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CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Business Manager
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
ALAN HITSKY
News Editor
HEIDI PRESS
Associate News Editor
DREW LIEBERWITZ
Advertising Manager
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the 19th day of Tammuz, 5742, the following scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Numbers 25:10-30:1. Prophetical portion, Jeremiah 1:1-2:3.
Candlelighting, Friday, July 9, 1982, 8:51 p.m.
VOL. LXXXI, No. 19
Page Four
Friday, July 9, 1982
TOYING WITH DESTINY
Never before, in all the crises that have arisen
in the Middle East, has Israel been confronted
with so many dangers, so much criticism, so
many pitfalls.
Her army has invaded a neighboring country,
not to battle it, but to rid herself of a serious
danger from an implacable enemy and at the
same time to rescue the invaded country —
Lebanon — from oblivion.
Never before has Israel been subjected to so
many attacks — all under the guise of
humanitarianism because of the frightful civi-
lian casualties.
Even without a war, Lebanon had lost
100,000 people in massacres ascribable to in-
truding forces, Syrian and PLO, and there was
no word from the Vatican or anyone else on that
score, but Israel gets blamed immeasurably, on
many scores.
Israel's hope is that the Christians will as-
sume power in Lebanon. But the Christian
forces are strong only on Israel's score. One
must study events in retrospect. The Chris-
tians, primarily the Maronites, were always
pro-Israel, but they were enmeshed in fears for
their own lives and they never spoke out. They
are not so voluble now either.
Meanwhile, there is the compelling need to
plan an end to the horror that is called the
Israel-Arab controversy. There must be a solu-
tion in the administered territories.
Thus far, there has been only confusion, and
the hatreds predominated. Now there must be
some form of collaboration with the Palesti-
nians, unshackled by the PLO.
Dr. Irving Kristol, co-editor of The Public
Interest and professor of social thought at NYU
Graduate School of Business, in a New York
Times Op-Ed Page article, "Muddled Thinking
on the Middle East," asked consideration of
"plain truths that mysteriously have dropped
from sight," listed the following: or.
"The Palestinian refugees are not refugees
from the West Bank. Few ever lived there. It is
in no sense their 'homeland.' That homeland
was in the part of Palestine that is now called
Israel and that history has delivered to another
people as their homeland.
"The West Bank is a poor, infertile strip of
land already overpopulated by 700,000 Arabs,
one-third of whom make a living by working in
Israel.
"It is thus understandable that the refugees
have not the faintest interest in emigrating to
the West Bank and living there. This explains
why they did not go there before 1967, when
Jordan governed the area, and why there is no
illegal immigration (not too difficult an
enterprise) there today.
"The PLO is, from its viewpoint, absolutely
correct in refusing to recognize the territorial
integrity of Israel in exchange for the promise of
an autonomous or independent Palestinian na-
tion in the West Bank. For the PLO and for most
refugees, a Palestinian state there makes sense
only if it is a prelude to the reconquest of its
remembered homeland, Israel. In and of itself,
the West Bank has no interest for them.
"Because a PLO state on the West Bank
would be irredentist or nothing, neither Jordan
nor Israel can tolerate the existence of such a
state, which could only result in another Arab-
Israeli war, with incalculable consequences.
"Jordan, it is true, is committed on paper — in
the name of Arab solidarity — to the emergence
of exactly such a state. But the fact that, under
two decades of Jordanian occupation, no such
state was established in the West Bank speaks
louder than any paper proclamations. It is also
worth noting that during those decades Arab
spokesmen did not even request establishment
of a Palestinian state there.
"Israel, for obvious reasons, will never agree
to creation of a PLO state on the West Bank.
Whatever the differences within Israel on
specific policies toward this territory, there are
no differences on this fundamental premise.
"It is sometimes argued that what the Pales-
tinian refugees want is not so much an actual
homeland — a goal now, perceived to be un-
reachable — as a symbolic homeland, a national
entity that would issue to them passport's and
with which they could emotionally identify.
There is some force to this argument: Stateless-
ness is a terrible condition for people to be in,
especially in today's world. But why must the
West Bank play this role? Why cannot Jordan,
the majority of whose citizens are already of
Palestinian origin, issue those passports and be
that symbolic homeland? Jordan, after all, is no
more 'foreign' a country to the refugees than is
the West Bank. Moreover, it has the immense
advantage of already existing as a nation-state.
