THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Friday, 114 31, 1181 Purely Commentary By Philip Slomovitz A Tragedy in the Heart of Lebanon and the Perpetrators of Hatreds Who Are the Cause of Horrors for Which Israel Is Being Needled, Her Prime Minister a Scapegoat of Haters Panic-Stricken Critics of Israel Must Look at the Record in Latest Sad Occurrence For 33 years, civilians on Israel's borders with the Arab states were attacked terroristically. Their homes were shelled, mostly with weapons provided by the Soviet Union as well as Libya and Saudi Arabia. There were no condemnations of the in- humanities. The fact that most of the victims were children didn't stir much anger. Even the Vatican was consistently silent. There was a change of heart in the last two weeks. Under compusion to prevent the spread of the terror that emanated from the haters of Israel headquartered in Beirut, there were many, hundreds, of civilian victims. It was a tragedy widely deplored. It also provided heydays for the media, and the Vatican as well, in the opportunities provided for them to needle Israel. It became an occasion for condemnation, for the searching of a . scapegoat. One was immediately available. His name is Menahem Begin. Out of hatred for this man who would not permit his leg being pulled, who counters his interviewers with sentiments he will not abandon, who deploys weapons when he speaks for his people, advice-providers dominated newspaper space, editorial columns, radio and television time, with accusations which served to incite rather than to clarify a tragic situation. Some Jews joined the affray and utilized the unhappy events to vent their bitterness at the scapegoat. Such elements belong to the panic-stricken. They have no patience for proper judgment based on the time elements that contribute toward clarification of issues. Realities now are coming home to roost. The loss of so many lives is cause for deep concern and great anguish. The causes that led to the attacks on arsenals aimed at Israel's destruction are inerasable. Realism dictates acknowledgement of existing facts. There has never been an apol- ogy for the attacks on Israeli civilians. There is yet to be negated the threat to Israel's very existence. Therefore, there must be a concession also to Israel's determined will to resist that aim. The casualties resulting from such defensive methods must be attributed to those in the Arab ranks who seek an end to Israel's existence. A realistic analysis of the occurrences as well as the regrettable accompanying loss of life appears in the current issue of Near East Report. It commences by quoting the "Voice of Palestine" Radio: . The heavy rocket and artillery units of the (Palestinian) Joint Forces continued to shell Israeli military positions in northern Palestine from the very same positions the Israelis claimed to have destroyed. The Joint Forces launched heavy rocket and artillery attacks yesterday (July 18) on Israeli positions at Nahariya, Misgav Am, She'ar Yashuv, Dan, Eshkol, and Kiryat Shmona. The same units launched another today on the Israeli positions in Upper Galilee and inflicted heavy casualties. Thereupon, in an editorial, "The Raids in Lebanon," Near East Report presents a challenge to world public opinion, declaring: The world expects Israel and the Jews to behave better than anyone else. T _ o suffer long and in silence. To turn the other cheek. And, in fact, if to examine the long historical record of the Jewish community of Palestine and Israel in the face of concerted Arab hostility, rejection and deadly violence, . a history of patient Jewish self-defense — with only rare moments of zealous excess — would unfold. How long and to what extent must this community forbear? And how much explanation would suffice, ever? Day after day, night after night, year in, year out — PLO rockets, rifles and artillery shell Israeli towns and farms — and the world ignores it. Howls of outrage arise only when Israelis retaliate. The double standard is also evident in the equation of Israel's actions and the PLO's. If the PLO can be called terrorist, so the argument runs, then Israel's bombing of apartment buildings is not less so. But the simple truth is that Israel attacks only military targets and arsenals — mostly Soviet-supplied and Libyan-bought — and if civilians are "tragically struck down, it is only because the PLO deliberately, with callous cruelty, emplaces its military sites within residential buildings and areas thus ensuring the death of their own innocents, and guaranteeing a worldwide hue and cry. The PLO, on the other hand, has virtually never assaulted Israeli mili- tary targets. It has specialized in the tilling and wounding of civilians, and the destruction of