Greetings Over the Potomac
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 48235 Mich.,
VE 8,-9364. Subscription $6 a year. Foreign $7.
Second Class Postage Paid at Detroit, Michigan
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Business Manager
SIDNEY SHMARAK
Advertising Manager
CHARLOTTE H.YAMS
City Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the nineteenth day of Sivan, the following Scriptural selections will be read
in our synagogues.
Pen.tateuchai portion; Num. 8:1-12:16 Prophetical portion; Zachariah 2:14-4:7.
Licht Benshen, Friday, May 29, 7:41 p.m.
VOL. XLV. No. 14
Page Four
May 29, 1964
Truth About Refugees and Water Project
Two matters involving Israel will require
endless explaining in order to overcome the
prejudiced views that have been broadcast
in many quarters. One, and the major one,
concerns the irrigation project.
There is cause for serious concern that
no amount of clarification has served to
convince those who have been reached by
Arab propagandists that the refugee numbers
were inflated, that Israel is anxious to help
solve the problem and is prepared to assist
in compensating the Arabs and in financing
their resettlement, with provisions for train-
ing them for useful pursuits. Thus far, the
appeals to hatred have superseded those of
reason. Even those who recognize the danger
to an established state of a mass return of
Arabs, who are a potential fifth column, to
Israel, are unwilling to accede to the justice
of protecting Israel's security.
The problem calls for renewed and con-
stant clarification. But while Arab propa-
gandists have invaded many areas with their
venom—including the World's Fair—the Jew-
ish public relations programs are continuing
to decline. There is need for increased en-
lightenment on the issue, and unless that is
done quickly, Jews everywhere will suffer the
consequences of unjust accusations that tac-
tics of Nazis who had murdered a third of
the Jewish people are being emulated by
Jews themselves.
*
*
*
Not only Nikita Khrushchev and his co-
horts in Communist ranks but many others
in Western lands have been misled on the
water irrigation issue in Israel.
The facts in the case have been told again
and again: how the United States offered to
assist in an over-all irrigation project that
would benefit Israel and the Arab states
equally — the decision having been the result
of a study that was made by the late Eric
Johnston who represented our government
in the survey he conducted for several years
in an effort to solve the problem. But the
Eisenhower proposal to aid all parties was
rejected by the Arab states, after their engi-
neering experts had approved it, because it
would have meant recognition of Israel.
Israel proceeded to build a vast irriga-
tion and water distribution plant, as of right,
in accordance with American findings. But
preceding Israel's action, Jordan already be-
gan to utilize and to divert the waters of the
Yarmuk River, the Jordan River's principal
tributary, the first stages of the East Ghor
Canal project having been completed by the
Jordanian government on June 21, 1963.
Facts gathered by George E. Gruen, a
Middle East specialist, for the American
Jewish Committee, from Arab sources, show
that the Ghor Canal diverts 123 million cubic
meters of water annually from the Yarmuk
and additional amounts of water enter the
canal from the Zarqa River and seven other
streams. The report states: "This is a high-
quality sweet water which in the past flowed
from the Yarmuk into the lower Jordan
River at a point in Israeli territory south of
the Sea of Galilee. The Jordanian project
taps the Yarmuk at a point some six miles
from the confluence of the Yarmuk and the
Jordan and carries the water through a
5 /s-mile-long tunnel into a 43-mile-long canal,
running parallel to the eastern bank of the
Jordan River. Using the force of gravity,
the canal irrigates a strip of land three to
five miles wide."
*
This Jordanian project has brought un-
der cultivation 25,000 acres and upon com-
pletion will irrigate approximately 31,000
acres. Jordanian plans also include a dam
at Magarin.
As reported by Willian E. Greenip, in
Viewpoints, published by the anti-Israel
American 'Friends of the Middle East, the
U.S. Government has so far provided $14
million of the East Ghor Canal project's $19-
million cost, under a U.S.-Jordanian agree-
ment signed in May 1958. The American
Jewish Committe's analysis explains, based
on the report by Eric Johnston: "U.S. offi-
cials have explained that U.S. support is
based on the fact that the amount of water
Jordan will divert under this project is with-
in the quantities assigned to Jordan under
the Johnson or Unified Water Plan. This
plan was approved by Arab and Israeli water
experts before being shelved by the Arab
League in October, 1955, because of the ob-
jections of Syria, on political grounds, to
participation in any project which might also
benefit Israel. On the basis of the same rea-
soning, the United States has lent its diplo-
matic support, as well as a small amount of
technical assistance, to the Israeli project to
divert to the Negev water from the Jordan
River after it has entered the Sea of Galilee
(Lake Tiberias or K i n e r e t) in Israeli
territory."
*
*
*
A fact that must be stressed is that the
Israel project is within the limits of water
supplies that would have been granted Israel
under the Unified Johnston Plan. Jordan
already is utilizing water in accordance with
a plan that might, if utilized by all parties
concerned, also have led to genuine peace
agreements by all the states in the present
conflict. Yet, the Jordanian diversions point
menacingly to Israel's status. The American
Jewish Committee's statement indicates:
"While the East Ghor plan is helping to irri-
gate tens of thousands of new acres in the
Kingdom of Jordan, the withdrawal of large
quantities of Yarmuk water is already making
the lower Jordan River, south of Tiberias, unfit
for irrigation—even before the Israeli diversion
has begun. In the past, the sweet waters of the
Yarmuk had sufficiently counteracted the saline
influence of the mineral springs flowing into
the Sea of Galilee. This increasing salinity,
however, was foreseen both in the Jordanian
government's own plans and in the United Nations
proposal presented by Mr. Johnston. The Jor-
danian Baker-Harza plan stated that 'with diversion
of the flow of the Yarmuk River and the possi-
bility of the flow of the Jordan River below
lake Tiberias, it is probable that the quality of
water in the Jordan will drop below the permis-
sible limits of use in irrigation agriculture.
