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2 Friday, October 22, 1976

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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Purely Commentary

The Tongue, the Evil and the Blessed of the Power-
ful Human Organ! . . . The Palestinians' Mideast
Misrepresentations and the True Israel Role

By Philip
Slomovitz

The Tongue: Its Power to Make or Break Politicians

If politicians were to specialize in the legendary and in the Scriptural they
could be saved many heartaches by avoiding the miseries of misspeaking.
There is an old fiebraic legend about the tongue and the other organs of the
body. They disputed about their powers, each claiming certain glories. Then came
the tongue with proof of having either saved lives or doomed people to death by
what it uttered.
"Guard your tongue - is an old saying. "Speak only once but listen twice before
you speak" is another warning to indicate there is one tongue and two ears.
It is necessary to go to Proverbs (18:21) for the basic warning about caution in
speaking:

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The power of the tongue is in evidence in the current political asseverations.
When there is a lust there can be a bust, and when the ethnic purity reality
becomes a matter of dispute there can be trouble for the political candidate.

That applies to the occupant of the White House as well as the contender for it.
And from the Chief of State, the unexpected and unexplainable about the,
Communist influences, the Vatican role in the boycott — oh, if one could listen to
himself rehearsing before blundering!
"Gerry" and "Jimmy" have been juggled by candidates and their wives and
confusion has become the product not of mind and brain — these are guiltless! —
but of the great power of the human being.
It may be a bit too late to admonish the political aspirants of 1976, but let if)
a lesson for candidates to come — that the tongue has the power over all. Bev
of the misspoken words!

Death and life are in the power of
the tongue;
And they that indulge it shall eat
the fruit thereof.

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Proverbs-18:21

Middle East Delusions Rivals' Fallacies Exposed,
Israel's Continuity Through History Re-Affirmed

By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Political pressures are emerging as a menace to truth in the Middle

East.

This business of compassion (sic!) is such a dire escape from realism
that it carries with it an unfortunate virus tending to harm rather than
assist any possible approach to peace.
What's this business called Palestinian aspirations for a Palestinian
state? Why this resort to a mirage which, while it is suitable for the desert
has no place in political factualism?
There never was anything approaching a Palestine state or a
people called Palestinians.
To clarify the issues the facts must be re-established.

Israel's and Jewry's antagonists — men like Prof.
Arnold Toynbee and his associates, Arab propagan-
dists and those who seek to destroy the Jewish state —
keep harping on the claim that Jews had driven Arabs
out of their land. It is the Jew who is the expansionist,
the imperialist, and the Arab the one who has been
robbed of his land: that's the propaganda line that
may have hurt Israel as much as the refugee issue
because of the hatred that has been fomented with
such ideas.
The truth is that, in recorded history, Palestine
was never ruled by an Arab government; that the
Arab caliphates who ruled Palestine were foreign
Moslem rulers who can claim 432 years of domination
as compared with 2,000 years of Jewish rule.
Here are the basic figures:
Israel Rule (biblical period) 1350 BCE to 586
BCE
Babylonian Conquest .... 587 BCE to 538 BCE
Israel Autonomy (under Persian
and Greco-Assyrian suzerainty) 538 BCE to 168
BCE
Revolt of the Maccabeans 168 BCE to 143 BCE
Rule of the Hasmoneans and
their successors
143 BCE to 70 CE
Jewish Autonomy (under Roman
and Byzantine suzerainty) .. 70 CE to 637 CE
Rule of Arab Caliphates ... 637 CE to 1072 CE
Mecca
637 CE to 661 CE
Umayyid
661 CE to 750 CE
Abbassid
750 CE to 870 CE
Fatimid -
969 CE to 1071 CE
Seljuks Rule
1072 CE to 1096 CE
Crusaders
1099 CE to 1291 CE
Ayyubid
1175 CE to 1291 CE
Mamelukes Rule
1291 CE to 1516 CE
Ottomans (Turks)
1516 CE to 1918 CE
British Mandate
1918 CE to 1948 CE
Jews, in fact, never left the Holy Land. Even after
the last destruction of the Temple and the exile of
1,900 years ago, Jews continued to live in major Pales-
tinian centers — Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias . . .
In the 1960s, as part of the Arab propaganda, the
ultra-conservative magazine National Review, edited
by William F. Buckley, published a "Letter from
Beirut" by Daniel daCruz in which the claim of illegal
conquest of Palestine by Jews was again resorted to.
One of the editors of Buckley's periodical, Max
Geltman, has written a reply that is worth taking into _
account.
Under the heading "The Open Question: The Is-
rael Haters," Geltman wrote:
The correspondent from Beirut tells of a plot that
dates back to 1919 when "the Zionists first claimed the
Litani — in fact all south Lebanon, as well as the
present Kingdom of Jordan," etc.
Among the plotters one finds a few names. Men like
Eban, Allon and Herzl are mentioned. "When the Israeli
push into Lebanon comes, as Abba Eban, Yigal Allon
and Zionism's founder Theodor Herzl among others in-
sisted it must, then the moment of truth" — but here we
must interrupt this Byzantine narrative in order to
bring some order out of this propagandistic morass.
In the first place, there was no Lebanon in 1919
(Lebanon was separated from the constituent whole of

