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THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951
Pros. ./owsoN)
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 $6 a year. Foreign $7.
Second Class Postage Paid At Detroit, Michigan
.,
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ SIDNEY SHMARAK
Editor and Publisher
Business Manager
Advertising Manager
CHARLOTTE HYAMS
City Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the sixteenth day of Adar, the following Scriptural selections will be read
in our synagogues.
Pentateuch& portion; Exod. 30:11-34:35. Prophetical portion; I Kings 18:1 39.
-
Licht Benshen, Friday, Feb. 28, 6:02 p.m.
VOL. XLV—NO. 1
Page Four
Feb. 28, 1964
Myopic Arab Intransigence
For several months now, the Arab
states were at odds over internal matters,
and the Kurdish and Yemeni struggles
were said to have divided them and espe-
cially were interpreted as creating a se-
rious cleavage between Egypt's President
Gamal Abdel Nasser and his kinsmen.
Now, analysts believe, the end of the
Kurdish-Iraqi controversy and the im-
pending withdrawal of Egyptian troops
from Yemen will release vital forces
from embattled areas and will strengthen
the armies of Egypt and Iraq, giving them
an altered balance of power against Israel.
It is still questionable whether the
Arab armies will be able, by such a mo-
bilization of all the Arab forces, to over-
come the much smaller but determined
Israeli army. Israel, fighting for its exist-
ence, must face all eventualities, and
undoubtedly will rise to whatever needs
emergencies may create.
The primary fact that becomes appar-
ent again from the renewed Arab threats
is that Israel must spend the major in-
come from taxes for defense. By the same
token, the Arab states, instead of striving
to elevate the standards of their backward
peoples, are placing emphasis not on the
humanitarian needs in the area but on
war-mongering. This is the deplorable
situation that turns the entire Middle
East into a war cauldron.
Arab attacks on both President Lyn-
don B. Johnson and on Mrs. Johnson, the
misinterpretation of American aims to
be of help to all parties involved in the
controversies in that area, the charges of
pro-Israelism that are now being hurled
at our Government, serve to aggravate an
already tense situation.
The Arabs seemed to have pooled
their forces, to have tightened the ties
of friendship; as a result of the recent
meeting of the heads of 13 Moslem states.
The mucilage that pasted them into a
new friendship is without doubt the
hatred of Israel.
An amazing element in this Middle
Eastern struggle 1s the refusal of the
Arabs to cooperate in efforts to assure
scientific and economic progress for all
involved and to utilize proferred aid in
many areas. The United States offered
aid. in irrigation programs and in whole-
some utilization of water power, in addi-
tion to assuring adequate water supplies
for both Israel and the Arab states. But
to go along with the U. S. in the Johnson
plan would have meant recognition of
Israel. The Arabs preferred to harm
themselves rather than acknowledge an
indisputable fact: the reality of Israel's
existence. Even the arch enemies of Is-
rael in several Christian quarters are
willing, while striving to harm Israel, to
accept this basic fact.
Now there has emerged another fac-
tor of Arab intransigence. President
Johnson gave Israel an assurance of a
cooperative research undertaking "in
using nuclear power to turn salt water
into fresh water." Our Government then
also offered that similar projects should
be inaugurated by the Arab states in co-
operation with the United States. All that
has thus far been accomplished is an-
other round of enmity, as indicated in
an editorial on "Plan for the Mideast,"
in which the New York Times stated:
More than a decade ago President Truman
voiced a dream of a new golden age in which
the atom would be used not to threaten man-
kind with annihilation but to create a new
Garden of Eden—to make the Arab desert
bloom, to turn Israel again into a land of
milk and honey, to raise food for hundreds
of millions in Africa and Latin America. A
part of that dream has now been revived by
President Johnson.
Under his plan, the United States under-
takes to cooperate with Israel and the Arab
states in developing atomic power plants to
convert salt water into fresh water, with the
International Atomic Energy Agency as a
"focal point" in the program. Mr. Johnson
is fully aware that this program will take
time and is no cure-all for the Middle East's
age-old rivalries and hostilities. But the op-
portunities are so vast and the stakes are so
high that such efforts are very much worth-
while. This is all the more so because the
rival Arab and Israeli water plans based on
the Jordan River have so raised tensions in
the Middle East that President Nasser has
recently been declaring that "war appears
inevitable."
As revealed by Mr. Johnson, discussions
on such cooperative efforts are already under
way with Israel which, with two reactors and
a desalting plant, is farthest advanced in this
field. But he stresses that we are equally
ready to cooperate with other countries, and
the State Department is getting in touch with
the Arab states on similar projects. There are
research reactors in Egypt, Iraq and Iran.
The first Arab response, which sees in the
offer merely a plot to give Israel the atom
bomb, is full of furious hostility. We can only
hope that sober second thoughts will persuade
the Arab leaders that the welfare of their
people deserves priority over their hatreds.
If this is to be the continuing attitude
of the Arabs towards progressive steps to
improve the conditions of the peoples in
the Middle East, what hope can there
possibly be for an early peace there?