Therefore, the use of water directly from the
Jordan River is not recommended.' "
From a practical point of view, judged
by humanitarian standards, instead of accept-
ing a plan that would have provided sweet
waters for all the nations involved there will
be harm to Israel immediately and damage to
the plan eventually to Jordan.
The Johnston plan would have allocated
to Israel more water than the Jewish State
presently plans to utilize via Lake Tiberias.
The Johnston plan viewed the Jordan as a
mere drainage ditch and Arab farmers in
the area were to be compensated, under the
U.S.-UN plan, with fresh water under the
regional development scheme. Now Jordan
must compensate Arab farmers for their loss
of water with Ghor Canal water allocations.
Thus, while Israel is being maligned, the
hopes that were inherent in the Johnston
plan were frustrated. While there is de facto
implementation of the original program by
Israel and Jordan, it is being accomplished
in an atmosphere of distrust rather than co-
operation — all due to Arab intransigence.
The facts should be known in order that
Israel should not be unduly harmed in a
game of Middle East power politics. Ameri-
cans, at least, should not be misled.
Story of 'New York' -- Splendid
Text, Magnificent Illustrations
New York always will be, as it has been for a century or more,
the most attractive place for tourists. It retains its magnetism that
draws to it scholars who seek information in its libraries, artists who
come to view the works of the world's greatest painters, students of
history and sociologists who are interested in the fusion of peoples
and races.
Viking Press (625 Madison, NY22) has just produced a book that
is so colorful, so descriptive of the great metropolis that those who
have been and know New York, those who live in the great city and
love it, as well as those seeking new experiences there, will be thrilled
anew by what it has to offer.
"New York," this magnificent volume, text by Kate Simon and
photographs by Andreas Feininger, offers so much, is so illuminating,
that its readers will turn to it again and again to study the wonderful
photographs and to become reacquainted with the great center that
has everything.
Feininger explains that he used six cameras and a total of 12 lenses
to produce the pictures for this book. They are outstanding. Regardless
of the area covered, they portray the great city in its fullest illumination,
its people, its entertainment fields, its historic role as a melting pot
that never melts.
Typical examples are the two full-page photographs in this 12x9
large format volume that show the small Jewish businesses on the
lower East Side. Here we see the portrayal of signs announcing avail-
ability of mahzorim, taleisim. sidurim, as well as a weaver's sign about
artistic darners and weavers—both in Yiddish and Hebrew.
The numerous full- and double-page photographs and multi colored
illustrations are even more expressive. They show nearly everything
one would like to find in a city that has so much to offer. Feininger's
is a most artistic labor that has earned the interest that is certain
to be drawn to this book.
Kate Simon's text is equally expressive and impressive. She
commences with an introduction in which she explains that "New York
has always been an unbelievable place," that: "Like a great work of
art it is tainted by the terrible; it will hardly recognize human limita-
tions, and leaps off normal scales . . . New York is shredding itself,
bursting, exploding, destroying itself in suicidal mania, the apocalyptic
phrase varying with the sharpness of the city's irritations. And still it
persists, whirling and shouting lustily . . . The New Yorker . . . loves
the city not in spite of the fact that it is ridiculous but because it is."
Then come the evaluations of the growth and the explosion, its
changes and its peoples.
Jews are described as having "moved in more cohesive, limited
areas" than other elements: "As elevated trains, ferries, bridges, and
subways opened the city, the Jews too moved to Brooklyn, East Harlem,
and the lower East Bronx, then on to the splendors of the Concourse
in the Weet Bronx and westward into Washington Heights."
Tough little boys, Jews and others, "became the city's prize
fighters." "The Irish stars of vaudeville were replaced by Jewish comics,
theater-cast listings began to show Italian names and, more recently,
Puerto Rican names."
Changes in the picture are described. Jews and others were
accused of creating slums. Among those flocking to "the bursting
New York City of the 19th Century" were "Jewish tailors fleeing
pogroms." "Where Chinatown has seeped across the Bowery into what
was once the fabled Jewish East Side (now peopled by Puerto Ricans,
American Negroes, Filipinos, gypsies, Poles, and a few old Jews held
by the familiar synagogue and a job in the small tie factories of Allen
Street which permits them the Saturday Sabbath), old Chinese with
fine ivory cheekbones sit in a circle on the summer sidewalk, some
still wearing the wide trousers and side-clasped shirt of China, tallang
and chanting quietly .. ."
Then there is the village, "mainly Jewish but increasingly Puerto
Rican," and the other areas in a vastly changing sphere, all part of this
illuminating tale. The restaurants, the museums, the schools,— all are
part of this panoramic view.
There is a page devoted to statistics — of what New Yorkers need,
what they get, how much food and water, how many newspapers, go
into the making the great setting.
This is a marvelous book. It is not the total story: it would take
so much more to describe the Jewish and the other elements, their
aspirations, their environment. Despite its limited scope of 158 pages,
"New York" by Feininger and Simon is a splendid creation.
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