56 Friday, August 6, 1976
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Thomas Kierman's Book Demystifies Arafat the Terrorist
By ALLEN A. WARREN
Thomas Kierman in
"Arafat: the Man and the
Myth" (W. W. Norton &
Co., Inc., New York) en-
deavors to unravel the
"Arafat mystery" which
has its origin in the con-
troversy over the place
and date of Yasir's birth.
Yasir claims that he
was born in 1930 in
Jerusalem in a house
near the Western Wall
which the Israelis de-
stroyed in 1967. His fam-
ily however, maintains
that he was born in Cairo
in 1929.
In connection with this
controversy, it is well to
keep in mind that
"Arafat's claims about
his birthplace and the
house in which he grew
typ lend a neat and sym-
pathetic symmetry to his
entire life. How could any
reasonable man deny the
justice of Arafat's devo-
tion to his cause in view of
the circumstances of his
birth and upbringing?
. . . To suggest that he
has created a lie about his
birth, that he is 'living a
lie,' is very much a temp-
tation. But for Arafat it is
not a lie. It is a fiction
that, through the
dynamics of his Arab sen-
sibilities, has become
fact."
Yasir's father, Abdul
al-Qudwa, was a merchant
who traded with Jews. For
his dealings with Jews his spokesman, the Mufti,
neighbors harrassed and then residing in Germany,
ostracized him and van- collaborated with the
dalized his business estab- Nazis and lobbied for an
lishments. To appease independent Arab Pales-
them, Abdul severed all tine.
commercial ties with Jews.
The Mufti's efforts re-
In 1929 his family and suited in the secret coin-
he moved to Cairo where munique issued by the
Yasir was born. Axis Powers on April 28,
It is noteworthy, that 1942. The Axis Powers
Yasir on his mother's side agreed to help Arab coun-
is a -Husayni (the family tries in their desire for
of the Mufti). The "sovereignty and inde-
Husaynis and the pendence; as well as to
Nashashibis were in the abolition of the
pre-World I years the two Jewish National Home-
most prominent Palesti- land in Palestine . . .-
nian Arab families. Abdul al-Qudwa,
Among others, they con- Yasir's father, spent the
trolled the mayoralty of war years in Gaza an-
Jerusalem. ticipating "the abolition
In the 1920s and 1930s, of the Jewish National
the two families split Homeland in Palestine."
politically: each forming But the German disaster
its own political party. at El-Alamein in 1942
The Nashashibis founded dashed. his hopes. Still he
the Nashashibi National joined the Anti-Jewish
Defense party; the Muslim Brotherhood
Husaynis organized the whose leader in Gaza was
Palestine Arab party. Yasir's teacher, Abu
The Nashashibi Na- Khalid, the nom de
of Majid Halaby.
tional Defense party de-
manded that Palestine be
People who
Abu
joined to the neighboring Khalid and Yasir inti-
British Mandate, Trans- mately were mystified by
Jordan, to form an inde- their emotional attach-
pendent confederate ment to one another.
Arab state. The Palestine ". . . we discovered Abu
Arab party demanded an Khalid and Yasir giving
independent Palestine themselves pleasure . . .
state. Abu Khalid was quite
It is well to remember open about what he did
that the Husaynis during with Yasir. In fact, he en-
World War II supported
couraged all of us to par-
the Axis Powers, and their ticipate in such activities.
He said it should be a part
of the guerrilla way of life
.
Yasir, indoctrinated by
his teacher, became
fanatically anti-Jewish;
his sole ambition was to
kill Jews.
In 1947, on the eve of the
partition of Palestine, he
made a "pilgrimage" to
Jerusalem with the intent
to kill Jews. There, he sec-
ured a pistol and got ready
to annihilate his foe. Since
no Jews were in sight at
the instant he was ready to
kill them, he aimed his pis-
tol at a British policeman
who directed traffic. But,
he ". . . pulled the trigger
too soon. He shot himself
in his thigh."
Humiliated and frus-
trated he returned, to
Gaza.
More humiliating is the
fact that his family and
he spent the war of 1948
in Gaza and Cairo — a
fact Yasir passionately
denies because it does not
enhance his heroic image.
After the war the fam-
ily returned to Gaza
where two surprises
awaited them. 1. The city
was filled with war re-
fugees. 2. The Mufti had
established a "Govern-
ment of all Palestine," in-
cluding the West Bank of
the Jordan and the Old
City of Jerusalem King
Abdallah of Jordan oc-
cupied in 1948 and incor-
porated into his kingdom.
To fight. King Abdallah,
Israel and his internal
foes, the Mufti organized
a guerrilla force. Yasir
joined it, was appointed
squad leader and to his
great disappointment his
first and only assignment
was to attack the
Nashashibis, the Mufti's
rivals, and to destroy
their citrus groves.
The attack failed. Yasir
blamed the failure on a
member of his squad
whom he accused of
treachery and killed. It
turned out the man was in-
nocent.
Fearing for his life and
at his father's urging,
Yasir left for Cairo where
soon after his arrival, he
became embroiled in a
plot to assassinate Gamal
Abdel Nasser.
The plot was disco-
vered.
Yasir and co-con-
spirators, then attend-
ing a communist student
conference in Prague,
Czechoslovakia on learn-
ing of the anti-Nasser
fiasco hastily fled to
Stuttgart and from there
to Kuwait where they
went into hiding. There in
1958 they founded the
notorious FATAH. It is
interesting to note that
Fatah (conquest) in re-
verse reads "hataf," con-
YASIR ARAFAT
sisting of the initial let-
ters. of "Harakat at-
Tahrir al-Falstin (move-
ment for the liberation of
Palestine).
