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Friday, July 11, 1980

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THE DETROIT ',1EliSH ✓ DEWS

Purely Commentary

Greetings to the Delegates of the Republican
National Convention . . . Peaceniks' Personality
Contest Could Well Lead to National Suicide

By Philip
Slomovitz

Hearty Greetings to the Republican National Convention and Its Delegates

All eyes and ears will be on the sessions in downtown Detroit this coming week. The
televised shows will be watched, the views of the Republican politicians will be listened
to. While tongue-in-cheek will be suspected, much of what will be uttered will be treated
with respect.
After all, Gerald Ford will be there. Why shouldn't his experience serve as a guide for
the Republican Party? Henry Kissinger will elicit antagonism as much as respect. In its
totality, the national convention is certain to be a great show.
The problems confronting this nation are on the surface, and nothing can be hidden.
Therefore the aftermath of this convention, after the Democratic sessions in New York, is
certain to produce in November the test to which the American people are subjected
quadrennially. In 1980 it is more challenging than ever.
The candidates are judged as controlling the keys to the chambers where the
problems plaguing an anguished world will be under scrutiny: It is not this land alone
that will be tested by the results of the conventions and the election to follow in
November. The entire world feels the effects of decision that are vital in the deliberations

commencing in Detroit on Monday.
This, in the words of Wendell Willkie, is, after all, One World. Therefore, the
responsibility that rests with the delegates, even if they are primarily concerned with
candidates and personalities. Issues and answers are on the agenda. Even a platform
which people have come to view with a lack of confidence could serve as a guide for the
actions to follow in the four years of the candidates' services to the people of this land.
Politics and economy, social services and the rights inherited by Americans in what
has become an inerasable American legacy, dealings with foreign nations, duties to the
objectives for peace for mankind — what a collection of duties for delegates assembled at
a national political convention!
The American way of treating so vital an event as a national political convention is
to view the delegates with respect, to welcome them and to view with some seriousnPc
the important assemblage in a great American city.
It is in this spirit that this greeting is extended to the Republican National Cony:.
tion.

An Appeal to Reason, for Avoidance of Confusions and Comforting Scapegoating

They keep mobilizing, all those who, pompous about
the fame they have attained in various fields of academic
and other fields of endeavor, glorying in having held impor-
tant positions in Jewish movements, now advocate peace
with concessions territorially and sentimentally in the
Arab-Israel confrontations.
They speak of peace as if it were a new term. They
overlook the basic fact that Shalom among Jews and
Salaam in the Arab ranks is a salutation that has been
perpetuated and is resounding popularly in non-Hebraic
and non-Islamic ranks.
There is, therefore, misrepresentation. Peace is the
goal of all Israelis, all Jews. But there are always obstacles
to peace, and on Jewish matters they become unbridgeable
— for an obvious reason: it continues to be one-sided.
There is genius in Jewish ranks for everything, except
the solving of the problems which keep reverberating as
prejudicial -towards Jews whenever bigotry can gain an
upper hand. The peace advocates who have been signing all
kinds of letters addressed to Prime Minister Menahem
Begin and his associates in the Israel government, and in
letters to newspapers, have not ceased emerging as the
Quixotes. They tell Jews to make peace and are yet to
succeed in lining up a single Arab group, even a single Arab
individual, to second their, motions and to echo their appe-

als to Jews to do lots of abandoning with evidence of not an
iota of comfort for Jews in an assurance that peace will be
for all, not in submission by Jews.
On paper, in editorials criticizing Israel, in letters to
newspapers, in sanctimony, the assertions by the notables,
who emerge as beggars for peace without response, end as
appeasements without reason. The repetitions only cause
trouble. They strike at the very heart of Israel because they
mislead and becloud the issues. They accomplish nothing of
a positive nature.
Jews are a good element to appeal to, and the ranks of
the peace advocates can gain support, because the need for
an end to dangers to Israel is so great. But there must be a
definition for peace based in realism. One-sidedness is like
the hypocritical talk about even-handedness which was
rejected in earlier American administrations when there
was talk about it in dealing with the Arab-Jewish issues. It
is good and proper to be even-handed, if both sides can
concede to cooperation. When one side talks about peace
and on the other hand there is the threat that the peaceniks
are due for destruction, then it is time to take stock and to
expose those who would appease without a single thought
about cooperative efforts for peace.
Anwar Sadat alone, among all the Arabs extends a
hand of friendship. It is questionable at times, but it does

accede to the Camp David decisions to continue the talks.
He talks, he called Menahem Begin to wish him a speedy
recovery from his latest illness. Who else has made such a
gesture in Arab ranks? Yet the Jewish appeasers are shout-
ing accusations, giving the impression they have the power
to attain peace — if Israel cringes and keeps yielding.
Perhaps what is advocated as reasonable in the yield-
ing is proper and may eventually become acceptable. But
negotiations must continue for that purpose, and the
peaceniks would deny that. They want a one-sided submis-
sion by Israel, and Israel cannot submit as long as it could
mean suicide.
What the peaceniks have turned out to be is Begin-
haters. Their campaign often sounds like a political haran-
gue to force an election in Israel. Begin's opposition should
speak out, because it is evident that submission to suicide is
Impossible and no distortion of the term peace — shalom! —
will ever compel acceptance of such policies.
There must be a return to reason in the unfortunate
developments. Suicide is ruled out. A quest for a scapegoat
is abominable. Failure to secure support for peace only
strengthens the need for security, and the peaceniks may
be undermining it if they persist in a lack of realism and in
turning the urgency for peace into a personality contest.

