THE JEWISH NEWS

,• issue Qt•Inly Pi, 1951
Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association, National Editorial Association.
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17515 \V. Nine Mile, Suite S65, Southfield. Mich. -1S075.
Second-Class Postage Paid at Southfield, Michigan and Additional Mailing Offices. Suhscript ion S12

Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chrotlicle commencing with

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor and Publisher

CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ

DREW LIEBERWITZ

Business Manager

Advertising Manager

ALAN RITMO . . News Editor...HEIDI PRESS, Assistant News Editor

Sabbath Scriptural Selections

This Sabbath, the 20th day of Shevat, 5738, the following scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Exodus 18:1-20:23. Prophetical portion, Isaiah 6:1-7:6; 9:5,6.

Candle lighting, Friday, Jan. 27, 5:22 p.m.

VOL. LXXII, No. 21

Page Four

Friday, January 27, 1978

Truth: Exposing Atrocity Charges

Engineered in a shocking series of articles in
the London Times, encouraged by Israel's
enemies, charges have been circulating accus-
ing Israel of mistreatment of prisoners and of
brutalities in prisons. These have neither been
fully proven nor have they made sense in view
of the open roads provided by Israel for anyone
wishing to study conditions there.
Nevertheless, the charges escalated. Recent-
ly, a Nazareth clergyman, unappreciative of the
freedoms granted by Israel, came here, while
touring the country, with a repetition of the
charges of brutalities in Israel.
In view of the audacious spread of anti-Israel
propaganda it is important that the facts should
be stated, and fairminded people should not
object if refutations come from official Israeli
sources. From a responsible Israeli consular
official, via a local advocate, comes this state-
ment defining the manner in which the Arabs
are treated in Israel and the form in ' which
Israel's law is applied to them as well as to all
citizens and residents of the Jewish state:

Editor, The Jewish News:
The Jewish News of Nov. 18, 1977 carried a story of
alleged "violations of Arab human rights" in Israel
which were propagated both in Southfield and in the
U.S. by a Nazareth clergyman, Ria Abu ,E1-Assal,
during his tour of this country.
His charges were repeated in the press and because
of his clerical and civic positions in Nazareth carried
official knowledge and sanction. They were manufac-
tured half-truths as well as outright lies.
I wanted to have an authoritative, factual reply to
his accusations, so I sent the various stories of the
interviews to the Consulate General of Israel in New
York (via the Zionist Organization of America) and to
Chicago requesting a researched and factual account
of the true sitation on human rights in general and in
Nazareth in particular.
The enclosed is this reply from the Consulate
General in New York which came after consultation
with responsible Israeli officials. I hope you'll publish
it in full, so the truth will be known — to counteract
the poisonous propaganda of Arab "activists" and
their so-called "human rights" advocates in this
country.

Louis Panush
Chairman, Public Affairs Committee,
Zionist Organization of Detroit

* * *
We must take grave issue with the comments of
Father Riah Abu El-Assal regarding the Arab com-
munity of Israel, of which Arab Nazareth is an
important part. They are not in accord with the facts.
To charge discrimination in the laws of Israel
against Arabs or violation of their human rights is a
gross distortion of the truth. Israel's policy toward
her Arab citizens is based on absolute equality in
every area of life as guaranteed in the Declaration of
Independence according to the following quotation:
"The state of Israel will .., ensure complete equality
of .social and political rights to all its inhabitants
irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee
freedom of religion, conscience, language, education
and culture..." There are no privileges accorded only
to Jews.
It is a further fact that the Arab community in
Israel has developed and prospered and become the
most advanced in the entire Arab world. The elec-
tions this year demonstrated that the democratic
process is vitally alive for Jewish and Arab men and
women equally — something which cannot be said for