hospitals, homes, schools, buses, passenger airplanes. This glaring truth reveals the most fundamental position of the PLO and its Arab supporters toward the Jewish presence in the region: Any- thing goes. All is legitimate in their war — for Jewish civilians, even chil- dren, are explicitly seen as invading soldiers, and their mere presence in peaceable farms and cities, everywhere and anywhere in Palestine, is ipso facto defined as foreign intrusion and theft, and alien occupation. In the endless cycle of retaliatory killing which this Arab war sets in train, one thing is tragically clear: innocent people are killed on all sides. The lives of Arab and Israeli children are equally precious in the sight of God and man. This is the teaching of Judaism as of Christianity and Islam, and of the moral law of all civilization. No words, then, in this latest chapter of the tragedy, can remotely convey the compassion we feel for the innocent lives devastated in Beirut and in Nahariya. When will the vicious circle of violence stop? Only when Arab rejection turns to acceptance. This is, indeed, a challenge to the hypocrisy shared by the media, by the notables on the New York Times Op-Ed pages, by those who ignored the tens of thousands of Lebanese lives lost in a struggle for that nation's survival, but have jumped on Israel's back when that nation utilized the right to protect life and liberty on her borders and within her land. Manifold Rescue Activities of HIAS Portrayed in Memorable, Record on Centennial capees from persecution and humiliations in their search for refuge in this country. The past decade causes doubts in many minds, con- sternation in many hearts, over the conflicts generated by the Russian Jewish emigration trends. Because HIAS conceded to the pref- erences of those Russian Jews who preferred the United States, Canada, Au- stralia and England, HIAS was held to blame for not insisting upon Israel as the eventual landmark for those leaving the USSR. The HIAS position is not entirely denigrated by these protests and the right of all escapees to choose the haven lends defense for the HIAS position. New arrivals at the The dispute over the Rus- HIAS project in sian Jews' attitudes in no Beersheva draw water in way diminishes the great 1946. role of HIAS as an historic factor in providing assis- tance to the multitudes who sought and acquired a HIAS — Hebrew Immig- rant Aid Society — for many a generation repre- sented the most glorious in the human efforts to assist the hundreds of thousands — the millions!! — of es- North African Jews disembark in Haifa in 1962. Jewish refugees from Egypt receive vaccina- tions in Rio de Janeiro in 1957. A Soviet Jewish emi- grant is reunited with her family at New York's Kennedy Airport. haven of comfort in this country. HIAS' great contribu- tions to succor for the op- pressed constitute an in- erasable chapter in humanism. Wherever one turned in the century of its services now being re- corded, there was relief, comfort, a great measure of hope for a better future for those in flight from tyranny. A HIAS pamphlet de- scribing the movement's ac- tivities, 1880 to 1980, is a most revealing document. It portrays HIAS activities in behalf of refugees through the years and it shows that the organization's head- quarters were not limited to New York, that branches functioned in Japan, in European capitals, in areas where escapees from Nazism were assisted in their migrations to Israel. There was a HIAS instal- lation in Beersheva. Arri- vals of survivors from Nazism are shown on their arrival in New York in 1946. Another example is the photo of Hungarian Jews who fled Hungary into Austria. Imagine the extent of ac- tivities indicated in a photo of Jewish refugees from Egypt arriving in Rio de Janeiro in 1957! A bit later there was the arrival of North African Jewish refugees arriving in Haifa, in 1962. Even the Cuban exodus is portrayed, in the arrival of refugees from Cuba in Miami. Then there are the illus- trated portrayals of Jews arriving in this country from the USSR. . Few chapters in Ameri- can Jewish history are as impressive as those of HIAS. The story is best told in the photos reproduced here describing the movement's manifold activities. They merit the commendation due the movement, the appreciation of Jewry and of all who are interested in human values and they in- vite heartiest greetings to HIAS for its historic role now emphasized on its cen- tennial. —P.S. The first 800 concentration camp survivors to ar- rive in New York after World War II are shown corn- ing into port aboard the SS Marine Flasher in May 1946. A-400f44 **4 Cuban refugees are shown in 1963 learning English in Miami. – - Jews flee across the border to Austria during the 1956 Hungarian uprising.