THE JEWISH NEWS Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with' issue of July 20, 195I • Member American Association of English—Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association, National Editorial woclation. Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17100 West Seven Mlle Road, Detroit, Mich. 48235 r. 8-9364. Subscription S6 a year. Foreign S7. Second Class Postage Paid at Detroit, Michigan PHILIP SLOMOVITZ Editor and Publisher CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ SIDNEY SHMARAK Advertising Manager Business Manager CHARLOTTE DUBIN City Editor Sabbath Scriptural Selections This Sabbath, the fifteenth day of Heshvan, 5728, the following scriptural selections in our synagogues: Pentateuchal portion, Gen. 18:1.22:24. Prophetical portion, II Kings 4:1-37. will be read Candle lighting, Friday, Nov. 17, 4:50 p.m. VOL. LIT. No. 9 Page Four November 17, 1967 Expose of Falsehood vis-a-vis Refugees Several years ago, the distinguished cor- respondent Martha Gellhorn exposed many of the contentions that Israel was unfair to the Arab refugees. She visited the refugee camps and revealed the frauds that were perpetrated, the fact that the lists were pad- ded and the ration cards of refugees long dead were used to acquire funds and food provisions of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Mrs. Gellhorn returned to the Middle East to restudy the refugee problem and to probe into the charges that Israelis had killed civil- ians and that there were atrocities. She re- turned with these facts: Before this recent conflict, an estimated 1,500,- 000 civilians lived in West Jordan, the Gaza Strip, Syrian hill villages within the Syrian Mdginot Line and the adjacent Syrian garrison town of Kuneitra, and two Egyptian towns on the edge of the Sinai desert. Those were the Arab civilian war zones. Some 410,000 Israeli citizens also lived in war zones: on their side of Jerusalem, under sweeping Jordanian artillery fire for 52 hours; on populous Israeli farm land along the entire Syrian frontier, shelled by Syrian artillery for four days; in the narrow waist of Israel from Tel Aviv to Natanya, hit by- sporadic Jordanian artillery fire for two days. Nearly two million civilians were therefore at risk. I submit that two hundred civilians, Arab and Israeli, everywhere, throughout the war, is the highest conceivable number of noncombatants killed. A 19-year-old Israeli soldier, hitchhiking back to his post in West Jordan, explained this war per- fectly: "The generals say and every soldier under- stands we are fighting armies not peoples." It was a war between armies, mercifully remote from the people. These are facts well worth making note of. There have been, there are and undoubt- edly there will be a continuous flow of false and misleading reports about populations and atrocities. Unless the truth is preserved there will be trouble not only in the Middle East but on the international arena. In her articles, which were published in the Manchester Guardian, Mrs. Gellhorn stated, exposing the spreading rumors of atrocities by Jews: the best part of a month I have F OR been listening to Palestinian Arabs in West Jordan and the Gaza Strip. "Bethlehem was bombed all day!" one cries. But there is Bethlehem, intact and rosy in the afternoon light. "The Jews came to every house in Nablus, shooting. Our youths defended their homes. - Two hundred were killed, women, children, boys, at least 200." And there are the houses, solid, unmarked, of cut stone; and on a later visit, calmer counsel reduced the number of civilian deaths to 19: still incredible. In a Gaza Strip refugee camp, a very fat, pleasant-faced old man, surrounded by his buxom wife and eight stout, healthy offspring, announced with terror, "The Jews shoot every man, woman and child they see in the street." He had witnessed this crime? No. Then he must have heard the shots? No. The camp was an oasis of peace. The distinguished foreign correspondent further indicated that Jordan had exaggerated early claims by charging that 25,000 civilians had been killed. She pointed out that there is a measure of injustice in UN officials' deal- ings with the issue and, indicating that the "20 refugee camps are happily intact, un- touched by war, she declared: "Israeli co- operation with UNRWA was immediate and obliging. One does not feel that the cordial- ity is reciprocated. Since I was in the Gaza Strip, the UNRWA high command there has changed and no doubt improved. In West Jordan, it seems to. me UNRWA is making heavy weather of the Arab defeat, without justification." Of added interest in the description given by Mrs. Gellhorn of the refugee camps. Her description reads: Imagination leaps from the term "refugee camp" to the picture of a little Belsen, hordes of hungry, idle people penned in by barbed wire. The camps are nothing like that. They are simply poor Arab villages or small towns, all different. If there is enough land for the refugees to plant trees and grow grape arbors and flowers, they look livable and cheerful; if cramped for space, they look like rural slums. But the residents have one great advantage; UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) runs a welfare state for its charges, the Palestinian camp refugees. Native Arab poor enjoy no such special care. Mrs. Gellhoni does not stop here. She shows how UNRWA has served as a tool for Arab propagandists and she makes these revelations: UNRWA has always been treated like a sacred cow. No one has ever made a careful neutral study of the organization, toting up its successes and failures and examining its methods, its finan- ces and its political fallout. (I expect to be accused of blasphemy as I write.) UNRWA is a bureau- cracy composed of 11,419 Palestinian refugees and 118 Americans and West Europeans who are un- derstandably and necessarily devoted to Arabs, converts to a cause. Of course this bureaucracy, itself preponderantly Arab, would have welcomed an Arab victory and is far from joyful over the reverse. For 2,300,000 Israeli Jews, 1,300,000 hate-in- doctrinated Arabs (taught hate steadily in UNRWA schools as well) make a pretty big Trojan horse. Clearly Israel was not going to commit suicide. If UNRWA could not devise, if the Arab govern- ments would not agree to any program except repatriation, UNRWA had to accept tacitly the official Arab alternative: war to recover the Pales- tine homeland. Was UNRWA totally opposed to that unique solution for a refugee problem? UNRWA's reports and handsome publicity bro- chures are the basis for soliciting governmental and private contributions to UNRWA. they paint a heart-rending picture. As a side effect, UNRWA thus