Palestine in 1920 and it was not until 1943 that the
country achieved national independence, but about
five years before Israel did); in the second place
neither Allon nor Eban had yet been born; while the
"founder of Zionism" would just as soon have settled
for a river in Uganda as for the Litani.
Where Mr. daCruz speaks of the "Self-promised"
land he is guilty of a bit of blasphemy since the land
was promised- by the Lord God to the children of Israel,
and their legal claim for it has been upheld by such
distinguished authorities as William E. Blackstone
and most of the legal luminaries of 19th Century Eng-
land. -
According to Blackstone "the law of dereliction"
could not be applied to the Jews since they never gave
up their title to Palestine, "They never gave up the
land. They made no treaty, they did not even surren-
der. They simply succumbed, after the most desperate
conflict, to the overwhelming power of the Romans
. . . Since then, having no sovereign nor political head
through whom they could speak, they have disputed
the possession of the land, by continued protest
through their literature and their public and private
worship."
But daCruz marks the Jewish "claim" to Palestine_
— or to that part of it now known as Israel — by chiding
them for ignoring the "intervening ownership" of the
territory since the Kingdom of David.
Let us say he means since the sacking of
Jerusalem in 70 CE. That is the way the historians —
all the historians—Jewish, Christian, Moslem, under-
stood it. So that for the last 1,900 years the author
gives the impression there was an "intervening own-
ership" that was not only not Jewish, but Arab, which
is, of course, so much dross, believed by nobody but the
totally ignorant.
There has been- no "intervening ownership" of the
land by an Arab state claiming hegemony- over the
land-mass known as Palestine from the beginning of
historical times until the very recent past, that is,
until the breakup of the Turkish occupation of the land
by the Allied powers after World War I. Never, at any.
time, except for about 100 years during the Umayyad
Caliphate (non-Mecca oriented) has any claim to an
Arab hegemony been asserted by anyone over the
land, especially that part of it now called Israel.
Going back in time, the British mandatory power
ruled the land from 1918 to 1948; the Ottoman Turks
occupied it for 400 years (with a slight Napoleonic
interruption) from 1517 to 1917.
Before that the land was ruled by marauding
Mamelukes, the Seljuk Turks, the Crusaders (about 200
years), the Abbassid Caliphs and the Umayyads who
occupied the land-mass of Palestine after the Roman-
•Byzantine rule expired in 636 CE. All these occupations
— except the Umayyad — were directed from an outside
center; from Rome or Mecca or Constantinople or Lon-
don.
Only in modern times — only with the UN parti-
tion resolution setting up an Arab state in Palestine
west of the Jordan and a Jewish hegemony occupied by
Israel today (aside from the occupied territories since
the June War of 1967) can one speak of an Arab state in
Palestine, the largest part of which is made up of the
Kingdom of Jordan, also a recent creation by the
British during the time they occupied the territory.
That the local Arab population refused to estab-
lish an independent state of its own is nobody's fault—
certainly not Israel's. That hundreds of thousands
preferred to leave Israeli Palestine (or were driven
out; that is not at issue here) creating a serious prob-
lem is no reason to talk of Israel's appetite for "ag
gresslon, - that will not be appeased until some
"neck-wringing" is resorted to.
The facts are that the neighboring Arab states,
or rather Arabic-speaking states, sent their armies
across Israel's internationally established borders in

