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VOLUME LV
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A Weekly Review
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The Big Four and
the UN . . . Israel
and ME Security
ISAIG1—ilG/26.
of Jewish Events
Michigan's Only English-Jewish Newspaper — Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle
No. 4
•ole!ii• 27
17100 W.
7 Mile Rd., Detroit 48235—VE 8-9364—April 11, 1969
Editorials
Page 4
$7.00 Per Year; This Issue 20c
Big 4 'Friendly Intervention'
Sought by Hussein; El Fatah
Attacks Mat With Rockets
A three-day visit with President Nixon by Jordan's King Hussein, the
Second session of Big Four talks on the Middle East and an El Fatah rocket
assault on Israel's southernmost port of Eilat were seen this week as close-
ly related news items.
Hussein voiced his hopes for Mid East peace Tuesday, after warn-
ing that the Mid East situation was "explosive" and that Big Power inter-
vention may be "inevitable."
Israeli observers suggested that perhaps the king tolerated—or even
authorized—Tuesday's rocket assault to emphasize his warning.
The Israeli air force answered the attack, in which 14 Israelis
were hurt, with a rocket bombardment on neighboring Aqaba, Jordan's
only outlet to the Red Sea.
As the two chiefs of state were talking, the second session of the Big
Four talks was under way at the UN mission of Yakov Malik, the Soviet
Union's ambassador to the United Nations.
The third session will be held Monday with Britain's Lord Caradon as
host. Other participants are Charles Yost of the U.S. and Armand Berard
Of France, at whose residence the first session was held last week.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said that the Arab attack on
Eilat and a.five-hour artillery duel Tuesday along the Suez Canal were
timed to influence the Big Four talks.
He said that the Arabs were trying to convince the Big Powers
that. the Mid East was on the brink of a new war. Hussein was wel-
coming the Big Four's "friendly intervention."
Greeting King Hussein, Mr. Nixon said he hoped that their talks
might open "new avenues that could lead to permanent peace in that trou-
bled part of the world, the Middle East."
The Hashemite monarch said, "Within the very near future, we can
either move toward our objective — a just and honorable peace — or we
might lose the opportunity to establish peace. A situation as explosive as it
is holds many dangers, not only those involved in the area but to the
world as a whole."
Full state honors were accorded King Hussein- on the White House's
South lawn, including a 21-gun salute.
Mr. Nixon told the king that the "explosive situation" between
Israel and the Arab states required a solution that must come from
"leadership from within." Such leadership, he said, involved the quali-
ties of courage, wisdom and moderation."
"We in this country," Mr. Nixon declared, "have seen in you those
qualities."
In his response Hussein recalled the Eisenhower administration and
the occasion when he first met Mr. Nixon, in 1959 when the latter served
as vice president.
"I am proud of the fact that you are my friend," the king told the
President. Mr. Nixon beamed.
The king voiced hope that Arab-American relations would now "grow
stronger than they ever were."
After repeating his desire for a "just and durable peace," King
Hussein thanked the President for the splendid welcome accorded him.
Members of the king's official entourage told the press in informal
comments on the latest incident, rising from the rocket attack on Eilat, that
the Jordanian government could not assure the security of Israelis from
guerrilla attack.
They said that the attack may have been launched by El Fatah com-
mandos whose activity is "encouraged" by continued Israeli occupation of
Arab territory. In the view of the king's party, the bombing of civilians in
Aqaba in retaliation for a guerrilla action for which the Jordanian govern-
ment and public are "not accountable" was "deplorable." They said it
dramatized the "urgent need" for the United States and other big powers
to press Israel to withdraw to end the "festering situation."
A 4-month-old baby was among the 14 injure& at Eilat by the
volley of Katyusha rockets, and a number of buildings and cars were
damaged, Israel said. In Amman, a Jordanian military spokesman
claimed that two Israeli jets killed two civilians and injured nine in the
raid, in addition to damaging buildings in Aqaba.
An Israeli military spokesman said that four Israeli troops were
wounded, two seriously, in a five-hour artillery duel along 70 miles of the
Suez Canal, between Kantara on the north and the Bitter Lakes, south of
Ismailia. The fighting, the second Egyptian-Israeli outbreak in recent days,
subsided after United Nations observers arranged three cease fires. Both
sides blamed the other for initiating the exchange.
The spokesman said that an Egyptian tank was burned at Suez City,
and Egyptian antitank weapons were hit in the Bitter Lakes and Ismailia
area. Egyptian bunkers were also said • to have been burning.
