Truisms: Spirituality and Persecution as Factors in Survival of the Jews THE JEWISH NEWS A Weekly Review Commentary, Page 2 of Jewish Events Historic Anniversary: Jewish Agency at Fifty Israeli Arabs' Animosity Editorials, Page 4 VOL. LXXV, No. 16 17515 W. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075 424-8833 $12.00 Per Year: This Issue 30c June 22, 1979 High Court Halts Alon Moreh Construction for Thirty Days A Jewish Bullfighter Is the Subject of Archival Spanish Anti-Semitic Poem By REUVEN FREED The Israeli Supreme Court ordered a halt Wednesday to the JERUSALEM (JTA) construction of Alon Moreh, the controversial Gush Emunim settlement near Nablus and gave the government 30 days to show cause why the settlement should not be removed and the Arab lands expropriated for it returned to the owners. The temporary injunction was issued after a panel of three justices heard testimony in an appeal by 17 Arabs from the Nablus area against the seizure of their land. The court forbade any new settlers from taking up residence at the site while the injunction is in effect. Although the court's ruling has doubtlessly embarrassed the government, Israeli legal experts expressed the opinion that the state eventually will prevail over the appellants by correcting the defective legal procedures by which the land was confiscated. The appeal was based on the contention that the government's claim that the settlement is necessary for security reasons was false and that the land-owners never received a legally valid notice of seizure. The most dramatic highlight of Wednesday's hearing was the testimony by two reserve generals,Haim Bar-Lev, a former chief of staff, and Matityahu Peled, flatly contradicting a statement signed by the current chief of staff, Gen. Raphael Eytan, which claimed that Alon Moreh was-of strategic importance to Israel's defense. Eytan signed the statement Tuesday and it was read to the court Wednes- day. He claimed that the hill on which Alon Moreh is located controls communications in the Samaria region of the West Bank and therefore is vital to security. But Bar-Lev, who was chief of staff after the Six-Day War and is presently secretary of the Labor Party, declared in a written statement that Alon Moreh does not contribute to the security of the state because it is located far from any major roads and is in the heart of a heavily Arab-populated region. He stated further that, in the event of war, the settlement will not be able to defend the road to Nablus and that there is a military base not far away that controls the network of roads around Nablus. The same view was expressed by Peled who is a leader of the Shelli faction. Their statements were presented under oath by Elias Khouri, an Israeli Arab attorney representing the appellants. Such was not the case with Eytan's testimony which was introduced only as a written statement. This aroused the ire of Justice Moshe Landau who expressed astonishment that the state did not find it necessary to bring the chief of staff to testify. "With all due respect for the chief of staff, there is no special legal procedure for him," Landau said. He noted that the appellants questioned the honesty of the security — - BEERSHEBA — A Jewish bullfighter? The very words themselves seem to clash. • Now, a historian at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has un- earthed a manuscript from medieval Spain which not only shows that the notion was as improbable to them as it is to us, but which also sheds some hitherto unknown light on the history of the venerable sport. While browsing through the Egerton Collection of the British Museum some time ago, Dr. Elena Lourie, a medieval Hispanist, discovered a docu- ment — actually, just a sheet of paper — which was used to bind the last will and testament of one Don Vasco Ramirez de Ribera, bishop of Coria and grand inquisitor for the provinces of Aragon and Castille. On the paper is scrawled 54 lines of an incomplete poem, author unknown, about a mythical bullfight involving Jews as both spectators and participants. The tone of the poem, which Dr. Lourie estimates very tentatively was written sometime between 1485 and 1489, is mildly anti-Semitic, but hardly blistering. "It's a burlesque, actually," says Dr. Lourie, an Oxford University graduate and current chairman of BGU's history department. "Such satires were common in 15th Cen- tury Spain and some of them were vicious diat- ribes. What makes this one unique is that the pro- tagonists are fighting a bull, or at least trying to." Unfortunately, the first part of the poem has been lost. As it stands, it begins with an unnamed Jew timorously asking: Should the bull come What should I do? May it please God that he does not come With my little Jaco (a Spanish-Jewish name) Ho ho ho ho! Fuesenos el toro Oue le farre yo? Plega al dio que no me tope con mi filio Jaco Ho ho ho ho! The rest are fairly confident of their courage,' especially the "Jewish lads, valiant as they are," (Continued on Page 12) , Klutznick Pleads for Jewish Unity Devoid of Partisanship (See Story, Page 11) S., Romania Criticized in Trifa Case WASHINGTON (JTA) — The governments of both the United States and Romania have been criticized for failure to follow the proper judicial procedures bearing on the prosecution of Valarian Trifa, Archbishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church in America. Tlie former leader of the Romanian Fascist Iron Guard's youth division, accused of responsibility for the massacre of Jews in Bucharest in 1941, faces hearings in the Federal District Court in Detroit, beginning July 30, over the truth of the statements he made when he applied for U.S. citizenship more than two decades ago. The U.S. Department of Justice charged last week that the Romanian government is not cooperat- ing in supplying witnesses and is not permitting American officials access to its archives to unearth evidence against Trifa. Romania's Chief Rabbi, Moses Rosen, expressed apprehension, on a visit to Washington last week, that U.S. officials are disposed to put the blame in the "wrong place" in the event that the U.S. prosecution, 22 years after Trifa's naturalization, should fail to prove its case in Detroit. Rosen said he presented - evidence against Trifa 17 years ago. He also supplied statements to Radio Free Europe last week for broadcast to Romania and left a deposition at the Justice Department. Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith expressed concern in a letter to Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu over reports that his government would provide only slight assistance to the U.S. Justice Department. The U.S. proceedings against Trifa are in two stages. The Detroit case is an attempt to revoke his citizenship on grounds that his entry into the U.S. from Italy in 1950 was illegal because his claim at that (Continued on Page 5) (Continued on Page 6) Birmingham Temple, Rabbi Are Rebuked kir Providing Platform for PLO Defender A resolution adopted last -week by the Rabbinical Commis- sion of the Jewish Community Council contains a rebuke to the Birmingham Temple and its rabbi. Viewing the recent address at the Birmingham Temple as injurious to Israel and as an affront to Jewish dignity the resolu- tion, conveyed to Rabbi Sherwin Wine in a letter signed by Rabbi Israel Halpern, president of the Rabbinical Commission of the Council, calls for an apology from those who gave a platform to journalist I.F. Stone. The letter, dated June 14, addressed to Rabbi Wine under Rabbi Halpern's signature, follows: "The Rabbinical Commission of Metropolitan Detroit, while respecting the right of organizations and individuals to espouse any viewpoint, also reaffirms the responsibility of the rabbinate and the institutions which they represent to preserve the dignity of the Jewish people and to protect the welfare of the state of Israel. "The lecture by I. F. Stone at Birmingham Temple on June 4 was an affront to Jewish dignity and injurious to the welfare of the people of Israel. "When voices of hatred and defamation come from our own midst we ought not remain silent, for to do so is to become the victim of calumny. This is what leads us to protest this shameful event, in which a Jewish forum was provided for untruth and misrepresentation which receivedwide circulation in the Detroit area. "For the above reason we hereby censure the Birmingham (Continued on Page 7)