THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951
Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers. Michigan Press Association. National Editorial
Association
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co.. 17100 West Seven Mile Road, Detroit 35, Mich.,
VE. 8-9364. Subscription $5 a year. Foreign $6.
Entered as second class matter Aug. 6. 1952 at Post Office. Detroit Mich., under Act of March 3, 1879.
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
SIDNEY SHMARAK
Advertising Manager
CARM1 M. SLOMOVITZ
Circulation Manager
FRANK SIMONS
City Editor
Sabbath Scripthral Selections
This Sabbath, the twenty-seventh day of Ab, 5717, the following Scriptural selections
will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Re'eh, Deut. 11:26-16:17. Prophetical portion, Isaiah 54:11-55:5.
Licht Benshen, Friday, Aug. 23, 7:04 p.m.
VOL. XXXI. No. 25
Page Four
August 23, 1957
Factual Expose of M. E. Aggression
President Eisenhower's pastor, the Rev.
Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, who is the chair-
man of the American Friends of the Mid-
dle East—an organization that, under the
guise of being anti-Zionist, actually is
fanatically anti-Israel—returned from the
Middle East with advice that there should
be a "cooling off period" in the Middle
East. It is sincerely to be hoped that Dr.
Elson's sentiments, based on his recent
visit in the Middle East, and the impres-
sions he had gathered in Israel, will serve
him in good stead in steering a new course
for his organization.
Meanwhile, however. members of the
national council of Dr. Elson's organiza-
tion are spreading venom against little
Israel, hurling at her fantastically un-
founded charges. One of the AFME's na-
tional council members, Prof. William
Ernest Hocking, wrote to many news-
papers asserting that "documented facts
leave no doubt" that "Israel was the ag-
gressor in the armed conflict of 1947-48."
Israel's Ambassador to the U.S. Abba
Eban found it necessary to reply to Dr.
Hocking's poisonous attack and to point
out that "the Arab governments were the
self-confessed and internationally recog-
nized authors of the warfare," as was
proved by documented facts, and he added
that "Dr. Hocking's assault upon my coun-
try's honor is a painful offense to inter-
national courtesy and to objective truth."
Ambassador Eban incorporated in his
reply facts that refute the charges of
many other anti-Israeli propagandists. He
indicated in his reply:
Arab aggression against the people — and
later the state — of Israel in 1947 and 1948, has
been established by confession of Arab leaders;
by determination of United Nations organs;
and by the confirming judgments of leading
governments, including the United States,
whose historic view on this matter contradicts
that of Dr. Hocking at every point.
There were two phases in this aggression.
The first began on Nov. 30, 1947, on the mor-
row of the UN recommendation for partition.
The Arab governments had said they would go
to war to prevent the fulfillment of that inter-
national policy. They kept their word. Terror-
ism, blood-shed, and siege swooped violently
down upon our community and threatened to
engulf it. Our people fought desperately to
save their lives. their homes and families, and
their newly recognized right of nationhood
from brutal extinction. The Secretary-General
of the Arab League had warned: -This will
be a war of extermination and a momentous
massacre that will be spoken of like the Mon-
golian massacre and the Crusades." "The par-
tition line," declared the Palestine Arab rep-
resentative in the General Assembly, "shall be
nothing but a line of fire and blood." In pur-
suit of these threats, which were reiterated in
the-' General Assembly on Nov. 29, 1947 (A/PV.
128). the Arab governments sponsored the
mobilization and training of a "liberation army"
to wage war against our towns, villages and
communications. The Arab governments pub-
lished communiques about the progress of their
invasion. and promised that it would take on
a more violent fury when the British mandate
expired on May 14, 1948.
They were faithful to this threat. When
British rule ended, the armies of five Arab
states crossed their frontiers with the avowed
aim of destroying the State of Israel, whose
establishment had just been recommended by
the UN. The Arab governments filled the
records with letters to the UN announcing that
they would maintain their intervention until
its purpose was achieved, and Israel's statehood
destroyed. Their frank confessions are to be
found in the verbatim records of the Security
Council of May 15 - May 25, 1948.
Nor shall I readily forget sitting opposite
Jamal Husseini in the Security Council in the
spring of 1948 and hearing him declare in full
candor that the Arabs "have never concealed
the fact that we (the Arabs) began the fight-
ing." (S/PV. 287.)
Dr. Hocking's letter draws special atten-
tion to the period between November, 1947,
and May, 1948. He writes that this "is a little
known period of our current history. Its im-
portance. however, is out of proportion to its
extent—it contains the key to all that has
followed."
Now this period is not as "little known"
as Dr. Hocking believes. Responsibility for the
bloodshed in this "key period" has been estab-
lished with precision by an authority before
which Dr. Hocking must surely yield. In 1947
the UN established a commission of five small
democratic states for the very purpose of super-
vising and reporting the fortunes of the par-
tition plan. Your readers, who have read Dr.
Hocking's categorical statement, will rub their
eyes when they now read the unanimous words
of the United Nations Palestine Commission
on the armed conflict beginning in November,
1947:
"Arab opposition to the Plan of the Assembly
has taken the form of organized efforts by
Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser, who has acquired recognition for
strong Arab elements, both inside and outside his scholarship, has added another important accomplishment
Palestine, to prevent its implementation and to. his published works: a new translation of the Prayer Book
to thwart its objectives by threats and acts of for weekday, Sabbath and festival.
violence, including repeated armed incursions
Just issued by the Hebrew Publishing Co. (79 Delancey St.,
into Palestine territory. The commission had
to report to the Security Council that New York 2), this excellently arranged and well translated
Prayer
Book adds a new valuable
`powerful Arab interests. both inside and out-
side Palestine, are defying the resolution of version to tht many available trans-
the General Assembly and are engaged in a lations. -
Let it be noted at the outset that
deliberate effort to alter by force the settle-
its 375 pages of Hebrew text, and
ment envisaged therein.' (A/532.)
