Friday, Nove m ber 1, 1957 — THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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Israel's Two Fears: What Russia
Will Do in Mid-East, and U. S. Won't

By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
TEL AVIV—Israelis have only
two fears—of what Russia may do
in the Middle East and what the
United States may fail to do to
stop Communist infiltration here.
While the enemy supposedly is
the Arab, there is little fear of
what the hostile neighbors may
do. The average Israeli believes
that the Arab peoples know his
country can stand its g r o u n d
against them and they will not
attack Israel. Israelis live within
a stone's throw of Arab villages.
The entire country is one long
border. In some areas Israelis
and Arabs fraternize across the
demarcation lines.
But every time Russia makes an
effort to get a foothold in an
Arab land—as in the Syrian situ-
ation at this time—Israelis show
serious concern.
"Russia already is in the Mid-
dle East, that is why we are
concerned," an important gov-
ernment snokesman said. "But
what will the United States do?
Will your country stop the Rus-
sian infiltrations? Will the U. S.
be firm against Communist
domination in our area? At the
moment we are skeptical about
firm U. S. ' action, and that is
what makes us uneasy."
Meanwhile the Israelis are dis-
playing deep anxiety over the fate
of the remaining 2,500,000 Jews
in Russia. Israeli youths who at-
tended the Moscow Youth Festi-
val have returned here with sad
forebodings. They maintain that
anti-Semitism in Russia is assum-
ing violent proportions, that Jews
there live in insecurity, that they
fear to speak lest they and their
families should be compelled to
suffer an even worse fate at the
hands of the Communist terrorists.
"Russian Jews followed the Is-
raeli delegation around in hordes,
while were were in Moscow," one
of the delegates said, "but they
dared not get too near to us out of
fear that their interest in Israel
would bring punishment. But often
they sent - us messages to tell us
that they are suffering from anti-
Semitism and 'that they wish they
could go to Israel. Often they sent
their children to us . to touch us—
we seemed to them a symbol of
some hope of a better future if
they could escape to Israel."
One of the delegates reported
that an elderly Russian Jewish
couple managed to invite him to
their shabby one-room home.
They opened their hearts, spoke
of the bitter feeling against
Jews in Russia, and said that al-
though they lost three sons In

the war fighting with the Rus-
sian army their neighbors never-
theless shout the opprobrious
term "Zhid"—"damned Jew"—
at them.
The returnees from Russia are
unanimous in their belief that the
vast majority , of Jews in Russia
would welcome an opportunity to

escape from there and go to Is-
rael, but they are fearful that Rus-
sia will never permit it and that
Russian Jewry may be doomed at
the hands of a people that remains
anti-Semitic and that is not dis-
couraged by its government in its
retention and practice of anti-
Semitism.

Completion of Irrigation Project
to End Long Syrian Dispute in UN

By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
SAFED—Within a month, an
engineering task which had created
one of the most serious United
Nations controversies between Is-
raelis and Arabs, will be com-
pleted, and an area that was a
marshland that bred malarial dis-
ease, will become another agricul-
tural paradise for new settlers in
Israel.
The Huleh drainage project is
now nearing its final stages. The
Jewish National Fund, Israel's
land-reclamation agency, began
the first stages of the project of
draining this marshland in 1951.
Twice Syria objected, claiming it
would give Israel a strategic ad-
vantage. Twice the UN Security
Council rejected the objections.
Now this area will be available
for the settlement of more new
immigrants, who are arriving in
Israel at the rate of up to 10,000 a
month from lands of oppression
behind the Iron Curtain in Eastern
Europe and in Moslem countries..
The drainage of the Huleh
marshland of 60,000 dunams (15,000
acres) was accomplished virtually
under Syrian gunfire. At one point,
this area is not more than a mere
100 yards away from the Syrian
border.
The purpose of -this develop-
ment, financed with funds raised
by the Jewish National Fund, is
four-fold:
1. By draining the swamps,
this area is available for inten-
sive agricultural cultivation;
2. To make available to the
rest of the country thousands of
cubic feet of water which hither-
to was lost through swamp vege-
tation, evaporation and transpir-
ation;
3. To exploit the rich layers of
peat, layers of which are be-
neath the swamps and can be-
come accessible only through
drainage operations;
4. To rescue the entire neigh-
boring area from malarial
threats.

Lake Huleh and the Huleh

swamps, now completely drained
and almost ready for cultivation as
a new agricultural area, were the
results of lava streams from vol-
canic eruptions. There was no out-
let for the waters that went into
the Huleh Basin when a barrier
was set up for the original Jordan
River bed about a million years
ago.
The engineers who now are
completing the drainage process
explain that in the course of time
a new river bed opened up, but it
was too narrow and too shallow to
hold the storm waters. The result
was the formation of pools, swamps
and malaria-breeding lakes.
The drying up of the swamps
was the first move in the direction
of removing the disease-breeding
condition. Jewish National Fund
directors now , say that Syria will
benefit from the new health con-
ditions brought to the area.
Of special interest in connec-
tion with this undertaking is
the granting by the Jewish Na-
tional Fund of several thousand
dunams in this area to the Na-
ture's Friends Society to keep
the swamps intact for a natural
park, zoological and botanical
gardens.
The Jewish National Fund Coun-
cil of Detroit was one of the first
American groups to provide funds
for the drainage project. This
week, Israel leaders sent word to
the Detroit group that "in the
course of a few years the new
lands put under highly intensive
agricultural cultivation will give
a return of a considerable part of
the huge investments put into the
drainage scheme."

"And I will plant them
upon their land,
And they shall no more
be plucked up
Out of their land which
I have given them,
Saith the Lord thy God."
—Amos 9:15