Non-Negotiable Jerusalem: The Unheeded Admonition in an Atmosphere of the Unconscionable

•

IfI forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand
forget her cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the
roof of my mouth, if I remember thee not, if I set
not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy.

Psalms 137:5

This is one of a score Of condemnations that greeted the UN action. Regrettably,
these protests fall on deaf ears. Therefore, at least the Jewish supporters of Israel should
not fall into a trap of giving comfort to an enemy by encouraging efforts to wrest the Holy
City of Jerusalem from the Jewish sovereign state. There should be great caution never
to permit even the very suggestion of submission to dividing Jerusalem and ending the
justice that accompanies the present status of a Jerusalem United, never submitting to
the indignities that existed in an era when invading rulers sought to make Jerusalem
Judenrein.

Jerusalem shall be called the City of Truth.

Israelis negotiating with the Egyptians, conferring with American spokesmen, keep
declaring that everything is negotiable but not Jerusalem.
It falls on deaf ears and those who, undoubtedly sincere but certainly unrealistically,
give comfort to the enemy with so-called peace declarations, add fuel to the smoldering
fires by encouraging those who now demand that Israel abandon Jerusalem as well as
much other territory. The enemies of Israel, and their ranks are growing, would have
Jerusalem declared occupied territory. They ignore historic truths. They would annihi-
late all the practicalities which affirm the importance of an undivided Jerusalem, as well
as the factual legacies which link Jerusalem with Israel as a state and Israel as a nation,
with the Jewries of the world.
When Jordan took control of the Old City of Jerusalem in 1918, the Jews who had
lived there for centuries were driven out, their synagogues were destroyed, cemeteries
were desecrated, tombstones were used to build latrines. When Israel regained the Old
City and linked it with New Jerusalem, religious freedom was restored and all faiths
have complete freedom of conducting their religious affairs.
Ignoring these truths, the UN Security Council keeps adopting resolutions con-
demning Israel. The latest of these indecencies, showing how unconscionable spokesmen
for many nations can be, aroused a storm of protest. One of the condemnations was an
American Jewish Committee statement which struck at the very root of the outrageous
condition in the UN, stating:
The United Nations Security Council has ground out still another in its
dreary litany of predictably one-sided resolutions attacking Israel, this
time on that most sensitive of subjects, Jerusalem. One can hardly imagine
a procedure less likely to promote Middle East peace than this constant UN
excoriation and harassment aimed not just at Israel but at the entire Camp
David peace process.
When voting in the Security Council, the United States quite properly
declared that it does not intend to be diverted from our course of negotia-
tions by a series of actions and reactions resulting in resolutions in this
Council which do not contribute to a negotiated peace."
An excellent position — but one whose force and meaning immediately
were dissipated as the U.S. abstained on the Jerusalem resolution rather
than casting the veto it should have. Only when the U.S. makes known that
it will regularly vote against any UN resolution meant to diminish or impede
Camp David negotiations will its opponents realize the U.S. stands full force
behind Camp David. Only such a course can lead these opponents to con-
clude that they should be joining, not going against, the peace process the
U.S. helped create.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Zechariah 8:3

Psalms 122:6

Jerusalem shall be built again as His house unto all the ages . . . the
gates with sapphire and emerald, and all the walls with precious stone. The
towers shall be built with gold, . . . the streets shall be paved with carbun-
cles, . . . and all her houses shall say Hallelujah.
Apocrypha: Tibit, 13:15-18

Jerusalem-. . has been and will remain for ever the capital of the
Jewish people.
David Ben-Gurion, Dec. 3, 1947

All possible winds blow in Jerusalem. It is said that every wind before
going where it listeth comes to Jerusalem to prostrate itself before the Lord.
Bertinoro, letter to his father, 148F

Jerusalem at midday in midsummer is a city of stone in a land of iron
with a sky of brass.
Disraeli, 1847

Jerusalem will become the metropolis of the world.
Exodus 23:10

Ten measures of beauty came down to earth: nine
were taken by Jerusalem, and one by the rest of the world.
Talmud: Kiddushin, 49b

In the din and tumult of the age, . . . the still small
voice of Jerusalem remains our only music.
Israel Zangwill, Voice of Jerusalem, 1921

That which the Hebrew call the City of God is
Jerusalem, literally, "Vision of Peace."
Philo