20 Friday, August 1, 1981 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS PLO Gunrunner Protected by Vatican Capucci Filling European Press With PLO Propaganda By LIZA PALMIERI- BILLIG ROME (JTA) — The Ita- lian Jewish community is seriously disturbed by the Vatican's inability or un- willingness to restrain Msgr. Hilarion Capucci, the former Melchite Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, who has emerged of late as the foremost propagandist SHERMAN FRIED & SHERMAN ATTORNEYS and COUNSELORS • Real Estate • Personal Injury • Criminal • Corporate • Divorce • Traffic ALL OTHER LEGAL MATTERS No Charge For First Consultation *AFFILIATED WITH ZIONIST ORGANIZATIONS 354-0230 for the Palestine Liberation Organization in Italy if not all of Western Europe. Despite the Vatican's pledge that he would not be allowed to engage in activi- ties "detrimental to the state of Israel," Capucci is currently touring Italian cities championing the Palestinian cause and con- demning Israel. His flair for self- dramatization has gained him immense exposure in the press, radio and televi- sion. The media regularly refers to him as "The Vati- can's ambassador for Mideast affairs." Capucci was convicted in Israel on Dec. 9, 1974 of gun-running for Palesti- nian terrorists and sen- tenced to 12 years' im- prisonment. But he was released in 1977 by President Ephraim Kat- zir in response to an ap- AVERY J. MURAV, R.Ph. D.D.S., P.C. is pleased to announce the relocation of his office and his association with SIMON HARRISON, D.D.S. in the practice of FAMILY DENTISTRY 28200 Southfield Rd. Lathrup Village, Mi. 48076 557-6767 Extended office hours By appointment • peal by Pope Paul VI. The Papal intervention was accompanied by written assurances from the Vatican that Capucci would be restricted thereafter to pastoral duties away from the Middle East. But after a brief stint in South America, Capucci brazenly violated the Vati- can's solemn undertaking by attending PLO meetings in Syria and Lebanon and resuming his propaganda activities on behalf of the terrorist organization. Pro- te;ts from Jewish commu- nity leaders have been to no avail. His Palestinian connec- tions apparently convinced church authorities that Capucci could be "useful" in Vatican attempts to mediate the Iranian hos- tage crisis last year. He "in- tervened" on behalf of the American hostages without success but with considera- ble publicity for himself and criticism from some of the hostages. Later, he played a role in arranging an audience for Farouk Kaddoumi, the PLO's foreign affairs spokesman, with the Vati- can Secretary of State, Car- dinal Agostino Casaroli. The Jewish community protested vigorously. Last April 1, the vice president and the secre- tary of the Union of Ita- lian Jewish Com- munities, Tullia Zevi and _Alberto Levy, respec- tively, were received by the Vatian Secretary for Public Affairs, Msgr. GIVE YOUR CHILD THE BEST HILLEL DAY SCHOOL EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION JUDAICS SECULAR CALL NOW 851-2394 TO SECURE A PLACE FOR YOUR KINDERGARTEN CHILD FOR FALL 1981 A FEW OPENINGS REMAIN Rabbi Robert Abramson, Headmaster June Weinberg, Executive Director 32200 Middlebelt Road, Farmington Hills, Michigan Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit admits Jewish students of any race, color, national or ethnic origin. its admission and scholarship programs are non-discriminatory. No child will be denied an education at Hillel because of parents inability to pay the full charge. Tuition allowances will continue to be granted based on individual needs. z-T11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111110 HILARION CAPUCCI Achille Silvestrini who acknowledged their pro- test. But the Vatican never denied Capucci's involvement in gaining an audience for the PLO's No. 2 man — a clear _ violation of its promise that he would not be allowed to engage in political activities. Jewish community lead- ers have been trailing Capucci on his propaganda tour. But their letters to the editors are a weak response to the lengthy interviews with Capucci published in the newspapers of Leghorn, Genoa and Padua. His most recent stopover was in Venice at the end of June. He was received there by a committee of local political leaders headed by Carlo Bernini, president of the Venetian regional gov- ernment. Two days of dinners, speeches and press conferences, attended by representatives of the region and the province, were arranged for Capucci by Walid Chazal, head of the PLO office in Rome and Gianfranco Lai, leader at the leftist Partito Demo- cratico di Unita Populare. Capucci states that his ob- jective is to "inform" public opinion on the plight of the Palestinian people and the "PLO program." He insists that his motivation is "reli- gious, not political." But his propaganda line is identical to the most extreme positions of the PLO. In an interview published in the Leghorn daily, Il Tir- reno, on May 24, Capucci contended that Europe must concentrate on "rec- ognizing the inalienable na- tional rights of Palesti- nians, to the return of t refugees to Palestine, to building of an independe Palestinian state and the recognition of the PLO as the only legitimate repre- sentative of the Palestinian people." While Capucci insists that his aim is "peace and brotherly love, particularly on the part of my Jewish brothers," he fails to men- tion the PLO's covenant cal- ling for Israel's destruction. He insists, in fact, that Is-, rael's return to its 1967 bor- ders would be only a first step toward "a re-_ unification into a single Palestinian nation with a democratic, secular state in which three religions can live in peace." Italian Jews are par- ticularly concerned by the way the Italian media accepts Capucci's prop- aganda without question while ignoring his in- volvement with ter- rorists. To overlook his false claims to have been "Archbishop of Jerusalem," a post he created for himself, or to be now the "representa- tive of the Palestinian (Christian) church in exile" is almost farcical. More serious is the resi- due of anti-Israel sentiment Capucci leaves wherever he appears. Italian Jewry is looking to the Vatican to keep Capucci in line but so far there has been no move in that direction. Jewish Languages Decline in USSR: WJC Study Shows LONDON — According to a World Jewish Congress (WJC) study, there has been a sharp decline in the use of Jewish languages, princi- pally Yiddish, in the Soviet Union. Some 14 percent of the country's Jews now name a Jewish language as their mother tongue. These findings are con- tained in a report issued by the WJC's London-based re- search arm, the Institute of Jewish Affairs. According to the report, more than 83 percent of the Jewish popu- lation named "Russian" as their principal language. In nine out of 11 Soviet Republics there was a de- cline in the percentage of Jews citing a Jewish lan- guage as their mother tongue. The exceptions to this trend — the Republics of Uzbekistan and Georgia — are attributed to techni- cal factors. While Yiddish is the most common Jewish language in the USSR there are also several Asian Jewish languages, such as Judeo-Tadzhik. The percentage.of Jews giving the Jewish lan- guage as their mother tongue ranged from a low of nine percent in the Uk- raine to a high of 41 per- cent in the tiny Baltic Re- public of Lithuania among the 11 Republics for which data has been assembled. Ask Even the high figure Lithuania represents a sig- nificant drop from the 62 percent reported some nine years earlier. It is likely that in some regions the linguistic shifts were asso- ciated with demographic change, primarily emigra- tion from the Soviet Union. The study was prepared by Dr. Lukasz Hirszowicz of the institute who analyzed statistics compiled from the Soviet census of 1979 and which have just been made public.