A*: 72 Friday, April 14, 1918 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Arab Skill, Jewish Technology in Gaza Wicker Works By PAUL HIRSCHFIORN (Special to The Jewish News) (Editor's note: The au- thor is public relations director at the Technion.) ak GAZA— Near the low flame of a Bunsen burner sit several men, weaving wicker and bending bamboo into pieces of furniture in much the same way as their forebears did. In generations past, the product of this labor was sold at roadsides, in small shops, or from the back of open trucks. Today, with the help of modern technol- Pivco, who immigrated ogy and business methods, to Israel from France this same hand-made furni- while still a child, was re- ture is a prized export item. turning from a trip to The know-how needed to Gaza a few years ago bring this about has been when he first visualized provided by Ilan Pivco, a the possibility of a joint 30-year-old graduate of the effort with Gaza resi- Technion — Israel Institute dents. of Technology. For more "The whole thing began than two years he has set an during a discussion between example of Israel-Arab in- myself and a friend. We pas- dustrial cooperation in the sed many Arabs along the Gaza Strip; in the future, it road, selling wicker furni- could serve as a model for ture. We said. 'their similar undertakings with techniques are so good, but our Arab neighbors. the design is so obviously lacking.' " The conversation soon ended, but the idea re- mained in Pivco's mind. As a Technion-trained ar- chitect, he began to imagine the possibilities of combin- ing wicker materials and traditional handcrafting with modern industrial methods and designs. "Finally, two years ago, I decided it was worthwhile to try to do something about it," he says. Pivco and his foreman discuss production. Pivco returned to Gaza. He talked with several Arab experts in this field. He explained his new de- signs to them. A work- shop was set up. Pivco opened his own retail shop, Gazebo, on Tel Av- iv's Dizengoff St. And he began to study the export possibilities. In order to make this family-style business into a thriving export industry, new working methods were needed. While the tradi- tional ways of making the furniture were fine in some ways, in others they were much too time consuming, Pivco says. "Some things, like making a connection through wrapping with bamboo, must be done by hand," he said. "What machine could do such beautiful work? But others, like the bending of the bam- boo, consume a dispropor- tionately long amount of time." New techniques were de- veloped. A new production line was introduced into the Gaza Strip. Pivco continues to work at solving other problems of this budding industry. For aid in this, he has turned to other Techn- ion graduates. And he will ask the Technion itself for help. The result of Pivco's en- deavor is a strikingly new st) e of wicker furniture, cot bining the modern with the traditional. His designs an modular, and every- thi g is "L" shaped. They car be folded up and easily tra sported or stored — tak- ing into account the space lim Cations of the modern apa tment. The Jerusalem visit last year of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat set Pivco to thinking of a bright future of cooperation with Egypt, just a short camel ride away from Gaza. "Since Sadat's visit, I've thought a lot about the possibilities of cooperation," he says. "I feel I can make a contribution to industry in Egypt." One must build around the traditional skills, rather than immediately introduc- ing heavy industry to the Arab world, he explains. Workers using traditional methods in Pivco's Gaza wicker factory. Catholic Leader Tells Concern for Survival of Jewish, Brothers (Continued from Page 1) the Times faced up to the facts of life and of the past history of Israel in its heroic effort to sustain itself in peace and freedom behind secure boundaries. Those influential voices in the media and more par- ticularly those at the very top level of our government who deplore the so-called "intransigence" of present Israeli leadership regarding its terribly precarious sec- urity and call upon the Begin government to give the West Bank back to Palestinians are simply not facing up to a number of frightening facts — particu- larly frightening facts to any Israeli who has had his country invaded three times in the last 25 years. These facts should make it clear to any reasoning human being that such a move without safeguards of great mag- nitude could not only jeopardize peace in the Mid- dle East, but world peace it- self. The shocking and ut- terly damaging facts are th- ese: • The PLO would obvi- ously be the new ruling elite of the Paleslinkn government of the West Bank. The PLO is, unfor- tunately, still deemed by many governments and the UN as the authentic voice of the Palestinians. Arafat was welcomed to the UN with a pistol on his hip by a majority of its members (not the U.S., thank God) who went on to vote overwhelmingly to damn Zionism as the equivalent of racism — a clear indication of the vast, worldwide extent of anti-Semitism. • The West Bank under PLO police state domina- tion, if not total dictator- ship, would very soon be- come a Soviet- dominated, Soviet-armed satellite next door to Is- rael — not unlike Castro's Cuba. When tiny Cuba, a full 90 miles away from our coaicappeared to be threatening the giant, powerful U.S.A. simply by the presence of Soviet arms, although there were no Cuban guerillas invading our country, blowing up our buses or killing our children, we mounted a major military solution to the problem. The West Bank under the PLO would be the equiva- lent of a Soviet-dominated Cuba directly on Israel's border with no 90-mile buf- fer zone and no U.S. fleet or air force standing by to stop the PLO from continual in- cursion. • The PLO was driven from Jordan by King Hus- sein