Meanwhile declarations like the one
made last week by Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara, to the House Armed
Services Committee, that the United
States aims "to keep the Arab-Israel feud
from escalating into overt hostilities"
ought to be a warning to the war-mongers
that there is concern lest there should be
an unnecessary conflict and that major
powers may step in to prevent it. Only
the most unrealistic can possibly fail to
see the futility of war as well as the utter
stupidity of either fomenting it or of fail-
ing to strive for the peace that is so vital
to - the needs of peoples who now live in
utter poverty.
Abba Eban's Visit to Our City
Abba Eban, the eminent scholar, bril-
liant orator and statesman who repre-
sented his nation for nearly 15 years as
ambassador to the United States and
Israel's chief delegate to the United Na-
tions, now Deputy Prime Minister of
Israel, comes to us again, in behalf of
the Allied Jewish Campaign.
It is a welcome visit by a great leader
who is beloved in our community, who
knows many of our leaders, who has
been helpful many times in efforts in
behalf of the United Jewish Appeal and
Israel Bond drives.
Mr. Eban comes here at a time when
it is so urgent that our gifts to the major
fund-raising effort should be increased,
that there should be a re-dedication to
causes that serve us overseas, nationally,
locally.
The distinguished guest is highly
qualified to render the service that is so
urgently needed at this time. We wel-
come his visit here most heartily.
Piotr Rawicz's 'Blood From
the Sky': Allegorical Novel
"Blood from the Sky" by Piotr Rawicz, published by Har-
court, Brace & World (757 3rd, N.Y. 17), translated from the
French by Peter Wiles, is Kafkaesque. It is a powerful novel that
is, allegorically, among the great products of an age during which
writers have been influenced by the challenges of our time and
are striving for justice on earth.
It is a novel in which the horrors of the past, the blackmail
of the torturers, the resistance to terror, play important roles.
Rawicz, who was born in the Ukraine, studied in Russian,
Polish and French universities, was in concentration camps
during the war for three years, and the cry against the horrors
that emanates from his book is a result of personal experiences.
His Jewishness is linked with deep-rooted worldly knowledge
he acquired as a journalist—the career he pursued after his in-
carceration by the Nazis and as a result of his studies in leading
universities and his acquisition of literary and linguistic knowl-
edge.
In "Blood from the Sky" there echo the experiences of the
ages, the heritage he had gained from his Jewish background.
He turns to apocalyptic glimpses and he lapses into an epic tone
when he asks "which of us has not imagined himself to be the
Messiah in person" and he elaborates:
"The race which for thousands of years has been boasting
that one day a true Messiah will emerge taintless from its
midst has in the meantime produced a whole Pleiad of Messiahs
false semigenuine and suspect. You are as familiar as I am
with the cases of Sabbatai Zebi and Jacob Frank, to say nothing
of a certain Karl Marx and at least a dozen People's Commis-
sars and Deputy Commissars ... In the 17th century, when the
Cossack hetman Bogdan Khmelnitski had caused several hun-
dred thousands of our people to be cut down, drowned and
impaled, the handsome Sabbatai appeard in Smyrna, promising
the strewn corpses justice and resurrection; millionaires in such
peaceful countries as Holland sold their homes for a song in
order to join Him whose coming had been foretold. These enter-
prising, level-headed shipowners, those kings of commerce,
climbed unto the roofs of their ancestral homes and awaited
the wind, the divine tempest, which—in the twinkling of an
eye—was to convey them to the feet of their Messiah. Appar-
ently the God-given wind did not come. Once Sabbatai had
performed his act of perfidy, once the Messiah had donned a
green turban and the Sultan had appointed him court chamber-
lain (according to some) or governor of an Aegean island (ac-
cording to others), the majority of the shipowners and mer-
chants went back to their business. True, they rebuilt the for-
tunes squandered at the Messiah's behest and, to some extent,
in his honor. But the incident left a scar, one more scar to be
perpetuated in the lives of their children . . ."
Rawicz goes on to relate how it fell "to one of the great
members of our race" to create the Golem and the longings and
terrifying consequences that ensued.
The author of "Blood from the Sky" also draws upon his
experiences in Russia and with the Russians, the blackmail to
which officials resorted during the years of the Nazi horrors.
He recalls the stale jokes of that era of despair and humiliation,
when three enigmatical letters appeared—"R.J.F.," which stood
for "Rein Juedisches Fett—Pure Jewish Fat."
Name changing and detection, demands of contributions, such
as the blackmailing demand: "I see no reason why I should con-
ceal the fact that I am treasurer of the local Resistance movement.
I am sure you will feel impelled to make a small contribution. I
put it to you as question, whereas I am entitled to demand. Your
ancestors made fortunes out of the sweat of our peasants' brows.
It is only fair that you should pull your weight, in this way if In
no other . . ."
And while seeking refuge, Boris, who changes his name to
Yuri in an effort to save his and his wife's lives, is told as it
becomes evident that his attempt to conceal his background has
been detected: "It bolsters our natural pride to hear a foreigner
express himself in our tongue as you do . ."
There is a postscript which admonishes us: "The events that
he (Boris) describes could crop up in any place, at any time, in
the mind of any man, plant, mineral .
And in the interim an era that was marked by human decline
is depicted with great skill, making "Blood from the Sky" a very
powerful novel.