There are also "documented facts" about the additional similar number of pages
the second phase of the aggression which took of translations fa ing the Hebrew con-
actically everything
the form of an official invasion by the five tents, include
Arab armies. The international verdict on this that one would ook for in a Prayer
phase is to be found in the report of the United Book.
In fact, it co ntains some prayers
Nations acting mediator to the General Assem-
bly of Nov. 25, 1948. I quote from the official that are not found in other prayer-
books—such as the marriage service,
summary record (A/C, 1/SR. 213):
a service for the dedication of a new
"The Arab States had forcefully opposed home, and other' services.
the existence of a Jewish State in Palestine
The translation is excellently suited
in direct opposition to the wishes of two-thirds for young people who will find greater
Rabbi Bokser
of the members of the Assembly; nevertheless, incentive in following their prayers when they are accompanied
their armed intervention had proved use- by suitable translations.
less . . .
In addition, there is a scholarly 10-page introduction in
All these documents prove Arab responsi-
which the compiler evaluates prayer as "the human side of an
bility for this savage warfare with its ghastly unending dialogue between God and man." The function of
legacy- of rancor and suffering. In the light of
this evidence, what a fearful mockery of jus- prayer, he states, "is to bring us closer to God, that we may
more faithfully perform His will."
tice it is to charge a friendly state with "un-
Rabbi Bokser also explains some of the variations in avail-
doubted" guilt for the aggression of which it
is the certified and internationally acknowl- able Prayer Book translations. Referring to the ambiguity that
has arisen with the creation of the State of Israel; he asserts
edged victim!
These memories of the Arab aggression a that "the House of David symbolized in Jewish history more
decade ago are grievously relevant today, when titian a royal dynasty. It symbolized a state of security within
these governments refuse to liquidate their the Jewish people, a state of national dignity and freedom.
state of war. The "censure and dismay" of And it also symbolized religious vitality."
world opinion attaches, not as Dr. Hocking
An explanation also is offered by Rabbi Bokser of the pecu-
writes, to Israel, but rather to the refusal of liarities of Talmudic style in "Ethics of the Fathers which he
Arab antagonism, glutted with opportunities has included in his Prayer Book. Other portions of the Prayer
of freedom in 12 sovereign states, to suffer a Book are reviewed and evaluated in the illuminating introduc-
small neighboring people to pursue its life and tory essay, which adds great value to a well arranged book
destiny in peace.
of traditional Jewish prayers.
BiateE
OIL 56AliPiti& RE DOO
THE OAIVAE12. ArtIRWENTS
Prayer Book: Newly Arranged and
Translated by Rabbi B. Z. Bokser
It is necessary, for the sake of a clearly
indisputable record, that the facts should
be recorded, and it is encouraging to see
them listed as irrefutably as they appear
in Ambassador Eban's statement.
One of the especially regrettable fac-
tors in Israel's struggle for autonomous
existence is the rise of a group of propa-
gandists like Dr. Hocking, men of culture
who would have been expected to know_
better than to attempt to undermine the
existence of a small state that is fighting
for the right to liberate the persecuted
and to provide secure homes for Jewish
masses in Eastern Europe, behind the Iron
Curtain and in Moslem lands of oppres-
sion. Nevertheless, there is such an ele-
ment—people who have been misled by a
false missionary zeal that has turned them
anti-Jewish, a group that can not tolerate
the success of Jews who are disproving
all the contentions of anti-Semites who
had claimed that Jews cannot govern
themselves, and the pro-Arab groups who
are blindly following the path of static
non-progressivism that would not permit
the skill of a Jewish State to introduce
modernity into the mediavalism of a Mid-
dle East ruled by Moslem effendis. That
is why it is so necessary to make Ambas-
sador Eban's factual statement known to
all Who are willing to be guided by truth.
`Israel's Treasures - as Meritorious a
Volume Today as It Was 31 Years Ago
Those who cherish a love for the wisdom of our sages, and
more especially the lovers of proverbs in Yiddish, would do
well to turn to a book published more than 30 years ago, by
the Hebrew Publishing Co. (79 Delancey, New York 2). In
English and Yiddish, with references to the original texts—the
Scriptures and the Talmud—Dr. Benjamin Vend incorporated
many hundreds of quotations in his book "Israel's Treasures."
This volume is as valuable today as it was when irt first was •
published, 31 years ago. Nearly every topic affecting the exis-
tence of mankind is included in the selections chosen by the
author.
Slander and Gossip, Health and Healing, Men and Women,
Life and Death, Marriage and Divorce, Wealth and Poverty,
Parents and Children, Speech and Silence, Tears and Laughter,
are among the scores of topics covered in this work.
Take a simple example to describe the author's approach:
in the section "Food and Drink"—the Yiddish counterpart of
which is "Essen un Trinken"—the author has the quotation from
Erubin 64: "When wine enters, the secret comes out." In the
Yiddish section, he has the Hebrew original from the Talmudic
tract Erubin and this Yiddish translation: "Es is areingegangen
der vein un arois der sod." But he also adds to it in parenthesis
the well-known Yiddish proverb: "Vos bei a nichteren oifen
lung—is bei a shikeren oifen tzung."
That is how Dr. Vend accomplished his multiple purpose.
The result was an excellent collection of wisdom—the volume
"Israel's Treasures" which merits wide distribution even three
decades after it first came off the presses of the Hebrew Pub-
lishing Co.