Lebanon First
Arab Country
to Get Rid of
the Commandos
LONDON (JTA)—A high Lebanese official confirmed in Beirut that Arab commandos were withdrawing from Lebanese soil.
According to various estimates, the commandos number 1,500-3,000, mostly members of the Saiqah, a guerrilla group sponsored by
the Syrian Baathist Party, and of El Fatah, the largest Palestinian guerrilla organization.
Withdrawal of the commandos, whose presence and activities on Lebanese soil led to the bloody rioting and the downfall of
Premier Rashid Karami's government in Beirut on April 25, was first reported last week by Pierre Gemayel, a leader of the right-
wing Phalangist Party. He said the withdrawal began about 18 days ago and was continuing. About half the commandos were said
to have left so far. According to Gemayal, El Fatah leaders were instrumental in getting the Saiqah guerrillas to withdraw.
The Lebanese government crisis was precipitated tby popular support of the guerrillas and government attempts to curtail their
raids on Israel from Lebanese territory. Lebanese authorities feared reprisal raids by Israel and possible Israeli occupation of south-
ern Lebanon if the raids did not cease. Lebanese students, Palestinian refugees and others had demanded a free hand for the
commandos who were concentrated on the slopes of Mount Hermon, just north of the Israel border. Observers here said the departure
of all the commandos would constitute a diplomatic victory for Lebanon, which still has been unable to form a new government.
JEWISH NE
Characteristics
of Peoples
Affected by
DE T R O IT
Assimilation
A Weekly Review I
Commentary
Page 2
Confrontation
and Reality
on the Campus
Israel Tourism
Undeterred
by Terrorism
MICHIGAN
of Jewish Events
Michigan's Only English-Jewish Newspaper — Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle
VOLUME LV — No. 15
27
17100
W. 7 Mile Rd., Detroit 48235—VE 8-9364—June 27, 1969
Editorials
Page 4
$7.00 Per Year; This Issue 20c
rithodox Council to Maintain
Draft of Chaplains; Rejects
Conservative, Reform Ruling
Bomb at Western Wall, Ilaifa
Oil Refinery Damage, Growing
Casualties Mark M.E. Conflict
Retaliation for attacks on Israeli villages and for bomb-
ing of the Haifa oil refineries and an area close to the West-
ern (Wailing) Wall, as well as increased fighting at the Suez
Which accounted for numerous casualties marked a week of
increased fighting on Israel's borders. Warnings have been
issued to King Hussein that Israel will retaliate unless there
is an end to attack on civilians.
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel's cabinet denounced last Friday's
bombing of a street leading to the Western Wall in Old Jerusalem as
security officials planned measures to prevent similar incidents in
the future. Six persons, including an Arab man and an Arab child,
were injured when three 10-pound bombs exploded in rapid succes-
sion in the 16-foot-wide Share el Wad (Street of the Valley). The
bombs detonated at 7:15 p.m. local time. Only an hour earlier, the
street was thronged with Orthodox Jews making their way to the
wall for evening prayers.
The cabinet described the bombing as "a dastardly act carried
Out by saboteurs against women and children who come in the thou-
sands to pray on the Sabbath at the holiest place to the Jewish
nation." Gen. Moshe Dayan, the defense minister, accompanied by
senior military officials visited the area to plan security measures.
(Continued on Page 16)
FALLSBURG, N.Y. (JTA)—The leading Orthodox rabbinical organization in Amer-
ica rejected Tuesday selective conscientious objection to the military chaplaincy and voted
to maintain the draft of military chaplains in contrast to the Reform and Conservative
movements in Judaism which have eliminated it.
The resolution as introduced by Rabbi Zev Segal of Newark, president of the Rab-
binical Council of America, and passed inanimously by the organization at its 33rd annual
convention here, also called on Orthodox rabbinical seminaries to maintain the draft
of newly ordained rabbis, or to reinstitute it if it has been eliminated.
The Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University, at which
most of the 1,000 members of the Rabbinical Council were ordained, has dropped the
draft.
Rabbi Segal said that it was a "sacred and unquestionably moral obligation to serve
the religious needs of Jews in the armed services," and he declared that those who refuse
to serve would not be admitted into membership in the rabbinical organizaton. This pro-
hibition would make it difficult for such rabbis to obtain pulpits, he said.
(At the annual convention in Houston, Tex., last week, the Reform Central Confer-
ence of American Rabbis voted, 123-108, to end its participation in the American rab-
binate's self-imposed draft for military chaplains. Detailed story on Page 37).
