2 Friday, August 19, 1977 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Purely Commentary
Noted British Journalist Refutes London Times Accusatory
Articles, Relates Personal Experiences in Israel to Prove the
Jewish State's Judicial System Won't Endorse Tortures
By Philip
Slomovitz
Faith as a Deterrent to Panic: Israel's Leadership Inspires Strengthened U.S. Friendship
Understandably, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's mission to the Middle East and his
meetings with Israel Prime Minister Menahem Begin and Foreign Minister Moshe
Dayan created anxieties that bordered on panic.
"This is bad ... this is the worst ... this means trouble" were the comments that ech-
oed loudly in Jewish communities.
In Israel the sessions of the diplomats ended in handshakes, smiles were not erased,
the emerging concerns over peaceful relationships of Israel with the United States were
not transformed into panic. The historically knowledgeable gave evidence that they
knew the value of patience and the imperativeness of faith in Jewish perseverence.
Basic facts, the pragmatism of a people's existence in a dynamite-laden atmosphere,
are the vital elements in a situation that appears threatening to that people's existence
but in truth is repetition of experiences that are repetitive.
Israel, and world Jewry. had similarly tense moments in the past. How ridiculous the
assumption that the rise to leadership of a minority party was responsible for differen-
ces in views between Jerusalem and Washington! How blind can people be in their as-
sumption that a new confrontation is ascribable to' Menahem Begin?
Why should anyone imagine that a Shimon Peres or a Yitzhak Rabin or an Abba Eban
would act differently from Menahem Begin?
Israel's security, the very life of the Jewish state, is involved in any proposal, no mat-
ter whence it comes or who may engineer it. That the nation holding fast to her right to
live would submit to admitting those seeking her destruction to a role of judging that
right; or any proposal for an introduction of genocidal forces into the borders of that
state. is unacceptable.
They were tense moments, but they also were a revival of experiences of the past.
The Grand Mufti sought Israel's destruction; so also are the aims of the imitators of the
mass murderers of the Nazi era. Menahem Begin said so, and it is incontrovertible.
That which was a challengd to the builders of Zion during this entire century emerged
as a threat which appeared as if it were the hour of doom for the People Israel in the
Land of Israel. Had it been a realistic judgment it was well to judge it as a welcome
occurrence: because a danger must be met when it arises and it is better now than if it
were postponed. It needed a strong man and Israel is fortunate that firmness was not
strange to a people tested by time in its determination to live. and in its role of sover-
eignty to survive unblemished. If Israel is the last rampart for the Jewish people it is
well that its guardians have faith, are firm, are determined that Jews are not to be
judged differently from other peoples. In international skirmishes contending forces
meet face to face to decide on the destinies of nations. If the Party of the First Part,
Israel, can not get the Party of the Second Part, those who threaten her existence, to
meet amicably, then the will to live demands that obstacles be treated as immoral. Men-
ahem Begin didjust that!
How gloriously that the American principle of Fair Play seems to be emerging as
bright star on a dark horizon! What had seemed like a day of judgment may well end in
an ever-strengthened American-Israel friendship. This should be judged as a result of a
people pressed to the wall acting firmly in an affirmation of the right to live in dignity
and in security. Apparently the People Israel knew what they were doing when they
chose their leaders. Because the new leader has faith, he has strengthened the faith of
his nation.
ae
Eminent British Author Refutes Anti-Israel Accusations in London Times
So outrageous is the trumped-up charge that Israel has
condoned the torturing of Arab prisoners that an eminent
British author, David Pryce-Jones, has written a strong
condemnation of the shocking London Times articles.
David Pryce-Jones was a war correspondent in Israel in
1967. He had made a study of the arrests of Arab terrorists
and of the manner in which they were treated. He con-
cedes that in an expression of anger some poeple can be
unruly and can react brutally to aggressors. But he touch-
es upon Israel's judicial system, the strictness with which
international regulations are treated, and he rejects the
manner of the London Times approach to the issue.
The David Pryce-Jones article was written for the Lon-
don Jewish Observer and Middle East Review under the
title "Why the Sunday Times Took a Second Swipe," re-
ferring to a follow-up article, after publishing the official
Israel government reply to the charges, in which the Lon-
don Times repeated it accusations. Pryce-Jones' refutation
follows :
"The recent accusation in the Sunday Times that Israel
practices widespread and systematic torture of Arab pris-
oners had about it an air of revelation and sensation.
"Far from being new, this canard of torture was sprung
upon the world as early as June 17, 1967, when Pravda ran
a story from its Rome correspondent that Italian journal-
ists—who naturally were nameless—had just witnessed Is-
raelis burning Arabs alive and crushing them under tanks.
