THE JEWISH NEWS (USPS 275 020 Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with the issue of July 20, 1951 Copyright © The Jewish News Publishing Co. Member of American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers, National Editorial Association and National Newspaper Association and its Capital Club. Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17515 W. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075 Postmaster: Send address changes to The Jewish News, 17515 W. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075 Second-Class Postage Paid at Southfield, Michigan and Additional Mailing Offices. Subscription $15.2. year. PHILIP SLOMOVITZ Editor and Publisher CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ Business Manager HEIDI PRESS Associate News-Editor ALAN HITSKY News Editor DREW LIEBERWITZ Advertising Manager Sabbath Scriptural Selections This Sabbath, the 22nd day of Iyar, 5742, the following scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues: Pentateuchal portion, Leviticus 25:1-27:34. Prophetical portion, Jeremiah 16:19-17:14. Thursday, Yom Yerushalyim Candlelighting, Friday, May 14, 8:26 p.m. VOL. LXXI, No. 11 Page Four Friday, May 14, 1982 `A HATER IS A MURDERER' BIGOTED ARSONISTS Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart. — Leviticus Hatred takes on many forms. It is racial. Its anti-Semitic tones have been universalized. It is certainly irrational. It is always inhuman. The bigoted opposition to the establishment of homes for the retarded is a sample of the inhumanity of man to man that is in evidence in several areas in this community of Americans who dare demonstrate their hatred in the courts. Some have given vent to their meanness with torches setting afire structures intended as homes for the retarded. Such is the extent of their actions which demand challenge from the courts where judgments hopefully will firm on the side of decency, rejecting any tolerance for the brutal minds who would deny homes and comfort, affection and decent treatment for the less fortunate . It is yet to be proven that the retarded who are granted lawfully the right to be housed with small groups of their kind in specially- supervised homes have in any sense been harm- ful to neighborhoods. The five homes now supervised by the Jewish Association for Re- tarded Citizens are exemplary. They have been welcomed in the neighborhoods where they exist. The residents are recognized as fellow citizens. They are law abiding. They vote in elections and express their views. They never carry weapons. They work in the Jewish Voca- tional Service workshops and produce to the best of their abilities. They are reminders of an indictment in the Talmud that "A hater is a murderer!" Some haters even carry the Bible with them to the courts to demonstrate that they are de- vout. They can't be as they hate and deny homes and hypocritically recite the above quotation from Leviticus. What is needed is an uprising against such hatred, such manifestations of bigotry. Let there be a mobilization of effort to reject the arsonists and haters in the midst of any com- munity. The retarded are human beings who are not to be denied the right to a decent way of life. Whoever hates them or burns their homes is a murderer! The bigots who are degrading every symptom of human decency have not limited their venom to efforts to outlaw the just rights of fellow citi- zens. They resorted to arson and their sick minds are rooted in crimes. They have called attention to a situation that cannot be ignored. Their actions must also be the means of guid- ing jurists who have hesitated in upholding the state's regulations which provide for the legal rights of retarded to homes legally protected. When a judge states that he will need a year's probation to prove the validity of such rights, he merely encourages arsonists and crime provok- ers. The lessons are all-too-clear to need better elaboration than has been provided by the out- rages committed in Michigan _communities whose peaceful status has been undermined and whose actions must not be condoned in the courts of law. CHILDREN AS TARGETS It is difficult to believe that the land whose record under Nazism records the murder of more than a million children continues to tolerate spread of fear among children. A report from Bonn, West Germany states that Jewish school children, even those in kin- dergartens, live in fear stemming from continu- ing verbal attacks upon them. The universities, according to the report, are not immune from guilt, Jewish students there also being subjected to humiliation. How many children can there possibly be in Germany, whose remaining 25,000 Jews are mostly the elderly who live on pensions? Apparently that does not matter. All that is needed is one Jew,. and