2 Friday, December 25, 1981
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Purely Commentary
The Golan Heights,
the Israeli Scapegoat
and Good Sportsmanship
William Satire, in an essay on the NYTimes Op-Ed
Page, Dec. 17, reviewing world affairs evolving out of the
Polish situation and its effects on the United States, in-
cluded these telling paragraphs:
To counteract the creeping annexation of
Lebanon by Syria, a Soviet client complete with
Russian missile emplacements that U.S. diplo-
macy has not been able to dislodge, Israel an-
nexed the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in
its 1967 attempt to obliterate Israel.
The Reagan Administration reaction to this
nonviolent act is to jion Soviet and third-world
condemnation of Israle, as if its belated recogni-
tion of border realities were actually a threat to
the peace.
This is not a common denominator of media reactions
to what has transpired as a Knesset decision and has in-
vited another condemnation by the UN Security Council.
On the contrary, it is the exception. Nearly all others have
spoken and written with disdain about Israel. They had an
available target and they are still shooting at Menahem
Begin.
But none have really ever properly and effectively
dealt with all the abuses leveled at Israel from Damascus,
Beirut, Amman and an occasional echo even from Cairo.
Even the Vatican seems to be aspiring to opportunities
to shoot at Israel. The Polish Prince now presiding over the
Papacy has not restrained the haters of Israel, even while
his own homeland is being sacrificed by the very enemies
who are knifing Israel from the Kremlin.
There are many Jews who are as misdirected about the
Golan Heights as are the non-Jewish foes of the Jewish
state. It's about time they turned back the pages of recorded
history to recall how Syria was striking at Jewish settle-
ments from the Golan hills, how Israel could no longer
submit to such threats and captured these mountainous
areas, how Syria kept sniping at Israel and joined her worst
enemies with threats to destroy her.
Thusjsrael ascertained that she could never abandon
the security of her settlements established under these
hills, having declared without reservation that Golan re-
mains Israeli territory. The UN Security Council shares
Syria's dislike of such a decision. When did the Security
Council approve of anything Israel ever did?
This being the case, even when it must be admitted
that Israel isn't always correct, that her prime minister
frequently makes declarations that are too blunt, the Golan
issue must not lead people into believing that a small state
amidst so many enemies, in a world atmosphere in which
the echoes from everywhere are dipped in venom, can be
wrong on the score of Golan.
Israel earns some credit for acting courageously, de-
spite the recorded obstructions. True: even her minority
political party is critical of the man who defeated it at the
polls less than a year ago. This minority, in its split ranks,
could have been more consistent. It really does not differ on
the Golan decision. Perhaps at the present time that party's
spokespeople are merely poor sports.
Eroding Friendships: Problems .
Between the U.S. and Israel
and the Need for Solutions
In an analytical discussion of the current American
involvements in foreign matters, James Reston, in an
Op-Ed New York Times article, directed a warning to Is-
rael. In the, process of touching upon many issues, he re-
ferred to the Middle East and stated:
"U.S. officials have been telling Israel not to assume
Washington will go on forever financing policies it op- .
poses."
This is indicative of the growing concerns among Is-
raelis as well as Diaspora Jewries lest a decline in support-
ing forces will seriously affect the Jewish state's role in the
„world. It adds concern over the threatened menacing posi-
tion into which Israel may be forced by the endless threats
to her security.
In his address here to the Allied Jewish Campaign
leadership, the former Assistant Secretary of State for
Near Eastern Affairs, Dr. Joseph Sisco, dealt with great
seriousness with what he termed an increasing erosion in
American attitudes toward Israel which have always been
the friendliest of all countries having cordial relations with
the Jewish state.
• Meanwhile, the already eroded attitudes toward Israel
in the Western world are becoming more aggravating.
Also, the hospitality provided the PLO in Greece and
Austria, and in some Latin American countries, and the
comforting words for the PLO in Great Britain, create an-
xieties that cannot be shunned.
Warnings of Eroding Friendships Must Inspire Greater
Concern in Defense of Existing U.S.-Israel Friendship,
Despite Temporary Setback Created by Golan Decision
Israel's Prime Minister Menahem Begin is often
quoted asserting that in matters that involve Israel's secu-
rity and just historic rights even an effected friendship with
the U.S. will not deter him from his firm position which is
viewed in many quarters as overly militant.
In most matters, the attitude of Begin and the Likud
party usually are proven correct. That, however, does not
resolve the threatened erosion in popular sentiment toward
Israel. The admitted decline in favorable Israel sentiment
represents a very serious challenge. It calls for an improved
By Philip
Slomovitz
and expanded public relations program which should effec-
tively present the facts relating to Israel's insistence upon
an unimpeded sovereignty. All the argumentative posi-
tions assumed by Israel can fall to naught without practical
approaches and proper educational methods of presenting
Israel's case to the public, in this country and abroad.
For Israel it is also an obligation most effectively to
reach her own people and the American Jewish commu-
nity. Properly undertaken, it could dissolve much of the
erosion now threatening Israel.
El Salvador as a Problem for the United States;
Status of Its Jewish Community Related by AJCommittee
"El Salvador: Central America and the New Cold War"
(Grove Press) is a compilation by authoritative students of
Latin American affairs. It deals with the confrontations
and the American involvement. The editors of the volume
declare at the outset:
"The United States has become a party to the confron-
tation in El Salvador, and its position has to be counter-
posed to those other interested parties."
Hence the documents and views of the junta and its
rebel opponents.
The editors of this volume are Marvin E. Gettleman,
Patrick Lacefield, Louis Menasche, David Mermelstein
and Roland Radosh.