after that Soviet- financed group of skilled terrorists and murderers at- tempted to assassinate him and destroy his govern- ment. They then retreated to Lebanon and proceeded to turn that beautiful country into a battleground between Muslims and Christians. The Lebanese Christians responded bravely, but few Christians elsewhere pro- tested — indeed, Christians and supporters of democ- racy worldwide were dis- gracefully silent, not unlike the 1930s when Hitler was on the march. The PLO went on to virtually destroy that country and demolish the lovely city of Beirut. Is not the lesson clear? With the PLO occupying the entire West Bank, would not its next victim be Israel? The New York Times editorial of March 26th admitted the PLO might continue its violent assault on Israel, since the PLO, to use its own words, "might not be able to control all the forces allied to it." This, of course, is the under- statement of the year. The leadership of the PLO, which includes Arafat at the top; has never controlled those advocating violence within its own ranks and, indeed, has probably en- couraged them and then disavowed what they did. Having gained a foothold in Lebanon, the PLO made it a base for assaults into Is- rael, funded by the Soviet and armed with Soviet weaponry. Does not the per- formance of this group in Lebanon make it clear as to what their leaders would do once safely ensconced on the West Bank? Chamberlain's capitula- tion to Hitler gave him sanction to attack everyone of the countries adjoining Germany; any sanction of a PLO-governed West Bank Palestinian enclave would give Arafat the same right to violate every Judeo- Christian and, indeed, Mus- lim, tenet of human decency and human rights. • The most recent mad- ness of the PLO in killing 33 people and injuring 76 in a sneak attack upon a public bus is but one of 14 such PLO attacks in the past eight years. Israelis cannot easily forget the assault in an El Al passenger terminal in Athens in 1969, the kil- lings at Lod Airport in 1972, the cold-blooded murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games, the killings in 1974 in two apartment houses and a school, the murder in a Tel Aviv hotel and the bombing in a crowded Jerusalem square in 1975, the explo- sion of a booby-trapped motorcycle on a main thoroughfare and the explo- sion of a loaded suitcase at Ben-Gurion Airport in 1976, and that same year the hijacking of 104 people held hostage in Uganda until Israeli commandos liberated them. To speak of establishing a Palestinian state next door to Israel to be headed by such murderers is sheer madness. The leadership core of such a government would be a group of murder- ers whose major objective would be the mass assassi- nation of the Israeli people, just as Hitler's avowed pur- pose was the elimination of all Jews in Europe. • Every thinking Ameri- can must be aware of the re- lentless Soviet pressure in the Middle East, but too few Americans appear to realize that it is our (U.S.) arms and Israel's guts, to put it bluntly, that have pre- vented and continue to pre- vent a Soviet takeover of the whole Middle East. Israel is the one bulwark against Soviet aggression in the Middle East, a point too little emphasized in c 3CUS- sing U.S.-Israel rel: ions. All Americans shoe d be grateful to the bra e Is- raelis for their resists ice to the continual inroad ; and pressures of the Sc viet- armed and often Sc viet- directed Arab forces sur- rounding Israel. The outrage and dee,) sor- row of many Americans at the loss of their sons in Vie- tnam is not dissimilar to the anguish and deep grief and equally poignant outrage of the Israelis over their chil- dren's ultimate sacrifice. Indeed, it is the sons and daughters of Israel who are now giving their flesh and blood to keep the Soviet at bay, to insure the freedom and peace and sovereignty of Israel, and they deserve the applause of the entire Free World. When our government calls upon Israel to rely upon the UN for its pro- tection, it should re- member this fact: Israel finds it hard to forget how it was "protected" by the UN in 1967. Sud- denly Egypt ordered the UN so-called "peace force" to vacate the Sinai, and following the UN's withdrawal, Egypt faced Israel in the Sinai Desert with over 1,200 Soviet- made tanks and accom- - panying troops, more tank forces than the combined tank forces of Generals Montgomery and Rommel when they faced one another at the historic battle of El Ala- mein in October 1942. Although Israel in a lightning stroke de- molished those tanks, van- quished the Egyptian troops and won the Six-Day War, the so-called "protection" of the UN forces is not readily forgotten. The Syrian artillery from the Golan Heights shelling kibutzim in the Israeli val- leys below was likewise de- molished during that Six- Day War; if the guerilla forces of the PLO, however, seized control of the West Bank hills, Israel's coastal plain below would simi- larly be rained with artil- lery fire and its villages left wide open to terrorist at- tacks. As the Times' March 24th editorial said, the crux of the entire problem is: "the return of captured territory to all who grant Israel rec- ognition, genuine security and real peace." Yet, neither the Times nor any of the other influential voices in the media and in gov- ernment has suggested any credible- means of guarante- eing Israel the necessary safeguards for the true peace it so fervently desires and prays for. As the minimal first step toward achieving such a peace, let all to whom cap- tured territory is to be re- turned first recognize Israel and her right to exist. Then let the U.S. and others who truly believe in democracy and freedom take the neces- sary stringent military in- ternational law enforce- ment steps to insure Israel's "genuine security" and "real peace" and Israel will no longer be intransigent but will welcome such an accord.