THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

2 Friday, July 9, 1976

Purely Commentary

Israel's Courage Emphasizes Sanctity of Life, Rejection of Threats
From the Jungle Emerging from Hooliganism Encouraged by Arab
Enemies . . . Challenge to France and to the USSR

By Philip
Slomovitz

Sanctity of Life: Israel's Courage Preserves and Protects It for All Men

Life is sacred.
Therefore it is necessary to preserve and to protect it and that risks be taken
to give effect to that principle.
The Talmud admonishes that when a single life is taken needlessly it is as if
the entire world were being destroyed. The threatened destruction of hostages
by gangsters was tantamount to an undermining of the basic humanities with-
out which civilization is transformed into a jungle. Israel's courage last Saturday
was a demonstration of a people's determined will that the right to life, liberty
and pursuit of justice shall not be undermined by the savagery that marks the
aim of Israel's enemies to destroy that free nation.
The triumph of the Israeli defenders supports every nation's right to live and
the heroic mission that rescued 110 hostages from the threatened death at the
hands of a brutal gang that operated with the protection of an uncivilized coun-
try also was an admonition to the free world not to yield to terror. It is because
there has been such a yielding that terrorists were able to submit free nations
to fears and to abandonment of courage to deal with terror.
Israel demonstrated on July 3, 1976, that the lives of her citizens are not to
be bargained with, that Israelis will never again submit to tyranny and to panic,
that the "never again" warning to the enemies who seek her destruction also
apply to implied cowardice. To love and to survive is a duty to all Israelis and to
the Jewish kinsmen wherever they may live.
The July 3 demonstration of courage is primarily a challenge to France. It
was a French plane and its piloting team that was hijacked. Will the French
people condone a continuation of their government's animosity to the people of
Israel who plead for a perpetuation of a traditional friendship between the two
nations?
What has happened is a new challenge to the Soviet Union. Will the Kremlin

condone an Idi Amin policy of inhumanism?
The victory of July 3 also is an unending challenge to humanity. Without
rejection of terrorism and adherence to human decencies, the lesson for decency
provided by Israel may fall on deaf ears.

Conspirators in Villainy

Tragically, the villainy of the newest experience in dealing with hijackers
links the world organization (UN) with Uganda. The latter's collaboration with
the hijackers and UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim's angered support of
the terrorists puts an added pall on the world organization which is already
mismanaged.
Waldheim has chosen to brand Israel as being guilty of a "flagrant act of
aggression," while Idi Amin fumes over a "Zionist invasion." The two
"statesmen" are assigning themselves to infamy with their apparent endor
ment of hijacking as a legitimacy. That is how the panic that has engulfed
so-called free nations of the world, whose spokesmen do not dare to speak out
defense of justice and decency, are transforming the organization that was
formed for peacemaking (the UN) into a jungle.
Waldheim's amended statement in no sense exonerates him from his initial
prejudicial attitude and his failures vis-a-vis Israel and the Middle East in the
course of his duties as UN secretary. general.
Perhaps a few of the victims of such a conspiracy of villainy will ask Wald-
heim what he has done for peace in the Middle East, for an end to the bloodbath
in Lebanon, for enaction of decency in the UN. Linked with inhumanities of an
Amin, Waldheim relegates himself to incompetency in his mismanagement of
the UN's obligations.

Now the Lesson of Terrorism for Complacent World

Uganda, ruled by Idi Amin, became the locale for negotiations for the lives of some
200 people, most of them Jews from Israel and France.
The agony of the families of some 80 Israelis compelled Israel to abandon a policy of
non-submission to terror and to deal with criminals in order to avert a mass tragedy.
But the agony was more than Israel's or world Jewry's whose concerns are not iso-
lated or separated from Israel. It was and remains the agony of mankind.
The inhumanity expressed in the beastliness of hijackers casts a pall on mankind. It
reflects the pains that emanate from a loss of faith in the rulers of the world's leading
communities who have failed to act to prevent anything approaching the actions that
culminated in Uganda, the symbol of the uncivilized in nations.
The horror that emanated from the hijacked plane is not an end in itself. It augurs
even more devastating, more dastardly acts. Criminality flourishes, encouraged by fail-
ures to stem such crimes, and the terrorists who are inspired by hatred for Israel and
Jewry may have been given new comfort and new impetus to carry on their beastly aims,
with Israel as the main target and all of humanity the ultimate sufferer.
Terror and hijacking are not limited to Israel as the victims and Arabs as the instiga-
tors of the horrors. They are emulated in other areas and are excuses for "liberation." Had

Zero Population Problem
Keeps Creating Concerns

Concern over the zero population problem is growing in
Jewish ranks to such an extent that many spokesmen for
the various elements in U.S. Jewry are appealing for family
increases.