"That the Israelis were committing atrocities within the
occupied territories instantly became the offcial Moscow
line, propagated in party organs and by party sympa-
thisers all over the world. To Igor Belyayev, a Pravda
commentator, goes the credit, I believe, for first using the
phrase llitlerite' about the Israelis, at the end of June
1967. But nothing has been too distasteful for Moscow. An
English-language broadcast on Dec. 11, 1968, beamed to Af-
rica, accused Israel of a program of mass sterilization for
the Arabs.
"By that date, Thomson Newspapers of London had been
pressed into propaganda service, at first by means of ad-
vertisements paid for by Arab money. The Times of July
29, 1968, carried a full-page 'Appeal on behalf of the Arabs
of Palestine under Israeli occupation'. Above many Arab
signatures was a short introduction with the words: 'We
are concerned about reports of the discovery of mass
graves, the collective shooting of civilians...' What these re-
ports might be, and where they came from, was never ex-
plained.
"A Palestine Supplement in the Times of June 25, 1969,
contained an article entitled, 'A system of oppression' but
it could substantiate nothing, and was signed mysteriously
`By a correspondent lately in Israel'.
'Not until October 28, 1969, did the Times as such chip
in, when the foreign editor at that time, E. C. Hodgkin,
published an article headed, 'Grim reports of repression in
Israel-occupied lands'. A paragraph, was specifically 'de-
voted to torture (the word was prmted in bold at the head
of the paragraph) asserting that it was a common belief in
the occupied areas that 'anyone suspected of belonging to
a guerrilla organization or of helping one in any way is tor-
tured as a matter of routine, and there is a great body of
evidence to support this belief'. The great body of evi-
dence, however, was not provided.
"I was then engaged on preparing a book ("The Face of
Defeat") about my experiences as a war correspondent in
1,ti.i, ana subsequently among the Palestinians, both those
on the West Bank and in Gaza and those forming guerrilla
groups'in Jordan and Lebanon. It seemed possible, though
unlikely, that a national movement of some kind was
under way.
"If The Times aritcle were true, then clearly I was a
most remiss reporter, for I was covering that very ground
and had ,come up only with what everyone knew : the give-
and-take of the Israeli-fedayeen struggle. By then it was
apparent that the Israelis were able to .win by making sure
that the Arabs under occupation had nothing to gain from
supporting the fedayeen and everything to lose. Torture of
Arabs under occupation, whether fedayeen or not, would
have made nonsense of Israeli policy; it risked provoking
exactly the kind of civil disturbances which were not hap-
pening.
"Had circumstances , been otherwise, and the Israelis
found themselves losing a guerrilla warfare, they might
perhaps have resorted to the methods of which they are ac-
cused: I do not believe that they are made of anything ex-
cept flesh and blood. Nor do I exclude the possibility of a
chance sadist somewhere. But it it a country with the rule
of law, hence a demorcracy open to inspection.
"I spent months chasing reports of torture, in prisons,
hospitals, homes, even the PLO office in Beirut, back and
forth. I interviewed many fedayeen and their lawyers,
whether Arab or Israeli, as well as prison authorities and
medical and military government officers, all of whom
would have to be in collusion if torture were widespread
and systematic.
"The fedayeen, I saw for myself, had to face a truth
worse than any torture; that they had come to kill des-
pised foe, but had been captured with humiliating ease and
were in prison with little or nothing to show for it. Their
self-deception was exposed. They were matched by better
men than themselves but this they could not admit without
collapse of honor. So they invented fables to explain how
Israeli superiority was really based upon something in-
human and therefore beyond combatting, like the power of
the dollar, and systematic torture—these fables by the
way, have seriously demoralized them.
"What I also found were plenty of atrocity-hunting re-
porters, including one for the Sunday Times. On Nov. 2,
1969, he published a dispatch which said: 'Objective
writers in foreign newspapers have described, more or
less convincingly, repression, torture and illegality as the
method of dealing with the West Bank problem. Such sto-
ries can be justified up to a certain point, but, as yet, I
have seen no evidence.'
"This hardly substantiated the 'grim reports of repres-
sion' just announced in the sister paper, the Times. To
make headway with his brief, the Sunday Times reporter
then contacted Mrs. Felicia Langer, a member of the Is-
raeli Communist Party and a lawyer specializing in defend-
ing fedayeen. Each and every one of her clients seems to
have been tortured as though to provide conveniently what
Pavada wants.
