can the Arabs fight? The Russians? As a practical mat- ter, what can a million armed Arabs do to Russia, when you consider that Israel whipped the combined armies of six Arab nations? No arms for Israel, but hundreds of millions for Egypt. Appeasement of the Arabs will not pay for Dulles any better than appeasement of the Nazi helped Chamberlain." In view of the growing dangers result- ing from the shipment of arms by this country and Great Britain to Israel's ene- mies, Mr. Bruce's statements are of major importance at this time. They assume added merit as a result of the • assurances that have been given by more than 100 men seeking seats in Congress that they will ex- ert their efforts, if elected, against the con- tinuation of the Middle Eastern arms race. Campaign pledges are less important than the recognition of the immorality of arming one set of nations against its smallest neighbor. The aim of our Government must, at all times, be in the direction of peace. No one should be armed in any area on the globe as long as that territory is engulfed in war threats. The plea must be one for peace, and a race for arms should be dis- couraged. This remains our major prayer and our dominant plea to our Government. In his address at the American Jewish Tercentenary dinner in New York, President Eisenhower stated: "In the Near East, we are all regretfully aware that the major differences between Israel and the Arab states remain unre- solved. Our goal there, as elsewhere, is a just peace. By friendship toward both, we shall continue to contribute to peaceful re- lations among these peoples. And in help- ing to strengthen the .security of the entire Near East, we shall make sure that any arms we provide are devoted to that pur- pose, not to creating local unbalances which could be used for intimidation of or agrres- sion against any neighboring nations. In every such arrangement we make with any nation, there is ample assurance that this distortion of purpose cannot occur." It is good to have the assurance that there is to be no "distortion of purpose," and that our Government is striving for peace. Equally painfully, however, we must make note of the fact that the State Department is working at cross-purposes with the White House by insisting on sending arms to the Arabs. This must be avoided, and the arrival at peace agreements must be made the first objective in international relations. Our Gov- ernment must insist upon direct negotiations between Arabs and Israelis. Then we shall be able to arrive at a practical solution to the existing problem. The President's statement h a s been called "meaningless" by the veteran Zionist leader, Louis Lipsky, and the calls for more positive declarations on the arms issue must be heeded. The assurances that have been given by Vice President Nixon and Sec- retary of State Dulles that our Government will strive for peace will prove heartening only when the policy of arming Arabs at Israel's expense is abandoned. In our own state, we are fortunate that our representatives in Congress, Senator Ferguson among them, continually intercede with the President and the State Department against the policies that will damage Israel's security unless there is an end to the arming of the Arabs. But the State Department ig- nores these intercessions. His hesitancy in calling a halt to Mr. Dulles' anti-Israel policy is one of the President's major weaknessnes. A Tercentenary Controversy Handlin's BOOk Draws Severe Attack from Ludwig Lewisohn If the Tercentenary Year is to serve the major purpose of emphasizing positive Jewish needs; if this historic year is to encourage a healthy and wholesome approach to our Americanism, then we must be careful in our selection of the right kind a literature and in our approval of the proper kind of books. Several good books already have been published. Louis Zara% "Blessed Is the Land" (a Crown publication) is a splendid novel. Rufus Learsie's history of the Jews in America (issue by World Publishing Co.) is the best U. S. Jewish history. But Oscar Hand- lin's "Adventure in Freedom" (a McGraw-Hill book) leaves much to be desired. In his review of Handlin's book, in the Saturday Review, Dz. Ludwig Lewisohn warned as follows: Mr. Handlin's 'Adventure in Freedom' is not easy to deal with in 1954. To him freedom. for the Jew means generally free- dom not to be a Jew or freedom to be as little of a Jew as possible —freedom, in the last analysis, to disappear. "Here," he writes, "no man was a Jew because he had to be." Since all Jews are born as such and live as such and die as such and since the only choice between emptiness and mimicry and servility on the one hand and Jewish learning and fulness and piety on the other, the temper of Mr. Handlin's book is easily discernible from this single sentence. Throughout he minimizes Jewish character, Jewish differentness, Jewish destiny. According to him the divine ordinances are "a yoke thrust on from without" and their "laws and customs" ghetto "walls," and Jewish accommodation to American life meant "radically to revise their own conceptiOns of themselves and of the nature of their culture." Oddly enough, considering his title and his apparent temper, he rejoices in every manisfestation of unfreedom. Adjustment is his motto and undifferentiation his ideal—the melting-pot, the sand-heap, the unfeatured crowd. He mentions scarcely a single Jew who has worked creatively within American civilization, neither Maurice Samuel nor the late Milton Steinberg, neither Abram Heschel nor the Zionist leaders. He delights in Hank Greenberg and Macy's. "It is no wonder, then, that he blankly omits all the salient facts and achievements of American Jewry. He omits to mention the 200 Hillel foundations at American colleges; he omits the growth of Jewish education at its most authentic and heroic from seventeen Law and Tradition (Torah umesorah) schools in 1935 to 156 in 1953. He neglects to describe the growth of the Young Israel movement and that great renaissance which marked the sweep of American Zionism, until at the World Congress of 1946 one-half of all voters (in excess of 1,000,000) were American voters. By the same token he fails to mention the fads of the religious intensification of life after Zionism had reached its peak and its political fulfilment in the State of Israel. "You would never know from Mr. Handlin that within the last decade Reform Congregations had increased from 300 to 461, Conservative Congregations from 265 to 473, and that the number of Orthodox Congregations has reached 3,000. Nor would you learn from his pages anything concerning the eminent Yiddish poets that have flourished in America or of the small distinguished body of Hebrew literature created here. Nor would you learn— for his prejudices include every Jewish effort—that there are 100,000 Jewish farmers in the United States today with 20,000 farm units. But you will find in his pages almost incredible sen- tences such as that "in the movies of John Garfield, in the novels of Saul Bellow, and in the language of the comic strips a much wider audience began to catch glimpses of what Jews were." "Jews, the People of the Book, the people with the longest history of literacy in the world, are to be observed in their true character not in Jewish Center or at study or at prayer but in the "comic strips." Where could Mr. Handlin have lived? With what Jews? Why, since everything authentically Jewish is alien to him, should he have written this book? He is psychically the descendant of a perishing type—the German, French, Austrian citizen of the Jewish faith. (Deutscher Staatsbueger Mosaischer Konfession.) It was the mark of these unhappy people that they sought to differentiate themselves exclusively by a religion which they either did not know or despised. Does Mr._Handlin not know —whether he likes it or not—that the Jewish religion consists in the conviction of divine election and the consequent duty to sanc- tity all the acts of life? He does not like it. Very well. But to slant history, according to a dislike is hardly sound or scholarly practice." We join in these warnings. There is no room for the frightened and defeatist attitudes which have invaded some Jewish quarters. Dr. Handlin's book, with all its merits, is, nevertheless, marked by fear. Its emphasis is on the right of Jews to vanish. That's not the American way. This great land has flourished by benefiting from the contributions of all its elements. The continuation of this basic principle is the true message of the Tercentenary Year.