an effort to destroy the new-born nation
but the
Israelis defeated them — all the five armies — in 1948
and so things stood until (with .a passing adventure in
1956) Egypt, bristling with Soviet armaments,
thought to test its strength with Israel, and called for
the deStruction of the Hebrew nation, only to find
-itself and its Soviet-made armor shattered by superior
Israeli force.
Mr. daCruz thinks he has hit upob something novel
by accusing Israel of "expansionist" dreams that date
back to 2000 BCE. So he conjures up names from the
public press and attributes to the two most moderate
and accommodating of Israeli leaders expansionist am-
bitions.
The facts are: Israel has never initiated an un-
warranted attack on any of its neighbors — never, not
even during the Suez adventure with two of its dubi-
ous allies, France and England. It has over-reacted at
times, it has retaliated, but it has never taliated. The
land that it occupies was granted it by international
charter, or was won — in self-defense — and in honora-
ble combat.
Since when is it a crime for a sovereign nation to
defend its borders from enemies, domestic or foreign?
Israel has both, and they are not always Arabs. In
London today an Israeli New Leftist, a Sabra, pub-
lishes Imperial Israel that is as full of hatred for the
Hebrew nation as are the radio broadcasts from Cairo.
The publication breathes a dual contempt for America
and its imperialist puppet Israel.
Already Bertrand Russell has sent warm greet-
ings for this new ally in savaging the land of his hate —
America, with Israel thrown in for good measure. The
pornoleft press — from Ramparts o,a,the West Coast to
Evergreen Review in New York7he official Com-
munist press; the dirty underground press. the Black
Panther press are all ablaze with hate. for the "impe-
rial puppet" in the Middle East — Israel:
Says Eric Hoffer:
"I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it
goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel
perish the holocaust will be upon us."
What he meant, I think, is that Israel will be de-
stroyed not by Christians but by Communists. And if
international Communism can accomplish this — and
the world look on — it will soon be up with the rest of
us, that is those of us who cherish freedom before
anything else — including life. What he meant, finally,
was that American interests in the Middle East can be
best served by supporting Israel's right to survi

One wonders whether the presentation of these accumulated
will ilccomplish anything in the effort to dispel misunderstandings and to
nail the lie regarding the Arab possession of the territory that is the Land
of Israel. But every possible, effort must be made to refute untruth.

And while dealing with untruths, let it be indicated again that the
tragic refugee problem is the creation of the Arabs, not the Jews; that the
vast numbers of homeless commenced with a much smaller number.

The fact is that when Great Britain assumed the mandate over
Palestine in 1918 there were 557,000 Arabs in all of the country,
including Christians as well as Moslems. The number of Arabs who fled
from the newly-created Israel was 587,300.

In 1947, in what was then Palestine and is now Israel, there were
747,300 Arabs, and the Arabs who remained to become Israeli citizens
were 160,000. Therefore the number of Arabs who left Palestine was:

747,300
—160,000

587,300

These also are facts not to be ignored . If taken into account,
perhaps the distorted stories about the Middle East will be read in their
true light.

(Copyright 1976, JTA, Inc.)