Notably, the volume concluded with an epilogue by
Carlos Fuentes, former Mexican ambassador to France,
who declares:
The balance of forces in 1981 is not what it was
in 1954 or in 1961. The U.S. should take a good
hard look at the Central American and Caribbean
area; link the realities there to those of the emerg-
ing nations in Asia and Africa, especially after the
election of Francois Mitterrand in France; under-
stand western Europe's desirable role as an
enlightened broker in the relations between the
developing and the industrialized worlds; glance
at the severe tensions within the Soviet bloc; and
conclude, with true courage, with true self-
interest, that nobody's welfare can be furthered
by inventing a fictitious fulcrum of East-West con-
frontation in a small country where, even if it
should "go communist," the Soviet Union would
be unable to maintain it within its orbit without
paying an exorbitant material price.
I suspect, however, that the Sovet Union does
not want El Salvador in its orbit. The Soviet Union
prefers to wink at the United States and say: "We
have understood you. You can do whatever you
like in your sphere of influence. We can do what-
ever we like in ours. We strangle Afghanistan.
You strangle El Salvador. We strangle Poland.
You strangle Nicaragua. And if it comes to the
crunch and you want to strike at sources not out-
side the target area, here goes Cuba and here
comes West Berlin. Okay?"
No, it is not okay; the balance has changed be-
cause Mexico and Venezuela have emerged as
important economic and political powers in the
Americas. They have a role to play in Central
America and the Caribbean. They are playing
that role, and their message is, Hands off El Sal-
vador, everyone. Negotiate. Do not inter-
nationalize an internal conflict. Do not invent an
East-West confrontation in a land that only re-
quires North-South cooperation.
The United States has a role to play, too, but
only if it is in concert with the other nations of the
area. What no one will tolerate is a proconsular
attitude from Washington.
What we expect of the United States is loyal
participation in our own Latin American policy of
shifting power from the army to the people; of
ending the long rule of the army; of cooperating
with Mexico and Venezuela and Costa Rica and
West Germany and the Soviet Union and East
Germany and Sweden and Japan and Canada
and France in offering the people of El Salvador
and Nicaragua the plural sources of aid they need
to reconstruct their shattered economies.
What we expect of the United States is a shift in
its attention away from the sterility of East-West
confrontation and toward the fertility of global
economic negotiations.
.
What we expect from the United States is as
little and as much as Roosevelt gave Cardenas:
American faith and trust in itself as a democratic
polity, and an understanding that by respecting
self-determination in Latin America, by under-
standing change, upheaval, and even violence in
Latin America instead of stopping change, add-
ing to violence, and creating its own counter--
revolutionary havoc, by accepting the universal
right to revolution even when it hurts U.S. private
interests, the United States is most loyal to itself as
a community founded on revolution, and most
consonant with its self-interest when it does not
permit marginal and private interests to set them-
selves above the meaning, the attraction, the triah
of this great nation.
In its debatable aspects, these and the other views in
this volume encourage study of the existing conditions and
the challenges represented here.
The attention given to El Salvador creates an interest
in the Jewish community which functioned there for many
years.
Encyclopedia Judaica carries this descriptive item
about the El Salvador Jewish community:
El Salvador, republic of Central America. In
1969, there were 300 Jews in its total population of
2,723,050. The recorded existence of Jews in El
Salvador dates back to the first half of the 19th
Century, when some French-Sephardi Jews set-
tled in the small town of Chalchuapa. More
French Jews, most of them Alsatians, settled in
the capital, San Salvador, during the second half
of the 19th Century. East European and some
oriental Jews came during the 1920s and a few
German Jews arrived as a consequence of World
War II.
Communal institutions — La Comunidad Is-
raelita de El Salvador, its cemetery, and
synagogue — date from 1944, 1945 and 1950 re-
spectively. The Zionist Organization was estab-
lished in 1945 and an affiliate of WIZO somewhat
later. There is no regular Jewish School, but wo-
some classes in Hebrew and religion are con-
ducted by the rabbi.
Open support of the Fascist cause during the
1930s hampered Jewish security, but the situation
improved after World War II. On Sept. 11, 1948, El
Salvador recognized the state of Israel, and in
1956 the Instituto Cultural El Salvador-Israel was
founded.
The Liebes and de Sola families are the most
prominent in philanthropic, cultural, and busi-
ness activities of the community. Alexander
Freund was for many years the spiritual leader of
the community.
A drastic change has occurred since the publication of
these figures: The current situation there was analyzed for
The Jewish News in a - telephonic interview from Mexico
City with Sergio Nudelstejer, the American Jewish Com-
mittee's director in Mexico and Latin America. He travels
frequently to El Salvador, knows the situation there inti-
mately and the facts presented in the interview are:
There are now 15 or 20 Jewish families in El Salvador.
Most of the original community have left; some live in
Israel, some in the United States and some have emigrated
to other Latin American countries.
According to Mr. Nudelstejer, the synagogue still func-
tions. Services are conducted on the Shabat and the Ho?' –
Days.
An American-trained rabbi left the community a year
ago.
There is a Zionist youth group. Although most of the
school-age children are gone, there still is a functioning
Talmud Torah.
Two years ago, the honorary Israel consul, Ernesto
Leabes, was kidnapped and found murdered by the guerril-
las.
The El Salvador government has relations with Israel.
But the leftist rebels are accusing Israel of selling arms to
the El Salvador government.
El Salvdaor Jews were engaged in several industries
— textiles, coffee and cotton.
Mr. Nudelstejer plans to visit El Salvador again in the
near future.