confirms Arab propaganda. The refugees must be kept desperate, in fact or on paper, or the Palestine refugee problem disappears. Without the Palestine refugee problem, there is no proper Arab excuse for war with Israel, since Israel im- pinges on no vital Arab interest. Quest for Amity in Sandmel's 'We Jews and You Christians' Seeking an answer to the question put to him by Christians, "What is the attitude of you Jews to us?" conceding that neither he "nor any other Jew can consider himself the official spokesman for all Jews," Dr. Samuel Sandmel, professor of Bible and Hellenistic literature at Hebrew Union College, has compiled an interesting set of views in a new book, "We Jews and You Christians," which has been published by J. B. Lippincott Co. In it he declares: "I shall do the best I can to reflect us Jews, all of us, and also to abstain from too great an intrusion of my own dispositions and biases. I shall try to report on what Jewish attitudes are, and not just what I would personally want them to be. I will try to do justice to Jewish views which I know are different from my own." It is on this basis that Prof. Sandmel proceeds to touch upon encounters, to explain Jewish approaches to many issues, including the ecumenical, to analyze the various factors affecting interfaith relations. He explains the difference between Christian and Gentile, pointing out that the latter means any one who is not a Jew, and he comments interestingly on "the parting of he ways," on the Chrisian heritage rooted in Judaism and on the manner in which Christians treated Jews. Here he points to the medieval "blood accusa- tion," to the "Jew badges," to the pogroms. But he also makes note of the opposition to persecutions among Christians and their repudia- tion of religious bigotry and their recent declarations about Jews. The fashioning of attitudes and the strains and tensions, as compiled by Prof. Sandmel in his outline of historic events, in- cludes references to the Vatican Council declarations, to the issues that developed from the Middle East situation, and he expresses the view that "much of the relationship between you Christians and us Jews is sociological rather than theological." He proceeds with this comment: "You find some of us not only devoid of religious knowledge, but even of a religious interest, at least in the sense in which you have a Christian religious inter- est; you seem to want to discuss topics such as redemption and salvation and messianism, and we seem to want to discuss economic and social problems. The reason Is not that we Jews lack religion, or are exempt from religious problems, but that the concerns which are most immediate and pressing to us deal with the mundane matters of our acceptability or even our safety. Moreover, we differ from each other not only in theology, but in our respective approaches to our different religions." These differences, while there is similarity in ethics; the misunder- standings; the assumption by each that "one of us is totally right and the other totally wrong" are among the points reviewed and discussed at length, and the author indicates that there are new chapters in interfaith relations, that Christians and Jews share in a common world. Yet, "there are many people who have little or no thirst to learn, and are bereft of any desire to unlearn and relearn . . . " He states: "I know many Christians, and no two of them are identical; I know many Jews, and no two of them are identical. A heightened human warmth, and sympathy, and the willingness to inquire about each other could be gain enough." Thereupon he touches upon the Jewish attitude and declares: TEAR AFTER year, UNRWA states that 40 to 50 per cent of the refugees are destitute or near destitute ("without resources" in my dictionary); 30 to 40 per cent are partially self-supporting; and some 10 to 20 per cent are all right. Yet UNRWA does not give money to refugees. Its direct aid is a monthly ration of flour, pulses, sugar, rice, oil amounting to 1,500 unbalanced calories a day. If the destitute, without resources, had nothing else to live on they would long since be dead, instead of having a higher birth rate than other Arab peasants, and healthier children. Over half the refugees live outside the camps, in private dwellings; they must be more than par- tially self-supporting to pay for rent, clothing and food (aside from UNRWA rations). Someone in each family has to work for money, and they do, "I have no great interest in raking up past grievances and in and their work has benefited the "host" countries. perpetuating them, and I know only one outcome to vindictiveness Poverty is endemic in the Middle East (while the you Christians need to confront each other in the light of today, Arab governments waste vast wealth on arms); an not carry over the misfortunes of the past." Palestinian refugees, like non-refugees, have to On the question of the future and the Jewish choice, Dr. Sandmel combat that general affliction and the special restraints put on them by Arab politics. But emphasizes that "we Jews have no intention of dissolving our Judaism," that "to the contrary, we are committed to perpetuating it and to UNRWA's picture of them does not stand up to common sense or the refuees themselves in the deepening it." He concludes with "A Proposed Declaration: 'The Syna- gogue holds that its message must spread not by power or by might, flesh. Mrs. Gellhorn shows quite realistically but only by the Spirit of God and in the love of mankind. The Syna- that the refugees now can secure a square gogue and the Christian People," in which he asserts that "the Syna- gogue is aware that the Christian assemblies, lamenting disavow- deal if Israel will be given a chance to solve ing the Christian persecution of the Jews, have spoken in and recent times the tragic problem. If the world powers will in the same vein. The synagogue welcomes these pioneer utterances." cooperate instead of being the willful wit- He concludes with a hope: nesses to what is tantamount to a scandal, "The Synagogue envisages the unity of mankind in a lofty and if there will be a human approach based spiritual bond, enabling men both to preserve the Institutions on total cooperation, the most serious issue in which they hold sacred and to transcend them." the Middle East will be solved quickly. Mrs. The proposed declaration to the Christians which contains this Gellhorn has contributed efficiently towards summarized hope, the analyses of Christian and Jewish attitudes, the a better understanding of the refugee prob- search for amicable relations—all combine to make the new Sandmel work a serious study of interest to Christians and Jews alike. - lem.