Last March 12 this column was devoted to a study of
the problem, indicating the "trend in reverse." It challenged
the claim that there are 6,000,000 Jews in this country and
expressed the view that the figure could be much closer to
5,000,000. The reduction in the size of Jewish families, in
this country and in other lands, were indicated as repre-
senting a challenge to Jewry with possible menacing experi-
ences in the future insofar as survivalism is involved. That
column also showed how the size of Jewish families of Is-
rael also is approaching the dangerous zero trend.
The issue was discussed by Curtis Arnson, director of
the Hebrew Union College Library in Jerusalem, in an arti-
cle in the periodical Ammi, published by the World Union
for Progressive Judaism. His article commenced with this
admonition:
Had the Jewish reproduction rate since 1945
matched that of other populations decimated in the
Holocaust, there would be 37 million Jews in the
world today. Indeed, had the world Jewish fertility
rate since 1945 adheared to the perpetuation ratio
of 2.1 births per mother, there would be close to 20
million Jews in the world instead of only 14 mil-
lion. Having survived the Holocaust, are the Jew-
ish people destined to extinction from a lack of en-
ergy from within?
Upon evaluating the case history under discussion,
Arnson, indicts the zero trend by stating:

The flaws in the ZPG scenario are many. For
example, no attention is paid to the role of technol-
ogy in the world; it is assumed that the population
of the year 2000 will be linked to the technology of
the 1960s.

the international community reacted properly the crimes could have been avoided. Where
there is injustice it must be erased and where there are conflicts over national security
they must have a way of negotiating for agreements to achieve an end to warfare. But
what had been hailed as an instrument for peace, the United Nations, has failed, and the
big powers, primarily the Soviet Union and the cowed in Western Europe, have given
comfort to criminals. Therefore, hope for an end to the terrors like the one that emerged
in Uganda inspires doubt over the triumph of human values.
Who will act to restore confidence in human decenc3,7? Will the nations of the world
unite to prevent civilization's transformation into a jungle? Will we be privileged to have
encouraging answers to these questions in our lifetime, without panicking over the fate
of our children and grandchildren?
Now the international community is being put to the test. Will it act against violence
or will the spirit of Idi Amin dominate in the United Nations?
The pall that has settled over the world organization remains one of the most deplora-
ble human experiences. Has the act of bravery by Israel taught the world powers the
lesson needed to end blackmail, violence, terrorism and hijacking?
Unless the lesson is heeded, the glory will remain Israel's alone. But the world can
share in it irthe courage of tiny Israel will inspire mankind into' fearlessness.

Will such appeals be of some help, or will Jews become
the chief propagators of the view that adherence to the
smallest of families principle is a necessity for mankind in
an era as trying-as the current one? In any event, the situa-
tion is clear and the challenge to young Jews is great. Will
it, like other challenges, fall on deaf ears?

Nor are socio-political solutions considered,
such as realignment of national resources and an
attempt at a proper distribution of wealth.
He draws upon Jewish traditions as a plea for a rever-
sal of a trend that can prove so very damaging to the Jewish
role in the world and points to the following Jewish tradi-
tional exhortations:

* * *

`Silo Charlie' in New Heroic Role

In popular tradition, the "first command-
ment" directed to the Jews in the Torah is found in
Genesis 9:7. This is the commandment of the Sons
of Noah, "p'ru ur'vu — be fruitful and multiply;
bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply
therein."

•

According to Rashi the first time this phrase was
addressed to man (Gen. 9:1), it was a blessing; the
second time it became a command. Rashi also
notes that "this command is mentioned here after
the mention of murder in order to compare one who
abstains from procreation to one who sheds
blood."

In recent times the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Is-
rael, Rav Ovidia Yosef, has ruled that after bring-
ing forth a son and a daughter, a family may use
contraceptives. Practicing birth control and using
family planning techniques do not mean that the
family is to be limited to a maximum of two chil-
dren, but rather that the spacing of children can be
coordinated with external factors, such as the
number and ages of other children in the family,
housing and economic conditions.
The Central Conference of American Rabbis also
holds this view.
Arnson concludes his analysis with these facts:
It is obvious that zero population growth must
be rejected by Jews, even if the highly tendentious
argument were to become valid. Indeed de facto
Jewish adherence to the ZPG stablization stan-
dard has already lowered the percentage of Jews in
the U.S. population from 3.7 per cent in 1963 to 2.8
per cent in 1973.

Charles E. Coughlin is a name that will never be erased
from the ranks of the most virulent anti-Semites. His vil-
lainy might have been amended had he chosen during the
past four decades to atone for his attacks on the Jewish
people and for having popularized the vile forgeries, the so-
called Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He chose by his sil-
ence to let it remain on the record that he keeps adhering
to views-which gave him the dreaded label "anti-Sernit "
Apparently it is not so dreaded now that he returne
his pulpit, in his 84th year, to be acclaimed as a hero rebo .
John Cardinal Dearden spoke of his glory and his genius.
How would Pope Pius XI, who condemned anti-Jewish feel-
ings as "the sin of anti-Semitism," have judged the man
whose anti-Semitism was equated with pro-Nazism during
the most dreaded years -of Hitlerism?

So "Silo Charlie" — that's how a church editor of
Detroit News described the Royal Oak priest — is gathefirig
acclaim again, and the recollections of his anti-Semitism
are not taken seriously.

He may have had a temporary change of heart when,
some 15 years ago, he purchased a $500 State of Israel
Bond. But he never aided in erasing the sad marks of anti-
Semitism from a record that blights his name.

Therefore, every book that deals with the history of the
Nazi period, all works relating to bias and prejudice and
anti-Semitism, carry the name of Charles E. Coughlin. HoNi,'
great his renewed heroism could have been had he, in that
acclaimed sermon, removed the stain of "the sin of anti-
Semitism" from his record! Apparently he chooses to live on
with his stigma.

