2 Friday, October 1, 1983 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Purely Commentary Nicaragua Again Accused of Anti-Semitism by ADL A statement in defense of Nicaragua by Ilana De Bare, denying ADL charges of anti-Semitism, was referred to in this column last week and drew a refutation from Rabbi Morton M. Rosenthal, director of the Latin American Af- fairs Department of the Anti-Defamation League. The NYTimes published this statement by Rabbi Rosenthal: Ilana DeBare's Op-Ed apologia for Sandinista anti-Semitism (Sept. 13) is self-contradictory. Her conclusion that anti-Semitism is no problem in Nicaragua" runs directly counter to her own ad- mission that Sandinista anger at Israel was "mis- directed toward Jews" and that the Sandinistas bombed Managua's synagogue. (Incidentally, the congregation was inside when the doors were torched.) Her expertise on the Jewish situation in Nicaragua is undermined by several factual er- rors. The charges of Sandinista anti-Semitism re- flect the experiences of not just Isaac Stavisky and Abraham Gorn, but a majority of the former Nicaraguan Jewish community. Isaac Stavisky is not the son of Abraham Gorn. She brands Mr. Gorn as a Somoza "collaborator," thereby herself indulging in the Sandinista tactic of convicting people without a trial. Her claim that there are 13 Jewish families living in Nicaragua today is refuted by Jaime Levy, one of the few Jews still in Nicaragua (his wife and children are in exile). He cabled the Anti-Defamation League from Managua on Aug. 3, stating that there are only three men who iden- tify themselves as Jews in Nicaragua. Miss DeBare also erred in stating that the synagogue building was abandoned by the Jewish community. On the contrary, before the Jews left Nicaragua they arranged for trusted caretakers to live in and maintain the building, which they did, until forced out by the Sandinis- tas. The Nicaraguan government delayed answering ADL's inquiry as to the status of the synagogue for almost two years, finally respond- ing only after we publicized their actions last May. The government initially sought to justify the confiscation by claiming it was a privately owned structure. Ambassador Antonio Jarquiii would not even acknowledge to ADL that it was a synagogue. After the ADL produced the deed to the build- ing, at a White House briefing on July 20, the government then claimed a "mistake" had been made and now offers to return the building to the congregation. If the Sandinistas seize this opportunity to remedy the injustices done at their hands, Nicaragua may once again have enough Jews to form a quorum for public worship — free of fear. The ADL Latin American Department has always been proven accurate in its studies of Jewish conditions in those lands. There is less cause for doubting Rabbi Rosen- Nicaraguan Accusations Demand Serious Consideration, Apologetics Are Justifiably Challenged by the ADL Settlements Issue Authoritatively Tackled by Rostow thal's accusations than those of Nicaragua's defenders. ADL's firm position must lead to a correction of exist- ing prejudices, even though the Nicaraguan Jewish com- munity has been reduced to a handful of remaining resi- dents in a country whose leanings are both pro-Kremlin and pro-PLO. Israel's Settlements: View of an American Authority Menahem Begin was reportedly asked some months ago what he wished to leave as a legacy for the generations. He replied that it was to be an Israel whose borders are in the record of Bible and Prophecy. It was simple if not de- fined: that it is to include Judea and Samaria which is commonly, especially by the media, spoken of as the West Bank. It now appears that set- tlements established under the Begin regime cannot, will not, be abandoned. Therefore, his legacy may seem assured. Nevertheless, there is a continuing debate on the subject. One eminent au- thority, who had much to do with American policies on Israel, keeps maintaining that the rights claimed by Israel to settlements are unassailable. Eugene V. Rostow, who held important EUGENE ROSTOW government posts in recent years, especially in the Johnson Administration, com- mented in a NYTimes article on the subject: In a recent news analysis, "The West Bank and the Emperor's Clothes," Bernard Gwertzman accurately portrays the mindset of the officials who condescendingly dismiss President Rea- gan's statement that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are "not illegal." But these officials and not the President are wearing the Emperor's gossamer suit. Israel has an unassailable legal right to estab- lish settlements in the West Bank. The West Bank is part of the British Mandate in Palestine which included Israel and Jordan as well as certain other territories not yet generally recognized as belonging to either country. While Jewish settle- ment east of the Jordan River was suspended in 1922, such settlements remained legal in the West Bank. All rights vesting under mandates were pre- served by Article 80 of the United Nations Char- ter. And they survived the end of British ad- ministration in Palestine as a "sacred trust" — exactly the legal posture for Namibia after South Africa ceased to be the mandatory power. Recognizing the legal force of these facts, those who are seeking to sabotage the President's position fall back on a provision of the Geneva Convention of 1949 forbidding occupying powers By Philip Slomovitz to transfer their own populations to occupied ter- ritories. This article of the Convention was a reac- tion to Nazi policy in Czechoslovakia after the invasion of 1938. But Israel is not in the West Bank only as an occupying power, because the West Bank has never been widely recognized as Jordanian. Is- rael's'claims to the territory are at least as good as those of Jordan, since Jordan held the territory for 19 years after a war of aggression, whereas Israel took the area in the course of a war of self- defense, so far as Jordan was concerned. As a matter of convenience, Israel applies the Geneva Convention generally in its administra- tion of the West Bank, but does not admit it is legally obliged to do so. Jordan is not the rever- sioner in the West Bank and therefore the protec- tive provisions of the Geneva Convention do not apply. Whether Israel's right to settle the West Bank should be exercised at a particular time is thus a matter of prudence, not of law. It is conventional wisdom that such