2 Friday, Juiie 8, 1984

THE DETHOIT`JEWISH'NEWS .

PURELY COMMENTARY

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Dunant's

Fratelli': Red Cross and Zionist idealism

The Red Cross marks its 75th anniversary in Michigan
with merited acclaim for humane services that retain in-
ternational support.
Operational difficulties resulting from existing eco-
nomic conditions will hopefully be resolved. The needs ful-
filled by the services provided must never be obstructed.
The observance of the
movement's 75th anniver-
sary invites special acclaim
for the fairness and impar-
tiality with which the
movement has been ac-
tivated here. Recognition
should be especially ac-
corded to the directional
skills of Duane Johnson,
under whose guidance the
message has gone forth to
all elements in the commu-
nity that prejudice, reli-
gious or social, has no place
in Red Cross ranks. Thus,
displayed in the headquar-
ters of the local Red Cross is
Duane Johnson
a unified display, linking
the Red Cross with the Red Magen David of Israel and the
Red Crescent of the Islamic communities: Such is the glory
attained on a high level of metropolitan unity.
The Red Cross anniversary has been linked here with
memories of the founder of the movement, Jean Henri
Dunant.
This is a proper time to recall that Dunant, the founder
of the world mercy movement, retains a place in history not
only as the creator of the Red Cross but also as one of the
great forerunners of Theodor Herzl, as a leading Christian
advocate of the Zionist ideal for a reconstituted Jewish
homeland.
The idea of a Red Cross was born in Solferino in 1859.
The International Red Cross came into being as a result of
the Geneva Conference in 1863. In 1901, Dunant was the
first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his
great humanitarian ideal.
At the same time, Dunant was nourishing another
dream: the rehabilitation of the dispersed, sorely tried and
persecuted Jews.
In an impressive biography, Dunant — The Story of
the Red Cross (Oxford University Press), Martin Gumpert
wrote about Dunant:
His prophetic glance did not yet see into the
distance not even as far as the misery that was
waiting just around the corner. Dunant had a new
idea. In March 1866, he divulged his plan for a
"Universal and International Society for the Re-
vival of the Orient."
Did he see so clearly in advance the evil that
was brewing in aged and fanatic Europe and
which could regenerate at last into an inconceiv-
able race hatred? Once more it was a touching
mixture of the apostolic spirit, the
humanitarianism of the century and a sense for
business speculation that made him a legitimate
forerunner'of Theodor Herzl and Zionism and fi-
nally led his plan astray.
In the Bibliotheque National is a single copy
of his extraordinary eight-page memorandum on
this subject. Palestine was to be neutralized in the
interests of a great colonial society. Arid in the
following year the International Palestine Co.
was actually founded, with Dunant as president;
it proceeded to make contacts with Jewish
societies until the enterprise broke up.
Neveitheless, the Palestine project had
flourished so far that by 1867 Dunant could dis-
cuss it with the Empress Eugenie in the presence
of the French Ambassador to Constantinople, M.
Bouree.
It is possible that Dr. Herzl may have been totally

unaware of the activities of Dunant; else he might have
attempted to enlist his services in behalf of the Jewish
National Home in Palestine towards the end of the last
century.
Much needs to be sail about Dunant's interest in
Palestine and his famous statement. It is necessary to
understand Dunant to be able to appreciate his concern for
the Jewish people.
Dunant began his movement for the injection of a spirit
of mercy in the cruelties of war with a practical act of his
own. At Castiglioni, a village in the center of the French
position in the collision of the armies of Austro and
Franco-Sardinia, in 1859, he personally urged the French
women and girls to follow him to the fields that were
covered with the bodies of the dying and the dead and to

offer drink to the thirsty, food to the hungry and whatever
care was possible to the wounded and maimed.
When Dunant's volunteers began to make a search for
the French and Italian wounded and turned their backs on
the unfortunate Austrians, the founder of the Red Cross
pointed out to them that Austrians were human beings too.
Tutti Fratelli — all are brothers — he said to them, and
with that phrase on their lips they helped all and in reality
established the foundation for the humanitarian ideal that
was called into being by Jean Henri Dunant.
It must have been this spirit of Tutti Fratelli that
motivated Dunant's "Open Letter," in 1866, appealing for
the colonization of Palestine and the "resurrection of the
East" which "uniting with the rise of religious sentiment,
will be aided by the cooperation of Israelites, whose valu-
able qualities and remarkable aptitudes cannot but prove
very advantageous to Palestine."
Dunant's letter was published a year after the publica-
tion of Moses Hess' Rome and Jerusalem, but it is clear that
his theories were worked out by himself and were not moti-
vated by earlier writings. In the plan that he worked out,
and for which he appealed to the Jewish and non-Jewish
worlds, he is one of the foremost forefunners of Dr. Theodor
Herzl, and is one of the greatest Christians of the past
century to have joined in advocating Palestine's resurrec-
tion.
Dunant appealed to the Alliance Israelite Universelle
in France to settle Jews in Palestine. His appeal fell on deaf
ears. He pleaded for his cause with the Anglo-Jewish Asso-
ciation, with Berlin Jews, he wrote letters to the London
Jewish Chronicli, but it was not as easy to succeed with a
Jewish project as it was for his Red Cross ideal to triumph.
He organized the International Palestine Society and
the Syrian Palestine Colonization Society, but his writings
and his appeals were only destined to become great historic
documents in the story of later efforts for the upbuilding of
Palestine as the Jewish National Home. The name of Jean
Henri Dunant is accorded a golden page in Zionist annals.
When Dunant was found in 1897 in the Swiss village