hatred will surface— that being the legacy suffered from the anti- Semitic terrors that have polluted the nations. Germany especially has much to account for when anti-Semitic outrages recur. The blame is surely on a minority, and that makes the obliga- tion of the majority all the more compelling — to assure an end to all aspects of Nazism. AVOIDING COMPLACENCY Much as an editorial-writing optimist would like to avoid resorting to the term "sur- vivalism," it crops up. It's on the agenda now with the warning by so eminent a personality as the President of Israel, Yitzhak Navon, that under current conditions world Jewry could drop from its present 12 mil- lion figure to eight million in the year 2000 and to five million in 2015. Attributed reasons are the increasing mixed marriages and the assimilationist tendencies. Undoubtedly, indifference to Jewish needs in Jewish ranks is major as a reason for vanishing numbers. If, therefore, there is a complacency, it must be abandoned. Indifference is criminal. Much more concern must be given to the problem so briefly touched upon in these few words. Civet, Moynihan Expose Venom of Anti-Zionism Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, and the inhuman factors which have given it ammunition for hate in many areas of the world has found an effective foe in an escapee from the Nazi terror. Jacques Givet throws light on the developing prejudices as they gained ground after the Six-Day War of June 1967, in which Israel triumphed over the superior Arab forCes, in his French-published "The Anti-Zionist Complex," in SBS Publishers' English translation-. Born in Moscow in 1917, Givet spent an emigre childhood even- tually settling with his family in France. He served with the French Army during World War II and later played a distinguished role in the Resistance. Arrested by the Gestapo on D-Day, he escaped death in the gas chamber — a fate which was to engulf his entire family — by jumping from a prison train. After the liberation of Paris, in which he took part, Givet was decorated and became an adviser to the French government on refu- gees and related matters. He and his wife, who is the diplomatic correspondent for a leading Paris newspaper, have three children, one of whom is on the staff of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Givet is the author of several volumes of French poetry and political thought. He shows how the emerging anti-Semitism stemming from the anti-Zionist ranks is akin to the vilest in medievalism. This is supplemented by an equally excoriating essay by U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who, in an introduction to "The Anti-Zionist Complex," condemns the hatred as "vulgar and blatant," especially as he witnessed its rise when he was chief U.S. delegate to the United Nations. Dealing with lack of understanding of the issues by Jews them- - selves, and providing guidelines to correct these shortcomings, Givet declares that "oppressed minorities can achieve true universalism only by affirming their own personalities and not by attempting to deny them." It is his way of emphasizing the significance of Jews having attained control of their own destinies through the statehood of Israel. He expresses a call to Jews, themselves to be firm in defense of the Jewish position, declaring: "Am I exaggerating? Perhaps. Possibly the ups-and-downs in Jewish history have been no more than accidents. As a Jew, part of me maintains an uneasy vigilance, and part is dominated by the urge to forget. This latter part would like nothing so much as to surrender to that confident optimism without which, certainly, life is much grim- mer. "But I am taking a risk if I yield to the temptation and slack, iy vigilance. It is therefore criminal on the part of those who stand on the sidelines to urge me to drop my guard, for the result — for me and other Jews like me — might be death. Those who claim to be objective, and can afford this luxury — let them take their cue from Baghdad or Moscow, and tell me who will step in to prevent the deaths of Jews next time. "Who, if not ourselves, in the only way open to us. Thanks to `structures' — simultaneously living and indestructible." In the Moynihan essay there is a shocking revelation of the manner in which the campaign against Zionism has become an anti- Semitic task in the Soviet Union,. He points to a Russian magazine for children ages 9-14, which is packed with venom. He quotes from the youth magazine, called the Pionerskaya Pravda, to show the extent of the poisonous propaganda. Thus, in its totality, Givet's "The Anti-Zionist Complex" emerges as a weapon against anti-Semitism, as an expose of the haters of Zionism, as an appeal for humanism — all indicating that the book should be a text not for Jews alone but for all peoples.