Touring Eilat, Israel's critically important Red Sea port, Chief of Staff
Gen. Haim Bar-Lev warned that Aqaba, which is three miles away from
Eilat on the northern tip of the Gulf of Eilat, was more vulnerable than
Eilat.
Even if the Arab rocket attack was carried out by irregulars, he
said, the Jordanian army and authorities were responsible for prevent-
ing such assaults. Several months ago, an Arab attack near Aqaba led
King Hussein to crack down on commando activity in the area.
The tacit warnings reflected an awareness that Tuesday's rocket bom-
bardment and the reprisal had violated the unwritten understanding be-
German Military on NPD Ticket
BONN (JTA)—The nomination Sunday of seven West German military officers, and the anticipated
Candidacy of some noncommissioned officers, to run for parliament on the slate of the extreme right-
wing, neo-Nazi National Democratic Party in next September's national elections has embar-
rassed the West German Defense Ministry.
There are also repercussions in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The NPD, headed by a
former Nazi Party member, Adolf von Thadden, has a paid membership of about 27,000 which is said
to include fewer than 1,000 active professional soldiers, but the party is making a strong bid for sup-
port among the military. According to one defense ministry official, the NPD represents an "ugly
problem" because of its attempts to feed on dissatisfaction in the armed services.
Some 50 officers and noncommissioned officers work actively for the NPD. The highest ranking of-
ficer among them is Capt. Ernst Thomsen, a naval aviator who was assistant chief of staff of
NATO's Baltic Approaches Command in Kiel. He announced a week ago that he would be the NPD
candidate in the nearby election district of Schleswig-Eckernforde.
The defense ministry announced that Capt. Thomsen has been withdrawn from his NATO post as
of April 1 and assigned to a desk job at a land base in Bensberg. He was supposed to have remain.
ed with NATO until October. Military sources here said Capt. Thomsen had become an outspoken
Critic of NATO and of the West German military forces since he joined the NPD.
- Other military men who have agreed to become NPD candidates were identified by the news-
Paper Frankfurter Allgemeine last week as an army major, three captains and two sergeants. An
NPD spokesman said last week that Capt. Thomsen joined the party last December and.was asked to
stand for election because, "We believe in an active military policy and that must be made with peo-
ple who are up-to-date like Capt. Thomsen, who knows from his NATO duty what is wrong in the
services."
(The Daily Telegraph said in London Moiblay that the embarrassment caused by military offfars
-
running as NPD candidates might strengthen support in West German government circles for an ap-
peal to the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe to ban the NPD as anti-democratic.)
The Congress of the Teachers' Association of Lower Saxony ruled this week to ban NPD mem-
bers from joining that organization.
- Meanwhile, security officials in Hamburg are investigating reports that a new Nazi group called
the.-Association of German. Natiqual.Socialists was planning to establish itself at a secret meeting.
(Continued on Pages 5, 7, 8)
ADL Unworried About AJCongress
Protest Against Xerox Booklets,
NEW YORK (JTA) — The American Jewish Congress disclosed
that the Xerox Corp. agreed to withdraw 3,000 reprints of an 1895
English edition of "Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes" following its
complaint that two of the verses contained anti-Semitic and anti-
Negro stereotypes.
George Soll, chairman of the AJCongress' commission on law and
social action, made public a letter to him from Xerox's public rela-
tions manager, Thomas D. Anglim, who apologized on behalf of the
company's president, Peter McColough, for publishing the offend-
ing rhymes and promised that "This volume will be withdrawn and
will no longer be available from us."
The same promise was contained in another letter to Soli from
Arnold Zohn, president of the Arno Press, which is the co-publisher
of the Xerox "Legacy Library Facsimile" edition.
One of the verses to which the AJCongress objected began with
the lines, "Jack sold his gold egg/To a rogue of a Jew/Who cheated
him out of/The half of his due." The other began, "Ten little Nigger
boys went out out to dine;/One choked his little self, and then there
were nine." In a letter addressed to McColough, Soll noted that at
the time Mother Goose verses originated, anti-Semitism and racism
were traditional in some quarters but today "it is generally under-
stood . . . that,th rey are destructive. of human values and even of
human lives." ^ _ _ r-
New York Times reporter Henry Raymont said that "Officials
of other Jewish civil rights agencies privately expressed dismay over
the AJC action." He said an official of the Bnai Brith Anti-Defama-
tion League "who asked not to be named, declared: 'We've stopped
worrying about the classics years ago. There are more pressing issues
(Continued on Page 7)