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January 30, 1976 - Image 2

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 1976-01-30

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i 'J.A l Z. tit A".1 f 3.1 ;iti

2 January 30, 1976

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Purely Commentary

Jewish leadership in Crucial Times ... Demand for Cour-
age and Realism While Mobilizing Constituents' Loyalties
... Victims of Iraqi Brutalities Expose Invitational Lie

Iraqi Murderers Seek New Victims

They dare so much, those who would destroy Jewry and Israel! Yet nations who
must be viewed as being in the civilized category are silent and thereby become acces-
sories to intended crimes!
It's not new, the Iraqi shamelessness of inviting Jews who have been exiled and
and disenfranchized to return.
Survivors from the Iraqi terror were prompt to reply and to expose the falsehoods
that were spread in space so easily obtainable in many newspapers at the price obtain-
able from the oil magnates.
The American Sephardi Federation, representing more than a million and a half
refugees from Arab countries, responded to the Iraquis by calling attention to this
photo, the origin of which is explained as follows:
Iraqis watch the bodies of Sabah Haim, (left), and David Hazaquiel, both
Jews, dangle from the scaffold after they were hanged in Baghdad. On Janu-
ary 28, 1969 it was reported in The New York Times that Secretary General
U Thant deplored the hanging of 14 persons in Iraq as an impediment to peace
in the Middle East.

Leadership Crises
On Agenda Is Demand for
Realism and Courage

Adversity often creates panic. Is it pos-
sible that a people steeped in courage, in an
age of many difficulties, should suddenly be-
gin to cringe? Is it imaginable that a people
always on the defensive but never lacking in
dignity and valor when confronted by dan-
gers should suddenly find itself numbed by
an inability to defy terror?
Woi Id Jewry faces many new dangers in
an age in which some of the best friends in
Christendom have suddenly choked up on oil
and are abandoning the Jew in his struggle
for a better world.
Perhaps this is generalizing a bit too
much and may be judged also to be a yield-
ing to a panicked state in Jewish experience.
Nevertheless an admission is demanded to
the realities of current experiences. Two in-
ternational gatherings were convened in Je-
rusalem recently to deal with Jewish issues
and both proved total flops. The leadership
was unable to rise to new heights over
clouded horizons. Eloquence seems never to
be lacking when a leader is primarily a fund-
raiser, and when the men on top emerge as
phantoms on an international battlefield it
is time to think realistically about the fail-
ure in pragmatism.
Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler assumes
a new role on the stage of Jewish leadership
as president of the Conference of Presidents
of Major American Jewish Organizations.
He assumes the important position as a
spokesman for American Jewry with an
admonition that he will not take orders and
will not hesitate to criticize, especially when
and where Israel is involved.
It would be unfair to treat his predeces-
sor, Rabbi Israel Miller, with disrespect.
Rabbi Miller, who is one of the leading candi-
dates for the presidency of Yeshiva Univer-
sity, is an eminent scholar and an advocate
of total libertarianism in the Jewish quest
for just rights. He is eloquent as a speaker
because he is authoritative on the subjects he
tackles. He has been criticized as being too

By Philip
Slomovitz

yielding to Israeli leadership attitudes and to
pressures from U.S. government officials. It
is time to defend him and to make the point
that one man can not set policies for an en-
tire entity if the associates are the yielders.
There is need for a common denominator
that rejects splits, and Jewish ranks could
easily be split without the common ground
which is to be protected by knowledge and
courage, by a fearless approach to the needs
of the hour. If Dr. Miller has faltered on
sbme occasions the cause may be like paint-
ing that has been organized haphazardly.
The entire canvas portraying the Jewish
communal setting may have to be redrawn
because the need is for a total fearlessness,
for a unified determination not to yield to
panic, especially when threats to the endan-
gered Jewish position may come from such
high quarters as the White House, the State
Department, the British Foreign Office and
the diplomats in many other lands. Rabbi
Schindler does not assure immediate success
for the cause over which he now must pre-
side with Quixotic gestures. The urgency is
for the mobilization of the Jewish will for
identification, with the battle for fairness
and for the construction of such a solid com-
munity steeped in knowledge of itself that
its weapons for decency in human relations
will be unbre4kable.
The urgency for realism, for pragmatic
approaches to the communities' needs, be-
comes more pressing because the battle is
not only for justice to the Jew on the interna-
tional front but also for a remodeling of the
very community battling for such fairness.
The obligation to revitalize Jewish life is all
the greater because out of such remobiliza-
tion alone can there be hope for a new cour-
age, a new wisdbm, a new dignity, a new de-
termination never to yield to infamy. In the
creation of such new conditions there must
be a supporting community whose constitu-
ents must feel free to criticize, but who must
be ever ready to give strength to those who
assume leadership over critics as well as sup-
porters. Such is the challenge to the emerg-
ing new leadership: it can expect criticism
and must encourage it, and it has the right
to claim allegiance in time of need. And that
time is here and now.