settlements are an obstacle to peace. But the absence of such settlements bet- ween 1948 and 1967 did not encourage Jordan to make peace. The thesis, often mechanically repeated by our government spokesmen, does not do justice to the principles of the Arab position: that the Bal- four Declaration, the Mandate, and all that flowed from them were beyond the powers of the victori- ous Allies of 1914-1918, the League, and the United Nations, and that the existence of Israel is itself an aggression against the Arab nation. Perhaps the realization that their continuing refusal to make peace with Israel is bound to have territorial consequences will help to persuade the Arabs that 35 years of intransigence is enough. Eugene V. Rostow has consistently held to this position on numerous other occasions. He may not have enlisted much support in his defense of the settlement as a recog- nized Israeli right to the nation's existence and to the legacies which have become a major cause for conflict and drawn condemnation from government officials, including Presidents Carter and Reagan. He has not even enrolled support from Israel's Jewish critics. Nevertheless, settlements have become a fact of life in Israel. The Labor Alignment, in its opposition and quest for a return to power in Israel, only half-heartedly lambasts Begin and his associates for having pursued a policy of establishing settlements in a disputed area. But the set- tlements remain a fact. In the over-all treatment of the Israel-Arab confronta- tions the issue will eventually be resolved. There is little reason for disputing the belief that resolution of the prob- lem in Israel's favor also will be of very great benefit to the Arabs as well. Perhaps a peaceful solution of the Lebanese tragedies will contribute toward pragmatism that will establish an accord assuring a friendly neighborliness of all the resi- dents in the West Bank with a recognition that Judea and Samaria are not such objectionable acceptances of biblical designations. New Strategy Needed to Enforce Helsinki Rights Agreement By VICTOR BIENSTOCK "The fact is that since Helsinki, Soviet respect for human rights has grown worse," the Wall Street Journal once commented editorially in objecting to the possibility of a com- promise on this issue at the recently concluded Confer- ence on Security and Coop- eration in Europe. The utter failure of the Soviet Union to respect its obligations under the Hel- sinki Final Act of 1975 has led many to question whether the charade should be continued and whether the West can ever hope to secure even a modicum of respect for human rights from the Soviets by talk alone. The conference — the continuing review of the ob- servance of the Helsinki Pact — dragged on in Mad- rid for two years and 10 months. It produced some technical improvements in the language of the accords, particularly in the human rights area, but it found no way to compel or even per- suade the Soviet Union to respect its commitments. The Helsinki Final Act promised much to a weary world and gave new hope to the Jews of the Soviet Union that they would be permitted to emigrate or, if they chose to remain, to prac- tice their religion and preserve their cultural traditions. Eight years later, how- ever, Jean Poperen, na- tional secretary of the French Socialist Party, re- ported to a conference of European legislators con- cerned over the plight of Soviet Jewry that at the rate emigration visas were being issued to Soviet Jews, it would take 308 years to process existing exit visa applications. In the first five months of this year only 537 exit visas were issued to Soviet Jews. In the years since 1975, the condition of the Soviet Jews has steadily deterior- ated in all respects as a re- sult of an insidious, covert anti-Semitism practiced. by the authorities, w•ich in- cludes the limitation of pro- fessional and educational opportunities for Soviet Jews and a blatant, overt anti-Semitism combining elements of the Protocols of Zion with a vicious anti- Zionist, anti-Israeli cam- paign. There is hardly a single aspect of the Helsinki Ac- cords which the Soviets have respected and ob- served. Yet the 35 signatory nations have just spent two years and 10 months in a tedious, acrimonious and thorougly unsatisfactory conference in Madrid to re- view the observance of the terms of the accord and to try to strengthen them. Max Kempelman, who headed the American de- legation to the confer- ence and led the fight there for human rights, is convinced that the time and energy were well- spent. He points to the strengthening of the human right provisions of the accords but, as he admits, the accords do not include any enforce- ment provisions. The new provisions, like the old, are just so many words on paper: The Helsinki process, however, does provide the justification for the claim that the status of human rights observance in any signatory country becomes the business of all other sig- natories and gives them the right to criticize and to de- nand improvement. It also provides the one forum in which the complaints of Soviet Jews and others dep- rived of their rights may still be presented, heard and debated. It is the one forum today in which the Soviet Union cannot prevent criti- cism and condemnation of its human rights violations. But there is another strategy being talked of; whether it has been raised in Administration circles has not been re- vealed. It is based on the fact that the Helsinki Final Act was a two-way pact in which the West paid a high price for the Soviet concessions. The price the West paid was the legitimization of the Soviet Annexation of the Baltic states and parts of Poland after World War II, the recognition of the Soviet Union's new borders and agreement on the per- manent division of Ger- many. Frontiers have always been a matter of great im- port to the Soviets who are almost paranoid on the sub- ject of security. The Soviets insist on a divided Germany because they fear that a un- ited Reich would be too powerful and dangerous a neighbor. What would happen if the United States, its Western allies and other free nations who are signatories to the Helsinki Pact, were to in- form Moscow that in view of the Soviet Union's persis- tent and contumacious dis- regard of its obligations under the Helsinki Pact, they were renouncing it and their commitments under its terms? There might be a different song out of the Kremlin.