Purely Commentary
Lethargy of World Powers . . . Israel's
Role Brilliantly Analyzed by Eban .. .
Christian Theologian Exposes Untruths
United Jewish Charities' Gift: More Than a Mere Gesture
Detroit's role in the campaign for the Israel Emergency Fund was greatly enhanced by the United Jewish Charities'
allocation of $500,000. The Jewish Welfare Federation's property-holding body thereby has demonstrated a deep under-
standing of a great need and the urgency of lending all possible assistance to a cause in behalf of which all humanitarian
efforts must be exerted without fail and without interruption.
The Israel Emergency Fund was set up even before the outbreak of war on June 5. By that time Israel's economy
already was disrupted and the manpower of the small nation that was under threat of being annihilated by its
neighbors was called to arms to protect the very lives of the inhabitants of the country. Now, in order to assure that the
threats still being made by the combined Arab powers to destroy Israel should never materialize, it is important that the
emergency fund should grow, that there should be full protection for a people of 2,500,000 still under threat by 80,000,-
000 saber-rattling enemy neighbors.
The gift from the United Jewish Charities is not a mere gesture. It symbolizes a community's deep interest in a
serious need. It serves to encourage individuals not to falter, not to interrupt the important undertaking to stand by
Israel and to proliide the assistance that must come especially from American Jewry.
We must provide manpower as well. As many as possible should enlist in the civilian corps that is being mobil-
ized to supplement the labor force that is so vital to Israel's security. It - is heartening to know that tens of thousands
are enrolling in this volunteer army of Israel's friends who will be laboring on Israel's farms and in the country's fac-
tories.
Meanwhile those who have not yet contributed to the Israel Emergency Fund owe a duty to themselves and to
their kinsmen to come forth with their gifts, and it is to be hoped that Detroit will be emulated on a community-wide
basis with contributions from available endowment funds.
While giving this aid, our people have cause to be heartened by many humane factors and by evidence of inter-faith
cooperation. There are excellent chances of an Israel-Vatican accord on the Jerusalem Holy Places. That should end the
unfortunate confusion which has caused even the godless suddenly to capitalize on an issue that was truly tragic when
Jerusalem was under Turkish, then British and finally Jordanian rule, and which now is being resolved wholesomely by
Israel.
There is added satisfaction in the knowledge that prisoners of war are treated like human beings in Israel, that
refugees are cared for, that the problem of the homeless can and most probably will be solved—provided Israel is au-
thorized to act in their behalf.
There are sad developments resulting from the short June 1967 war. There can be good results if power politics
and selfish motives will be abandoned. The activities of American Jewry, as exemplified by the response of our own com-
munity to the Israel Emergency Fund, are efforts in the direction of sanity and decency. Let us hope the humanitarian
efforts also will lead to peace in which the contending nations and not the outsiders will have their say.
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Go to Shul, Barb: A Salute to FP Action Line
One of the very sensational and fascinating developments in
modern journalism is the problem-solving Action Line that has given
much status to the Detroit Free Press.
In a recent issue, the FP Action Line carried the following
inquiry and the FP reply:
You may think it's too early to worry about football, but
this is important. The biggest college game of the year-
Michigan-Michigan State on Oct. 14—falls on the same day this
year as Yom Kipur, the most solemn day in the Jewish religion.
Jewish students won't be able to attend. Could Action Line
push through a date change?—Barb S., Ann Arbor.
With all 101,000 seats sold since June 23, Michigan won't even
consider a switch. That means at least 2,500 Jewish undergrads at
U-11I and 1.500 at State will spend the day in prayer, contemplation
and fasting. The game itself won't be affected by the conflict: Neither
team has Jewish players on the roster. Only consolation is that you
won't miss the post-game parties. After the blast the ram's horn
at sundown, you can enjoy yourself.
It's another way of saying to the inquirer: go to shul !
So. we concur and say to Barb: pray ! It's good for the soul and
it may help your favorite team !
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S. L. A. Marshall's Amazement
Brig. Gen. S. L. A. Marshall has returned from Israel filled with
admiration for the heroic people who established their right to retain
the liberties they won in two previous wars against the same war-
threatening neighbors.
He has found the warriors of 1967 superior even to the courageous
fighters of 1956.
The important aspect of General SLAM's report has to do with
the manner in which the "political takeover" in Old Jerusalem was
completed. He pointed out that "it was one of the most amazing sights
I have ever seen," that instead of witnessing hostility among the Arabs
who suddenly confronted Israelis "it was a happy holiday: total free-
dom of movement by everyone—Arabs and Jews, children and adults,
the military and police from each side."
