2 Friday, January 1, 1532 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Purely Commentary An Unpleasant Week for Israel, the Sensationalism That Threatened a Friendship, the Hostage-to-Hostage Drama That Begins to Find A Solution in Israel-U.S. Amity By Philip Slomovitz Don't Monkey Around With the Camp David Principles, Ye Hostages to Truth Menahem Begin certainly captured the limelight in the past year. He is that kind of person. He doesn't let anything stub his toes. He has a one-track mind regarding the state over whose government he presides: security, freedom, justice, life unhindered. What- ever he does is therefore implanted with these motivations. President Ronald Reagan comparably has the same ideals. He is tough on matters involving his interpretation of America's needs. Any wonder, therefore, that they should both have been portrayed as being hos- tages to their ideals? That did not excuse the irritation that invited rought talk on the part of the Israeli prime minister. Would that he had not been as described, especially in Israel, as being too vitriolic. In principle, he could not be indicted. The timing may have been bad. That's how a resolution on the unquestioned,status of Jerusalem was described. Was he overly insulting? He should have been more cautious in dealing with the best, the only, diplomatic friend in the world. But when sanctions are resorted to, the anger becomes understandable. There was only one major threat of sanctions against Israel in the entire history of the Jewish state. It was by President Dwight D. Eisenhower during the Suez Campaign in 1956. That's when the then U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas and U.S. Senator William F. Knowland of California, the leaders of their respective Democratic and Republican forces in the Senate, told the President in no uncertain terms that sanctions on Israel would cost him his proposed foreign aid package. They won their appeals. It may be a bit different now. Yet the situation must be judged on the basis of Israel commanding a much stronger position with regard to the Middle East situation and the threats from the Soviet Union. The American position in that area is dependent on Israel's major role as a deterrent to Soviet influence there. Therefore, Begin is not to be treated as a hostage. The Jewish ranks were put to the test and their reactions provided the most interest- ing observations to what some portrayed as a Hostage-versus-Hostage drama. In Israel the criticism was severe. It was far from a majority opinion, but it was outspokenly antagonistic, in the form of a no-confidence proposal and hasty remarks by the Labor Alignment leaders. This is worth taking into account. Yitzhak Rabin's words were especially notable. He spoke as if the occurrence vis-a-vis the Golan Heights spelled the end of the Camp David peace plans. What he said was immediately branded "rubbish." An important American authority, Dr. Joseph Sisco, repudiated his views. In Cairo, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak acted in support of the Camp David pact. Hopefully, these will be lessons for the stupidities that have emanated from Labor Alignment ranks, Shimon Peres being as guilty as Yitzhak Rabin. It was on the American scene that a bit of courage was evidenced. Except for a minority view like Leonard Fine's, the would-be diplomat who resorted to "advice" for Begin to be "more judicious" (he is the critic who should have applied such advice to himself), the overwhelming American Jewish sentiment was to recognize the reality of a situation which could never grant even an inch of Golan Heights ground to Syria. This near-unanimous Jewish opinion did not hesitate to criticize the Reagan attempt to impose sanctions on Israel. That's how the drama was enacted last week. There will be more such performances. They must all have the happy ending of the cementing of American-Israel friendships. They could be harmed by anti-Semites and by those who are blind to American needs in the Middle East and in vital U.S. foreign affairs. The rational will surely predominate. Then there is the Jewish attitude. Split ranks won't help anyone. The "rubbish" now to the credit of many will surely be washed down a Mediterranean gutter. The sensationalism of the past week was not pleasant. When did a conflict that involved the quest for Justice for the Jew ever have a pleasant tune? Even the President Must Accept Criticism It's a pity that disputes must assume a spirit of criticism and that it becomes necessary to restate what was said editorially. on another occasion: that even the President is not immune from criticism. William Safire, in his essay "Reagan Suspends Revived Polish Anti-Semitism Multiplies the Inhumanities An era when human beings turned into beasts finds an echo in the current tragedies of an entire nation. Uncon- cerned with the plight of their people, there is an element in Poland that has revived anti-Semitism, blaming the strug- gle between government and Solidarity upon Zionists. It doesn't matter that there are less than 6,000 Jews left in that land out of a population on the eve of World War II of some 3,500,000. It is immaterial to these insane people that the surviving group of Jews is of the age exceeding 65, perhaps 70. Now they say there are some young Jews "in hiding" — the admission, therefore, that if there is a hand- ful of younger Jews "in hiding" it is because they find life intolerable and insecure. Even this claim Cannot be proven. Whatever was left of young Jews in the last two decades was in the Communist ranks and they disappeared long ago from Jewry. There is a tragic lesson in the revived anti-Semitism. Returning from Poland where she visited Auschwitz and Treblinka together with the American delegation headed by Elie Wiesel, Prof. Alice Eckardt reported that peasant women often greeted them with disdain, proclaiming, "What, the Jews are back again?" Is it ever enough that Six Million perished, that the total including non-Jews exceeded 11 million? A non-Jew who describes himself as a "post-Auschwitz Catholic" wrote an indictment of Christian indifference to Jewish sufferings in a volume entitled "A Christian Re- sponse," a review of which will appear in a later issue. Elie Wiesel wrote the foreword to this volume (in a translation from the French by Ellen S. Fine), and a portion of it applies to the current situation. He stated: The murder of six million Jews is at the same time part of Jewish and Christian history. On all levels, the questions