Jean Henri Dunant proposed in 1866 that Palestine "and thg
barren East be resurrected."

.

of Heiden (where he also died on Oct. 31, 1910), where he
was living in poverty in a "Home of Rest" for old men, his
name was again accorded the well-earned admiration and
respect of the world In 1901, when the A.B. Nobel Peace
Prize was first awarded, it was granted to the founder of the
Red Cross.
At this time, when the 75th anniversary of the Red
Cross is being celebrated here and when Israel assumes a
place of priority among humanitarian movements, it is
only proper that world Jewry remember Dunant for his
pioneering efforts in behalf of Jewish national redemption.

U.S Jewry the target in two important elections

They are three and a half months apart, yet the two
national elections, the American and the Israeli, have re-
lated interests.
Israel's bitter campaign is just commencing, with cru-
cial results expected in a matter of weeks. Its concerns are
as vital to U.S. and world Jewries as they are to Israel.
The election in Israel on July 23 arouses nearly as
much attention as the American on Nov. 5. Communal
Jewish interest in the United States is targeted in the main
at Israel. In most instances, as in communities like Cleve-
land and Detroit, the major funds secured philanthropi-
cally are allocated for Israel. Israel's party lines have their
cohorts in this country. The partisans embrace the
ideologies that are rampant in the Jewish state.
There is nothing unusual about such a phenomenon
that invades an area far removed from the Middle East. In
earlier elections, when Menachem Begin sought leadership
to oust the Labor Party from its dominant role in his coun-
try, he did not limit his political activities to Israel. He
came to the United States to seek financial support. Labor
leaders were not immune from such practices. Both were
criticized, both had financial successes in the form of a PAC
system in the United States for Israel.
This was minor in relation to the bitterness that
ensued. Divisiveness in Israel, including religious fanati-
cism, often played a rather unsavory role. There were ele-
ments of hatred'that could have divided American Jewry.
That measure of divisiveness did develop, the exist-
ence of rancor could not be ignored. It is against the re-
development of renewed bitterness that American Jews
must view the oncoming election. In the previous two na-
tional elections hatred developed on so large a scale that
one imagined Israel to be a cesspool of hate.
That's where a serious challenge confronts American
Jewish leadership, if such has any influence at all upon
Israelis.
An Israeli election is Israel's business, and the Israeli
electorate will do the talking and acting. But there are
relationships which drag many elements from the outside
into the electoral act, and therein lies the obligation not
only to permit Israel to emerge on her own in the demo-
cratic way, but also to eliminate whatever rancor may have
a way of intruding itself into foreign areas.
The contending factions will be coming to this country
to ask for help. Let the contenders get their spoils, but there
should be a condition: there must be an avoidance of
namecalling! There had been encouragement for such bit-
terness and it tended to undermine the decencies that

should control the democratic and ethical codes of Israel. I
is on this score that a new and most serious responsibility
evolves. The past, no matter how aggravating, need not hi
ignored.
It was common for David Ben-Gurion and Menachen
Begin to be so incredulously antagonistic in the Knessei
and elsewhere that uncommon language was resorted to w
expressions of personal dislike. If the partisans in thi:
country have any influence at all, they should demand that
only the major problems, the economic, those affecting
foreign policies, the needs revolving around the interna
measures calling for religious freedom interpreted as ethi
cal decency, should have any consideration whatsoever it
support or encouragement American Jews may provide fa
their fellow Jews. Else, especially when namecalling be

Menachem Begin

David Ben-Gurion

comes a system in Jewish politics, any effort to enro
American Jewish endorsements must meet with contempt
Perhaps the philanthropic aspect will gain consider:
tion here„ The fundraisers, the "vested" interests, coul
become allies to one party or another, in a variety of way.
Should this ever be condoned, only disgrace will emerE
from an American Jewish-Israeli partnership which mu:
be kept on a high level of human consideration.
No matter how it is viewed, the religious factor

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