"Whether rabbis approve or disapprove of our country's military involvement in
Vietnam bears no relation to the fact that young Jews require the service of their clergy-
men," Rabbi Segal's resolution declared. "Men who are being drafted into the military
services are not asked whether they are for or against the war in Vietnam and they are
entitled to spiritual guidance and assistance during their service.
"The need for chaplains to lead religious services," teach the principles of their
faith, provide pastoral counseling, perform religious rites and represent the small minor-
ity of Jews in the military does not diminish because the United States is right or wrong
in being in Vietnam, the measure stated.
•
_
in Sponsoring;
Sponsorii
Nixon Said to Be Hoax
Visit of Widow, Daughter of Egyptian Pilot
TEL AVIV (JTA)—Official sources here and well-informed Israelis in Washington claimed
Tuesday that Egyptian authorities apparently perpetrated a hoax on President Richard M. Nixon,
who entertained the widow and daughter of a deceased Egyptian pilot in the White House Mon-
day. The sources said that the late Capt. Hadayat SCusuf Hilmi, who piloted a plane that carried
Mr. Nixon during his 1963 visit to Egypt. died in a crash in September 1967 and not as claimed
by Cairo in the June 1967 Six-Day War. They said the Egyptian government was trying to exploit
the visit of Mrs. Hilmi and her 14-year-old daughter, Nagla, to Washington for propaganda purposes.
The invitation to the Hilmis was extended in response to a letter Nagla wrote to President
Nixon reminding him that in 1963 he had invited her father to visit Washington. Sources here
said Egyptian government circles prompted the girl to write and instructed her to assert that
her father was a victim of the Six-Day War. They said that Capt. Hilmi's accidental death in
the crash of an air transport three months after the war ended was duly noted by the Cairo
newspaper Al Abram in September 1968, the first anniversary of the crash.
(Continued on Page 5)
Rabbi Segal stressed that as long as the armed forces of
this country consist primarily of draftees and not volunteers,
"it is our solemn duty to support the imposition of a similar
draft upon the spiritual leaders whose committed goal is to
serve their flock under all conditions. When and if the U.S.
government decides to substitute a volunteer army for that
based on conscription, a similar option should be granted to
rabbis, allowing them to determine whether or not they wish
to serve in the military."
The Rabbinical Council, Rabbi Segal stressed. maintains
that while "laymen may refuse to participate in military serv-
ice because of the dictates of conscience, the recourse to selec-
tive conscientious objection on the part of rabbis does not
constitute a valid reason not to serve as chaplains."
He also said that "experience of World War II and the
Korean War confirmed the truth that chaplains serve the
needs of their men and not the political-military objectives
of governments."
(Continued on Page 11)
Factors in Medieval Anti-Semitism Invaded French City
_ .
By EDWIN EYTAN
(Copyright 1969, JTA, Inc.)
city—well-fed and prosperous-looking bour-
geois. They dress carefully and speak in
ORLEANS, France—Orleans is less than slow, ponderous tones. Other Frenchmen
two hours away from Paris by road. It is a say that "there is nothing as reasonable and
bright, modern, even smiling city, with calculated as an Orleanese" and historians
white houses and small flowering squares. claim that Joan d'Arc, when she came to
The Loire River flows peacefully through deliver their city from the English siege,
ills center and a few miles to its south
begins one of France's most popular tourist
tegions. There 'is Nothing sinister or medi-
eval about the city apart from its huge
Gothic cathedral from whose top little stone
Carved details stick their tongues out at
had to fight the battle alone—the Orleanese
watched as spectators from the top of their
walls.
And yet, it was within this most unlikely
setting that a strange story started to
spread some two weeks ago—Jewish store-
keepers were drugging and kidnaping wom-
passing humanity.
• . The Orleanese are a projection of their en customers to sell them into white slavery.
At the corner of the Rue de Bourgogne
and la Rue du Charriot, passers-by stopped
and watched. At the busy corner of the
Rue de La Republique and La Place de la
Gare, the crowd was milling about. Behind
the cathedral, in small white stone houses
where the windows are always covered with
sorry situation.
Another rumor pretended to explain
the mechanics of the operation. The
shops were connected with each other by
means of a secret network of under-
ground tunnels, though many were as far
as two miles apart. Another tunnel con-
nected them to the river, where an eye-
witness had reportedly seen "a mysteri-
ous ship" waiting for its human cargo.
How did this strange, absurd story start,
chintz curtains, elderly women were whis-
pering into one ear and then another.
Every one had a "new detail." One
woman told of bow a husband had burst
into one of the shops and found his wife and what made it spread? This is what I
gagged and bound in the basement, wait- tried to find out during my two-day stay in
ing to be sent abroad. Together with her Orleans.
(Continued on Page 9)
were two other women in that same