are disturbing. How does one Israel" (NYTimes. Dec. 24), had a few things to say in defense of Menahem Begin, differing with President Ronald Reagan. Quoting Safire on the suspension by Secretary of State Alexander Haig of the Strategic Cooperation Agreement between the U.S. and Israel: Whether the Haig suspension was a calculated rebuke or a provocative a blunder, it was the most stinging slap in the face administered to any U.S. ally in recent history. The Israelis set great store by a solemnly signed document; a treaty is the only pressure on them now to return their territo- rial margin of safety to Egypt. For Mr. Haig to "suspend" the first written Israeli-American agreement in such cavalier fashion made a mockery of the negotiations leading up to it. So Menahem Begin gave Ronald Reagan a piece of his mind and I say good for him. Yes, the rhetoric was excessive — I don't want Mr. Reagan or Mr. Begin defining my loyalties as American or Jew — but the scale of the Reagan insult made the heartfelt blast understandable. An agreement that one side can ignore at will is no agreement at all. Mr. Regan is the first U.S. President to use aid to Israel as a leash, snapping the Israeli head back three times this year because they refuse to submit meekly to nuclear black-mail or terrorist attacks. When the White House puts out the line that American Jews are desert. ing Israel in droves, CBS television swallowed that wishthink whole — to the point of depicting Senator Charles Mathias, who since his re-election has joined Richard Nixon in deploring the political power of Jewish Ameri- cans, as one of the "Israel supporters" newly disappointed in Mr. Begin. This Administration acts as if it expects Israel to perform only as an agent of the United States, and no sovereign nation —least of all one whose survival is constantly at stake — is going to do that. "No blank checks," say the Reagan men — as they try to buy an ally with rubber checks. The policy of publicly humiliating our traditional ally has made us no new friends in the Arab world and has removed the trust needed to encour- age Israel to take risks for peace. Not only is it a betrayal of all Mr. Regan promised, it is a policy that is obviously failing. Now Mr. Haig is hinting that unless the Israelis say they are sorry, we will not veto UN sanctions — now there's a dandy way to patch things up. I'd hate to be living next to a PLO base in Lebanon after the UN votes for sanctions on Israel. The irony is that the only people the Israelis have left to trust are the PLO. The most militant of the Palestinians can be counted upon to provide r the provocation for an Israeli military strike into Lebanon, establishing an independent Christian state and removing the Syrian threat on Israel's northern border. Then the new U.S. tendency to "suspend" commitments would apply to all aid, and Israel would have to hunker down further, forced to think about holding onto its last third of Sinai and hoping for better luck with the next U.S. President. Is that what Ronald Reagan wants? That is where his policy of demand- ing vassalhood from Israel is leading. The way back from that brink is for the U.S. to honor its commitments; for Israel to declare its continued willingness to negotiate anything, as it did with Sadat even in Jerusalem; for the U.S. to veto sanctions and to tell Syria to remove its missiles from Lebanon lest the Israelis do it for them. America must never succumb to the temptation of bullying an honora- bly stiff-necked ally; that is the specialty of the other superpower. C, In spite of the near-unanimous condemnation of Israel by the media and politicians, it is this expression of self-respect by William Safire that will survive the enmities and conflicts between heads of the two governments. The argument won't be headed by the resort to a "Happy Hanuka" greeting. It must be reasserted by firm action to strengthen the friendship between the two nations. explain that a Hitler or a Himmler were never excommunicated by the Church? that Pope Pius XII never judged it necessary or essential to con- demn Auschwitz or Maidanek? that the killers came from Christian families and had received a Christian education? and that many Catholic and Protestant dignitaries had supported the Nazis. Certainly, here and there, courageous Christians faced danger and came to the aid of the Jews; we shall be eternally grateful to them. But they were few hi number. They were the exceptions. As a general rule, the Jewish victims barely found ref- uge. In Christian Poland, so hostile was the coun- tryside that those who escaped from the ghettos often returned to them; they feared the Poles as much as the Germans. In Lithuania too. In the Ukraine. In Hungary. And yet in all of these occu- pied countries, there were resistance movements that had their heroes and martyrs. Only the Jews were victims of the Nazi invaders and of their victims as well. How is one to understand, to explain, this Chris- tianity bereft of charity and compassion? As a Jew, I have always been reluctant to explore the question. Let us thank Harry James Cargas for having done so. The things he says about his Christian brothers and friends will be painful to them; one hopes they will not turn away. Thanks to this book, they will learn what others have hid- den from them for so long: that the love of God is whole only if expressed through the love of man. The tragedy has no end! It repeats and repeats! Are there enough heads hanging in shame over the new evidence of inhumanities? Even the speculated figure that from 5,000 to 6,000 old Jews now survive in Poland is challenged by Eli Eyal, the head of the information department of the World Zionist Organization. His contention is that there now are only 3,600 Jews in Poland, half of them very old, the other half intermarried and therefore on the speedy road of being absorbed into the predominantly Catholic Polish nation. Woe is the memory of what was the proud Jewry of Poland! Amphitheater Is Excavated I so BET SHEAN — A Roman cuses and sports exhibi- amphitheater where tions, according to Dr. gladiators fought man- Yoram Tzafrir of the Heb- eating beasts the only one rew University Institute of ever found in Israel — has Archeology. been uncovered in this city The dig is situated sev- in northern Israel. eral hundred yards from the Built around 200 CE, the magnificent excavated amphitheater served for Roman Theater, which was some 200 years as an arena a center for drama and other for gladiatorial combat, cir- performing arts.