That's what's happening: Israel is giving Arabs freedom of
movement after they had been hemmed in for 19 years as refugees
in camps and were prevented even from earning their own livelihoods
because they had to be kept as pawns in a battle against Israel. The
refugees in Gaza were even denied Egyptian citizenship although they
lived under Egyptian rule and were threatened by Egyptian whips.
Now they'll all have freedom. Who said the refugee problem can't be
solved? Let Israel do it.
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The Arab Refugees' Real Enemies: The Arabs Themselves
There is no denying the tragedy of the Arab refugees—no matter
how their numbers are inflated and how their ration lists have been
padded. One of the major responsibilities is to resettle them, to
provide them with natural abodes, either in Arab countries like Iraq,
that are underpopulated or by establishing the proposed Arab state
for them under Israeli or some other means of democratic government.
They must be put to work. Their status as pariahs must end—and that
status has been created for them not by Israel but by the Arabs who
used them as means of attacking Israel.
The refugees' real enemies are the Arabs themselves and the
sanctimonious Christians who have uttered a lot of lip service and
have added to the confusion by misleading people regarding the
entire refugee issue.
They have started refugee relief funds and have not gotten any-
where. They are sponsoring rallies and are fomenting hatred but are
refusing to talk peace.
The Syrian ambassador to the U. S., Dr. George Tomeh, was
announced as the principal speaker in the Los Angeles St. Nicholas
Orthodox Church on July 4. The large newspaper advertisement
appealed for funds under the heading "No home in their homeland ..."
with the additional legends about "The original converts of Jesus
and his disciples ... Not the Holy Family fleeing the terror of Herod,
but some Christian Arab refugees who need your help ...Almost
2,000,000 Arab refugees need food, clothing and shelter ..." etc., etc.
Now it is 2,000,000 Christian Arab refugees! How they can pad
the figures! And they are the martyrs who have no food, clothing or
2—Friday, July 21, 1967
THE DETROIT JEWISH NW
shelter—and this is being uttered by Arab potentates and their misled
American friends who failed to aid the refugees until now, having
refused during the past 19 years to add a single dime to the refugee
funds of the United Nations, more than 70 per cent of which came
from American tax dollars !
The charge outrageously made in that advertisement that
"napalm burned men, women and children" is not substantiated
in any report from the front. It is an indication of the attempt
to use the tie to malign a nation and their kinsmen.
How long can Tomeh and his cohorts fool the American people?
Will there be an end to the false propaganda, or will the victory of the
vanquished be translated also into a new campaign of lies on the
humanitarian front, thereby again harming the cause of the refugees?
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The Sins of a Theologian: Clergyman's Reply to Van Dusen
Reference has been made here to a vile attack on Israel by the
former president of Union Theological Seminary. His letter to the
New York Times was so vitriolic that it could be viewed only as
anti-Semitic.
He was answered properly—and promptly—in a letter to the
N. Y. Times by the Rev. A. Roy Eckardt of Bethlehem, Pa.,a minister
of the Methodist Church, a professor and chairman of the depart-
ment of religion at Lehigh University, and editor of the Journal of
the American Academy of Religion. Dr. Eckardt wrote:
As a fellow clergyman and former student of Henry P. Van
Dusen, it is with a heavy heart that I respond to his letter published
July 7. Dr. Van Dusen confesses to be "aghast at Israel's onslaught,
the most violent, ruthless (and successful) aggression since Hitler's
blitzkrieg across Western Europe in the summer of 1940, aiming not
at victory but at annihilation."
I find it hard to believe that Dr. Van Dusen is really the source
of this unspeakable distortion of the facts. There is no other course
than to speak out in protest, even against a man whom one has hon-
ored for years, when that person stoops to call black white, to label
as "aggressors" the targets of aggression, and to identify as "anni-
hilatlonists" those who barely escaped being annihilated by a foe
pledged to turning them into corpses, and who, after their own vic-
tory, now manifest an almost incredible restraint and readiness to
deal righteously with their would-be slayers.
Dr. Van Dusen's parallel of Nazis with Israelis earns the same
reaction that Abba Eban gave in the UN Assembly to an identical
attempt by the Russians: "The USSR has formulated an obscene
comparison between the Israel defense forces and the Hitlerite
hordes which overran Europe in the Second World War. . To
associate the name of Israel with the accursed tyrant who engulfed
the Jewish people in a tidal wave of slaughter is to violate every
canon of elementary taste and fundamental truth."
In fact, Dr. Van Dusen's sin is much the greater, because the
moral standards with which the Russians associate themselves make
no pretense at being Christian.