"In Jerusalem, this reporter and I saw each other on sev-
eral occasions and argued about our hesitations and qual-
ifications, but on Nov. 23 the Sunday Times published his
article, 'Eye-witness in Gaza.'
"This was based on the cases of four of Mrs. Langer's
clients, though fascinatingly her role was not explained, in-
deed her name was nowhere mentioned. The evidence was
admitted to be inconclusive, but already then an offcial in-
quiry was called for in the paper.
"Eight years have passed and the Sunday Times now re-
peats itself. Eight years in which Palestinians, far from
wishing to flee the repression of the occupied territory, do
whatever they can to be admitted, as residents if possible,
or as summer visitors by the hundred thousand. The Sun-
day Times now has the grace to mention Mrs. Langer and
her colleague, Mrs. Lea Tsemel. It is the ladies' finest
hour. Not four of their clients but a score have been enu-
merated.
"Now only Thomson Newspapers can know the wheels
within wheels which brought Mrs. Langer's and Mrs. Tse-
mel's clients round on a second circuit. What is the con-
nection between them and the paper? Only Thomson News-
papers can know the motives of those involved.
"Thomson Newpapers must have an explanation why the
Israeli judiciary and prison and medical services were not
interrogated—must equally have an explanation of its mor-
alizing, not to say sanctimonious, tone. When stories ema-
nate from ideological sources, never mind promoters of
Communist ends and means, Thomson Newspapers would
normally insist upon altogether more professional stand-
ards.
"Simultaneously the Times was publishing a piece
about a hitherto obscure Cambridge don, who was suppos-
edly the Fourth Man, or Kremlin recruiting agent and spy-
master of Philby, Burgess and Maclean. Well, that had to
be retracted as rubbish. It looks like a classic piece of se-
cret service disinformation, or disinformatzia to use the
KGB term, but there again only Thomson Newspapers can
reveal how and why they were taken for that ride.
"So how and why did the Sunday Times swallow its sec-
ond dose about wicked torturing Israelis? For that is equal-
ly a put-up job."
(Appended to the article is a note by the editors of the
Jewish Observer and Middle East Review that the honor-
arium for the Pryce-Jones article went, at the author's
request, to the Leukemia Research Fund. Therefore, an
added contribution to this research fund will go from this
column.)
Meanwhile, the outrage of leveling unfoUnded charges
against Israel continues. The current issue of New Times
has an article similar to those in the London Times by T.
D. Allman under the title "Oppressor Israelnthe question
mark immediately creating the suspicions that tend to em-
phasize the charges against the Jewish state.
These charges will undoubtedly be heard during the ap-
proaching United Nations General Assembly session. Once
again there will be the agonizing responsibility of Israel's
representatives to plead for justice against the libels that
stem from the Arab and Communist countries with the aid
of the Third World. It's a blessing that a Christian with a
conscience, David Pryce-Jones, steps forth to battle for
the truth.
Politicizing Human Values: Magen David's Predicament
When the United Nations came into being it was hoped
that it would be the great instrument for peace and for the
advancement of human values. Now many of the UN
agencies are being politicized and instead of progress we
have an agonized humanity.
The International Labor Organization, contrary to pro-
tests from the AFL-CIO, had voted to admit the PLO and
adopted anti-Israel resolutions. Since there has been a less-
ening of antagonism during the past year, there is a move-
ment afoot for the U.S. not to abandon the ILO. Since the
UN General Assembly also has been a source of hatred for
Israel and is not being abandoned, the argument pro-ILO
has similar justification.
Then there is the Magen David Adom problem. It can
not gain admission to the International Red Cross.
The Red Crescent is a recognized element in the world
Red Cross ranks. Why not Israel's Magen David Adorn?
Let it be said, to the credit of the American Red Cross
representatives. that they have committed themselves to
support Israel's application for admission to the world or-
ganization. But, sensing defeat, Israel has again with-
' drawn the application, according to reports from the Arn€
ican representatives.
But the American role deserves commendation. There- -
fore, let it go on record from the following, part of a
memo to American Red Cross personnel from Robert
Wick, vice president of the American National Red Cross:
The American Red Cross has repeatedly assured
Magen David Adorn that it will support its application
for membership to the League of Red Cross Societies
if that society chooses to submit one (which it has
never done) and that our representatives will speak in
favor of recognition of Magen David Adom as a nation-
al society if the subject comes up for discussion in
Bucharest in October.
The American Red Cross regards the Magen David
Adorn of Israel as a national society deserving of full
international recognition. Our relations have always
been cordial and remain so, as witnessed by our ex-
change of youth delegates this summer.
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