Fatah's first and his-
torically most important
"military engagement"
against Israel was its at-
tack on the night of
January 2, 1965 on Beit
Netopha where the upper
waters of the Jordan
River feed by canal the
irrigation complex of the
Negev desert. Though
unsuccessful, the attack
marked the beginning of
Fatah's war against Is-
rael and Arafat's rise to
Arab world notoriety.
Author Laments Martyred Soviet Jewish Writers
BY MEYER LEVIN
(Editor's note: The fol-
lowing article by Meyer
Levin is reprinted from
"Night of the Murdered
Poets," a publication is-
sued by the National Con-
ference on Soviet Jewry.
He remembers the 24
Jewish intellectuals
liquidated Aug. 12, 1952,
in the cellar of Moscow's
Lubianka Prison.) .
One day, more than a
decade ago, I sat waiting
my turn at the speakers
table in a New York hotel
meeting hall where a
Jewish labor convention
was taking place. I was
pleased to have been
thought of, yet a touch
uncomfortable because
life had carried me out Of
this milieu.
Z
.
MEYER LEVIN
Here in the hall were
Fascist Committee: Sol- place a massacre of writ-
delegates with Yiddish
omon Mikhoels, director ers, of Jewish writers,
newspapers stuck in their
of Moscow's Jewish State
and in the first land of the
coat pockets, and I heard
Theater, and Itzik Feffer, great social revolution.
around me the accents of good Communist poet.
Even up to today, this
my uncles, my father. But
Many of the men in this story of the holocaust of
I still reassured myself, I
hall had grasped their Russian Jewish authors
had never turned away.
hands.
remains virtually untold.
And though English was
But how was it that I
One of the most highly
our language, here I
had not heard of their gifted of these murdered
.wrote of Jews; I had con-
"liquidation?" That the poets is exemplified here
fronted the Holocaust
world had not heard of it? in the work of his son,
and Israel was part of my
In our newspapers, in our David Markish, now at
pattern.
last in Israel. He is one of
news magazines, had
Then, just before I was
there been mention of that incredibly courage-
to speak, the chairman
this massacre?
ous band of Russian Jews
asked the delegates to
We had heard of the
who have proven to the
rise for a memorial. And
whole world that resis-
"Doctors Plot," yes, and
as they stood, he read out
heard in 'general about tance is possible, is alive,
a list of names of Jewish
Stalin's anti-Jewish mea- and can succeed even in a
authors who had been
sures, of arrests and
police state.
executed in the Soviet
exiles, the closing down of
There occurs this re-
Union.
Jewish institutions,
Now and then a name schools, publications, of
resounded to me; I had
cultural strangulation, but
somewhere heard it, in
how had this enormity, the
Europe or in Israel it had
mass execution of the lead-
come through to me,
ing Jewish .poets and
Peretz Markish, I had
novelists escaped world
heard, David Bergelson,
NEW YORK — A
attention?
Itzik Feffer . . . but their
It may be that research Lutheran congregation
works were unknown to
will prove that the fact in Washington, D. C.,
me.
was indeed reported here has for the third time,
Yiddish poetry, I had
and there; just as in the imprisoned because of his
not followed. But it was
research on the imprisoned becaue of his
not my ignorance of their Holocaust, it can be religious beliefs. The first
work that came into shown that reports of a two prisoners were re-
question, good work sort were made: "we did leased soon after the
would live, and it has; it know." But we could not church members began to
was my ignorance of their accept, and doubted, and show an interest in them.
destruction that startled held away the horror as
The church project is
me.
long as we might, out of
Two of the names fear of having to confront one of many across the
evoked particular mur- an inadmissible human country that has been
sparked by the National
murs in the hall; these capacity for evil.
Council of Churches' Of-
men had been here in
So too we — particu- fice on Christian-Jewish
New York, travelled in larly we writers — have
America, sent during the held off from absorbing Relations.
war by the Soviet Union this explicit event; from According to its direc-
in a special Jewish Anti- knowing that there took tor, William L. Weiler, the
markable passage in the
diary of Anne Frank:
Who has made us Jews
different froin all other
people? Who has allowed
us to suffer so terribly up
till now? It is God who has
made us as we are, but it
will be God, too, who will
raise us up again. If we
bear all this suffering and
if there are still Jews left
when it is over, then Jews,
instead of being doomed,
will be held up as an exam-
ple. Who knows, it might
even be our religion from
which the world and all
peoples learn good, and
for that reason and that
reason alone do we suffer
now. We can never become
* * *
just Netherlanders, or just
English, or just represen-
tatives of any other coun-
try for that matter, we will
always remain Jews, but
we want to, too.
In their mass death,
these massacred Jewish
poets, these inextin-
guishable souls, sent us
their last alert. What we
must do in unity with
them is to heed it, not to
shrink away in horror,
but to spread this alert,
and wherever the Jewish
self, the human self, is
threatened, to react, with
all the strength of the Hy,
ing, and yes, the living
dead.
Lutheran Church in Washington
'Adopting' Its Third Soviet Jew
purpose of the two-year- encourage Christians to
old office is to "help write letters of support
Christians learn more for religious prisoners to
about the Hebraic roots the prisoners themselves
and to give the Jewish and to Soviet government-
community a clearer pie- officials. "In some case -
ture of the activities and community groups have
goals of the Christian even gathered and made
churches." Another aim a phone call to one of the
is to get churches work- victims of Soviet repres-
ing on human rights is- sion," Weiler reports.
sues that affect both
He states emphatically
Christians and Jews, that such work is not
such as religious repres- primarily
altruistic.
sion in the Soviet Union. "We're also concerned
about other religious
The organization's minorities in the Soviet
publication, "A Call to Union — the Baptists,
Conscience," a statement Seventh Day Adventists
on the plight of Soviet and Jehovah's Witnes-
Jewry that is intended to ses," he says.