2 Friday, August 22, 1975

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Purely

Commentary

By Ph ilip

Slomovitz

The Testimony and the Testifier,
Villification and Plea for Justice

If there were an international court of justice to which
the Jewish people could apply for justice in its rightful
claim for sovereignty and recognition of the right to live
peacefully in a traditionally inherited territory, the State
Department of the United States would be called upon to
offer testimony during the geographical argumentation.
The territorial evidence would then be based on the
map which was prepared only last month to illustrate the
United States Information Agency's 42nd Semi-annual
Report to the Congress, Jan. 1-June 30, 1974.
Note the area selected in the accompanying map on the
right to indicate the area under consideration which in-
cludes Israel.
The name is there, a bullet specifies the location, but a
search must be made to ascertain the reality of the exist-
ence of one of the tiniest of states in the world.
Yet that bit of land is begrudged the Jewish people.
Within the massive area indicated geographically in the ac-
companying map are located the massive nations, the peo-
ples with new wealth dominating the entire world. It is lit-
tle Israel's misfortune to be virtually trapped in the great
terrain of wealth and vast area domains. Who is there to
defend the small nation's right to live, and to be secure?
Up to this time, the United States has remained the
small nation's chief defender. But the U. S. responsibility is
greater than has been acknowledged. Alone among the na-
tions of the world to avow unstinted friendship for Israel,
the U. S. must appear before the tribunals of the world's
international community to defend the dignity of the mere
speck of the map it has issued for study by the U. S. Con-
gress. Will it be done?
The question is justified on the basis of new evidence
that there may be tongue-in-cheek of many a legislator,
that the heads of this government, while avowing comrade-
ship for Israel are so anxious for hypocritical even-handed-
ness that there is a new business motivation inherent in the
massive supplies of arms for Israel's enemies, an arming
with deadly military hardware that could prove so devastat-
ing that Israel's security could be undermined by the very
nation that claims to be Israel's only friend in the world's
democratic community.
The map shown here is the elementary testimony to a
small nation's right to live and to survive. The accumulating
evidence of danger to such a human demand is that the
small nation may be forced into increasing isolation from
human considerations; that good people like the Americans
may be unaware that -their very government, through the
big business deals related to oil and the arms industry, may
inadvertently become a tool in the hands of Israel's would-
he destroyers.
Therefore the warning against complacency, the ad-
monition to stop placing trust in princes and the urgency
for people to rise up with the demand for alertness and to
beware lest the dangers stemming from man's inhumanity
to man serve as a destroyer of human rights in a commu-
nity that keeps reasserting its determination to live and to
flourish. The will defies the inhumanities. That which dig-
nifies life for and by the smallest of nations must retain the
respect that will surely, in the course of - time, rebound to
the benefit of all mankind.

Why the Emphasis?

Why the repetition, the emphasis on the minuteness of
Israel in relation to the immensity of enemy power?
Because of the greed of the antagonists whose aim is to
strangle Israel.
One basic, human factor predominates in the Middle
East tragedy. There are 20 Arab states, collectively gigan-
tic, wealthy, ruling over vast areas of land. In their midst is
a small, a very small nation, a sovereign state determined
to survive against all the odds multiplied in the destructive
programs of her neighbors. The right of a minute national
entity to live, the justification of its aims to create high
standards for its people — benefits which must rebound to
the advantage of all the neighbors — must not be denied.
That's the point, and to this end the existing truths
must be re-emphasized until such time as the greed disap-
pears and the nations of the world concede that they can
not, must not, stand in the way of justice for Jewry and for
Israel.