"If Jordan is reluctant to play this role, it is
because that would in effect ratify the legiti-
macy of Israel and signify the surrender of the
Arab dream of reconquest. So far, only Egypt
has done this, at Camp David. The other Arab
states, for cultural, political and religious rea-
sons, still find the prospect unacceptable.
"It is for the same reason that the Arab coun-
tries (except Jordan) have stubbornly refused to
grant citizenship to the refugees they shelter
even though by now the overwhelming majority
of these refugees were born and reared in those
same countries. Such a grant of citizenship
would 'solve' the refugee problem overnight —
but it would also mean a confessed end to the
Arab ambitions to eliminate Israel."
Putting "all these elements together," Prof.
Kristol calls these three conclusions as inescap-
able:
"First, the future of the West Bank will be
settled between the two interested parties, Is-
rael and Jordan — if it is ever to be settled at all.
Second, the refugees and the West Bank consti-
tute two different problems and telescoping
them leads only to intellectual muddle. Third,
the basic obstacle to any resolution of the refu-
gee problem remains today what it was yester-
day: the refusal of the Arab states to accept
Israel as a permanent, legitimate political
entity in their midst."
There must be no submission to panic. A way
must be found for rationalizing, for prag-
matism.
Out of the tragedy that spells Lebanon must
come a measure of pea-ce. Else destiny becomes
both enigma and danger.
Nn-A,
Anti-Semitism in Germany
Traced in Bauer History
An historical record of the Holocaust and its carnage, and the
inhumanities that emerged during World War II, assumes a signific-
ant role in its similarly significant analyses of the anti-Semitic trends
in Germany.
Dr. Yehuda Bauer, professor of Holocaust studies at the Hebrew
University, combines the two important historical factors in "A His-
tory of the Holocaust" (Franklin Watts Publishers).
Already recognized as the chief his-
torian of the rescue and philanthropic
efforts during the world war, in his
histories of the Joint Distribution
Committee and related works, Dr.
Bauer, gave authoritative effect to his
new work with his thorough research
as well as the emphasis on the docu-
mentaries he attained as well as
the interviews he conducted with sur-
vivors and possessors of hitherto un-
published records of the horrors that
were perpetrated.
Becauge so much in the Bauer ac-
count is new and hitherto unpub-
lished, his book earns a place among
the most - impressive in the lists of
YEHUDA BAUER
hundreds which already form the Holocaust library. Dr. Bauer, to
point to one special example, tells of appeals that were addressed to
Adolf Hitler when he assumed power in Germany in 1933, to be kind
to Jewry. One such appeal was "a letter from the leaders of the
Orthodox community in Germany," sent to Hitler in October 1933,
expressing the German Jewish loyalties.
Referring to threats that they may be compelled to leave Ger-
many, these Orthodox leaders declared in their letter:
"We confess that this would be an unspeakable tragedy for us. We
have learned to love the German soil. It contains the graves of our
ancestors, of many great and holy Jewish men and women. Our link
• with this soil goes back through history for 2,000 years; we have
learned to love the German sun; all through the centuries it has let
our children grow and mature and has added special and good ele-
ments to their Jewish characteristics. And we have learned to love the
German people. At times it hurt us, particularly in the Middle Ages.
But we were also present at its rise. We feel closely linked to its
culture. It has become a part of our intellectual being and has given us
German Jews a stamp of our own.
"And yet we would and could muster up the courage to bear our
tragic fate and to leave its reversal confidently to the God
History . . ."
In his factual accounts, Dr. Bauer deals with the resistance
well as the record of humiliations, the Nazi occupation of Western
European communities and the persecutions that ensued in Vichy,
France; Italy, Belgium and Holland.
Covering the record of Resistance, Dr. Bauer described the rebel-
lions in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Bialystok Ghetto and the Vilna
Ghetto, as well as the resistance in Western Europe:
"In France, especially, Jews participated actively in the anti-
Nazi underground movement. Whereas in Eastern Europe most Jews
(with the exception of communists and the few assimilated Jews) were
motivated to resist because of their Jewish identity, although other
considerations — victory against Nazism, victory of socialism, a free
and independent socialist or liberal Poland — were also factors."
There is an urgency to assure introduction of Holocaust studies in
public schools and universities. For that purpose Dr. Bauer's "A
History of the Holocaust" assumes major importance and will serve
the needs perfectly.