Questions From Arab School Books: This Is How
Children Are Taught in Schools in Arab Lands

The books listed were printed by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and
Education in Cairo.

The reply to the Iraqis is brief. In an advertisement in the New York Times, the
Sephardi movement declared:
On Dec. 11, 1975 the Iraqi government published an advertisement in this
newspaper inviting the Jews from Iraq to return.
The Jewish refugees from Iraq must refuse this invitation.
They know only too well what it means: Sudden disappearances. Mur-
ders. Hangings. Arbitrary imprisonments. Confiscation of property. Living in
fear and humiliation. And, discrimination in all walks of life.
We, the Jewish refugees from Arab lands whose history in those countries
goes back more than 2,000 years, long before Islam — suggest that the Arab
governments finance the welfare of their own brothers, instead of using them
as political pawns, while they spend huge amounts for hypocritical propa-
ganda, half truths and outright lies.
But what's to be done with the lie that gains respectability because it is backed by
oil money?
How long will European statesmen (sic!) keep choking on oil?
is them'a danger that Americans will fall victims to the lie also because of oil?
Lebanon 5 houldhave been enough of a warning to all decent-minded people. But
cted in an atmosphere of silence, even from the Lebanese Maronites'
what is to be expe
fellow Catholics at the v L'Ican?
Are the stated facts falling on deaf ears?
The truth must be stated and the photo alone should awaken a bit of mankind's

*
conscience.
*
Confirmation of the indictment of Iraq is provided in the inhumanity represented
e photograph reproduced here. If further confirmation were needed it was pro-
Moslem-PLO combine in Lebanon. The Lebanese Christians are the best
- y the
s in a trial of Iraqi savagery. These are the people Israel must - deal with in the
Er international forums!

1. Arabic Grammar, 4th grade (elementary), p. 78:
Exercise 5: Decline the verb: "The Arabs (plan) to destroy the Zionists."
2. Arabic Grammar, 5th grade (elementary).
Question: "Why do we hate Israel? Why do we want to destroy her?"
Answer: "The fatherland must be victorious; Israel must be strangled."
3. Literary Texts for the 1st (preparatory) grade, p. 155:
"You Jews shall never have a homeland,
You never had a homeland;
We will take over Palestine—
And bury you in its soil."
From a poem by Elia Abu Madi.

Reader for the 3rd (preparatory) grade, pp. 34, 90:
299.
"In Palestine lived King David who turned his back on the evil Jews . . . we can never
forget how the Jews tormented Muhammed, the Prophet of Allah, and tortured Jesus,
who preached love and peace."
"My Arab brethren . . . help me throw Israel into the depths of the ocean, to the
remotest deserts."
. 5. "Zionist Imperialism," 9th grade (secondary), p. 249:
"Israel wishes to exist and does all she can to further that aim . . . the defense
burden she bears is overwhelming, because of the enmity of her Arab neighbors. Should
the Israel Army be defeated in battle, all the country will be destroyed . . . Israel hopes to
be the homeland of the Jews, and they have the stubborness of 4,000 years of history
behind them. But Israel shall not live if the Arabs stand fast in their hatred. She shall
wither and decline. Even if all the human race, and the Devil in hell, conspire to aid her,
she shall not exist!"
by Abbas Mahmud al-Akkad.

6. History of the Arab Fatherland in Ancient Times, 1st grade (preparatory), p. 52:
"Pharaoh will always be honored in our memory for destroying the Jews who endan-
gered him."
7. History of the Arab Fatherland and its Culture, 2nd grade (preparatory), p. 102:
"The Hebrews were not true Semites, and their temporary occupation of the Holy
Land disintegrated after the death of King Solomon."
8. History of the Arab Fatherland in Modern Times, for seminars — 5th grade, p. 181:
"While the U.AR strides gloriously forward, Israel screams with fear at her destiny
and fate — her ultimate destruction by the Arabs."

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