The Van Dusen charge also bears close affinity to action by
the President of an Arab nation who, having repeatedly incited Arab
armies to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth," said after the war
that 'Israel neo-colonialism is based in its essence on the total
extermination of the Arab people."
The pathological collective unconscious of Christendom, nur-
tured by centuries of the churches' "teaching of contempt" (Jules
Isaac) for Jews, has at last risen to the surface. The Jews are the
enemy; the more they appear to be helpless victims, the more they
in actuality conspire as the devil's own agents of destruction.
Dr. Van Dusen asserts, revealingly, that he is "risking alienation
from honored and beloved Jewish friends and associates." He may
be assured that Jews are by now quite used to being denounced, and
even betrayed, by Gentiles. But the entire Christian community
must stand appalled at this unredeemed act of calumny by one of
its erstwhile leaders.
In general, perhaps the only eventuality that would mutually
satisfy Communist, Arab and Christian detractors of Jews for the
latter's "aggression" would be for Jews to consent to lie down and
be slaughtered. At least this would fulfill one side of the traditional
yearning of Christendom, as described (and opposed) by J. Coert
Rylaarsdam: "The only 'good Jew' is a dead Jew or a Christian."
As long as there are men like the Rev. Dr. Eckardt who does not
hesitate to squeak up in the interest of truth, just causes are far from
lost. There has been entirely too much silence on many issues, espe-
cially the one involving Jerusalem. In his speech at the United Nations
By Philip
Slomovitz
General Assembly on July 13,
when he showed how Israel finally
set up religious freedom in the
Holy City, Abba Eban reproved
the Pakistani delegate whose res-
olution was pending as another
measure of rebuke to Israel.
Eban, after showing how Chris-
tian patriarchs had satisfactorily
conferred with Israel and ap-
proached amity with regard to the
Jerusalem Holy Places, said to
the Pakistani:
"The representative who open-
ed this debate expressed 'dis-
may.' The trouble is that on this
issue, as on so many others, dis-
may is selectively expressed. I
heard no such expression of dis-
may from the representatives
of Pakistan when in 1947 Jor-
danian guns rained death and
slaughter on Jerusalem's streets.
I heard no expression of dismay
when the city was besieged to
the very threshold of starvation
and thirst in 1948. I heard no
expression of dismay when
Jordan, having obtained Jerusa-
lem by military conquest in de-
fiance of a specific resolution
of the Security Council asking
Jordanian forces not to enter
Jerusalem at all, entered Jerusa-
lem and later, in 1950, annexed
it unilaterally after the signa-
ture of the Israel-Jordan Armis-
tice Agreement.
"I heard no such dismay ex-
pressed when Jordan refused
to acknowledge any special in-
ternational interest in the Holy
Places, when Jordan was criti-
cized by the president of the
Trusteeship Council for refusing
to make any proposals involving
an international interest in the
Holy Places. I heard not one
expression of dismay across the
entire human scene when Jordan
destroyed ancient synagogues in
the Old City in an orgy of hate.
"No United Nations organ ex-
pressed any dismay when Jor-
dan, for twenty years, refused
any access to the oldest and most
revered of all Holy Places: the
Western Wall. Nor was there
any expression of dismay when
tombstones on the Mount of
Olives were uprooted to build
walls in secular buildings—a
sight which I saw with my own
eyes but a few days ago. For I
have seen with my own eyes—
and perhaps this distinguishes
me from my other colleagues
here—evidences of such destruc-
tion and sacrilege which should
strike horror into every humane
heart.
"Similarly, not enough dismay
was expressed when, on June 5,
notwithstanding Israel's earnest
efforts to keep Jerusalem out of
the range of hostilities, Jordan
forces bombarded Jerusalem,
with dozens of men and women
and children killed and hun-
dreds wounded; or on June 6,
when the Church of the Dormi-
tion was bombarded.
"In short, the past two de-
cades have been dark decades
in Jerusalem's history. For 20
years there have been hostility,
separation, sacrilege, desecra-
tion and, in relation to the Holy
Places, a discrimination against
the Jewish faith."
These words needed to be utter-
ed and it is fortunate that a mas-
ter debater took care of a hate-
monger as well as Eban did.
And it is equally fortunate that
a good Christian, Dr. Eckardt, was
sufficiently incensed to challenge
an unjust attack by a fellow-theo-
logian. We are very grateful for
his firm assertions.
• • •
'Face to Face' Platform'
An easily-won war is not making
matters easy for Israel in the quest
for peace. Now the newspapers are
loaded with anti-Israel articles. In
the process of striving for peace,
there is only one platform: FACE
TO FACE. When Arabs meet with
Jews at a peace counter, there'll
be permanent peace.