THE JEWISH NEWS (USPS 275-520) AFTElk11-1E AMPUTATION 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 a year. 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.