a single Arab state. Incidentally, it should be of
interest to note that Arab Nazareth elected a com-
munist mayor in the municipal elections held recent-
ly throughout Israel. He is one of the seven Arab
members in the present Knesset (Parliament).
As in the United States, every municipality, and
Nazareth's upper and lower sectors are both inde-
pendent ones, each governed by its own municipal
council like all other cities and towns in Israel, are
accountable for their own educational and social
services, and it is the responsiblity of each to obtain
what is required for its respective community.
With regard to the land, two Israel laws govern the
leasing of land, the "Israel Land Directorate Law"
and the "Law of Villages." Neither of them contains
any discriminatory provisions whatsoever. Land may
be leased by Jew and Arab alike under the same
conditions.
In addition, the right of Arabs to live anywhere in
Israel is legally theirs just as it is the right of Jews.
There is absolute freedom of choice...
As far as education is concerned, Arab boys and
girls attend government schools on exactly the same
basis as do Jewish children — according to the law
which provides for free and compulsory education for
all through the age of 15 — and receive instruction in
Arabic. The following figures demonstrate the prog-
ress in Arab education since the establishment of the
state of Israel: In 1948 there were 46 Arab educational
institutions; in 1974 there were 367. In 1948 there were
11,129 Arab pupils; in 1974 there were 140,719. In 1948
no Arab student passed the matriculation exam-
. inations; in 1974, 600 Arab students passed these
exams. There are more than 1,900 Arabs studying in
Israeli universities in fields which include teaching,
medicine, and law, among others.
In 1948 there were 352 classrooms for Arab stu-
dents. Between 1948 and 1972, more than 3,100 new
classrooms were built exclusively for Arab pupils. It
is the right of every Arab to acquire an education in
Israel from kindergarten through university.
If anything is true it is that Israel is the only
democratic state in that area and the only country
which guarantees human rights to every citizen. It is
the Arab states which deny to their citizens the basic
human rights of freedom of speech and press, which
suppress their minorities (as witness, for example,
the barbarous treatment of the Kurds in Iraq and the
Jews in Syria), which deny their women the right to
vote, which do not allow any dissenting political
parties. Father El-Assal would do well to point his
finger in that direction and give thanks for his rights
and freedoms in the state of Israel...

While the most serious challenge in the
Middle East now revolves around the political
differences, the two basic threats to Israel
presently revolve around tit?. terrorist threats,
which once again place Jewish lives in jeop-
ardy; and the spread of libels, such as those
regarding brutalities in Israel prisons and in
territories administered by Israel. The latter
also is part of the political agonies afflicting the
Middle East. But it has the aspect of treatment
outside the diplomatic sphere. It is something
that demands public knowledge and it is of the
utmost urgency that every effort be made in the
active Jewish community to set the record
straight in disputing the libels. That is why the
spreading of knowledge based on the above-
cited facts is of such great necessity at this
time. The facts are at hand, they should be
utilized in disputing untruths whenever and
wherever they may be uttered.

'From Renaissance to Renasence'

Silberschlag Scrutinizes
Israel's Poets, Novelists

A thorough analysis of Hebrew literary accomplishments undergoes
intense criticism in the second volume of "From Renaissance to
Renascence"(Ktav). Dr. Eisig Silberschlag offers a most interesting
view of shortcomings as well as achievements.
While the author goes into detail in dealing with the works of
Samuel Joseph Agnon, the first and only Israeli Hebrew writer to win
the Nobel Prize in Literature, Chaim Hazaz, Yiru Zevi Gruenberg,
Nathan Alterman, Yehuda Amichai and many others who have gained
distinction and whose works have appeared in English translations,
the less known, too, are under scrutiny.
Thus, his work is as much an anthology as it is a critical analysis.
Dr. Silberschlag goes into detail to show how the new generation of
Israeli writers was concerned with the wars, the Arab problem, the
way of life that effects Israelis.
Liberty and the search for freedom and the economic pressures, as
well as the issues affecting the Ashkenazi-Sephardi confrontations,
make the Israeli author notably involved in the problems life creates
for the reborn nation. Naturally, liberty is of concern.
It is the limitations that concern Silberschlag the critic, and his
"Postlude - provides the basics for his view that Israeli writers have
fallen short of genius. He states:
"Hundred years of creative effort in the Land of Israel have
produced a literature which reflects with increasing adequacy but
with a dearth of brilliance or genius the great events of the century—
discovery of the neighboring Arab and the Arabized Jewry of the
Orient; reorientalization Of Hebrew literature; genuine and sham
socialism in the rural cooperative; tension between the collective and
individual will on the the wars with Turks, British and Arabs; the
involuntary militarization of the country's population; the Holocaust,
the liberation of the Middle East, the re-establishment of a Jewish
state; and last, but not least, detheologization of the land and
landscape in the Land of Israel.
"Not a single novelist of the stature of a Kafka, Mann, or
not a poet of emotional and intellectual sublimity like Rilke, Yeats or
Valery and not an inventive dramatist of new techniques and scopes
like Strindberg, Beckett or Brecht graces the hundred-year-old
literature in the Land of Israel. The eternal themes of life and death, '
love and hate, peace and war, nature and man, man and God in their
intricate inter-relationship have not been invested with articulation
that has a ring of the eternal. The exhilarating reconquest of the
Palestinian landscape in all its rich variety instead of the monotonous
repetition of biblical place-names. the building of a socialist milieu in
the form of rural cooperatives, the bitter strife against the indigenous
Arab — these major themes were reflected and refracted by men of
talent in the novel and in the poetry of Israel. But genius, the liber-
ating power of genius is missing."
Nevertheless, the products as analyzed reveal creativity and a
deepening of interest in the literary figures who are gaining attention
on a scale larger than the mere Israeli. The Silberschlag volume is
therefore a valuable factor in providing appreciation for the immen-
sity of a comparatively young but growing literature emanating from
the young writers, the poets and the novelists.