PURELY COMMENTARY
When Children Thrn To Terrorism, Mankind Weeps
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor Emeritus
S
ome 30 years ago, Life Magazine
published a special issue por-
traying 10- and 11-year-old Arab
youths brandishing guns and shouting,
"Death to the Jews," "Drive Zionists
Out of Palestine," with numerous
threats to that effect.
The illustrated articles showed how
mere youths were trained to hate and
destroy Jews who were their neighbors.
Now correspondents covering the
riot-torn Gaza Strip report that eight-
year old girls are heaving rocks at
Israeli soldiers, thus inviting the
responsive gunshots.
That's how the tragedy of Gaza is
dominating the news from an area that
has been subjected to frightful condi-
tions for Jews, with accompanying hor-
ror for their Arab cousins.
It is a heartrending situation and it
incites a judgment that when children
resort to violence their terrorizing
causes mankind to weep.
Certainly, the Jewish people weeps
over such calamities. Israelis join in
deploring an agonizing situation.
In every respect, when either gun or
rock is used to attack Israelis, the in-
tention being to destroy Israel herself,
the duty is to protect lives and homes.
There is an accumulation of
diplomatic guilt that must be taken in-
to account in the consideration of the
issues affecting the deplorable situa-
tion. There was a path to amity when
the United Nations created both the
Jewish and Arab states. The Arab na-
tions chose war instead. In the entire
process the Israelis, who accepted the
internationally-created autonomy, had
the responsibility of protecting and
defending the established status. The
guilty who permitted the emergence of
rebirth for Israel also became the
fomenters of hatred. The diplomats who
offered peace at the outset have become
the framers of resolutions, in the very
sanctity of the UN proceeded with a
policy of continually condemming
Israel, no matter how violent the Arab
antagonism.
Guilt is multiple and divisible.
Israel surely has much to regret.
Perhaps the failure to concede to a pro-
posal for an international cooperative
method of negotiations was a grave er-
ror. Israeli opinions were divided on the
subject. It must be conceded that for
Israel it was a difficult task and self-
blame is sorrowful. The targeted always
are the more accused and Israel's self-
defense nevertheless remains primary.
Are we charged with chauvinism while
destined to be the target?
At the outset it was the Soviet par-
ticipation that was feared. In reality, it
is the attempt to inject Arafat and PLO
that is an obstacle not to be yielded to.
Arafat's trickery was evident again
when he offered to recognize Israel if he
is accepted to share in negotiations and
then he balked at the challenge to per-
sonally appeal to the rioting youth to
end the violence.
The Arab guilt remains undeniable,
even when the powers who comprise the
Security Council uphold the hands that
apparently endorse violence. Not a
single Arab potentate replied to Israel
UN Ambassador Benjamin
Natanyahu's invitation to meet Israel
for direct talks for peace. That's what
Israel has to contend with.
It remains undeniable that the in-
active UN is very guilty. Sharing guilt
are the Arab states. Israel's neighbors
do little either to encourage peace tasks
or to come to the aid of the many un-
fortunates like the very many in Gaza.
There is another very guilty party:
the media. Little has been attempted
either to understand the issues, other
than to keep harping on "occupied ter-
ritories," or to take into account the
historic backgrounds involving Gaza
and its depressed inhabitants.
The organized Jewish community
shares in the concerns over the occur-
rences, deeply regretting the loss of life.
Recognizing the duty to assure Israel's
continuity, there is the quest for unity
toward that end.
The civic-protective and public rela-
tions agencies simultaneously search
for facts, aim to clarify and assure
knowledgeability in all the involved
matters. The American Jewish Com-
mittee provides a documentary
touching upon the issues and
challenges. In its behalf the economic,
political, historical and related records
are outlined in a factual statement
prepared by George E. Gruen and Gary
Wolf. In the AJC series of questions and
answers the current spate of violence
contains the following among the
numerous aspects in the dynamited
situation:
What are the underlying
causes of the violence?
The current problems are
ultimately the result of many
complex factors — demographic,
economic, and political. It is
necessary to understand the
multidimensional nature of this
situation and the elements that
present Israel with such dif-
ficult choices.
1. Demographic Causes
The "occupied territories,"
as the West Bank (Judea and
Samaria) and Gaza are often
called, have been referred to as
Continued on Page 46
'Blacks And Jews': Century of Human Relations
A
century of blacks-whites con-
frontations chronicle their so-
cial, economic, ethical and
cultural involvements. There also have
been and there are continued religious
connotations.
Black-Jewish interchanges are
registered more than that of any other
groupings in American experiences.
The records of mutuality are
voluminous and there are also an-
tagonisms that often mar approaches to
neighborliness.
The recording of the occurences is
an obligation to historians. The records
must be preserved. The American
Jewish Archives, based in Cincinnati,
respects this as a permanent obligation.
Dr. Abraham J. Peck, the ad-
ministration director of the Archives,
has compiled the catalog for a "Blacks
and Jews" exhibition which was ar-
ranged by the American Jewish Ar-
chives and is currently on display in
Cincinnati. Here we have the dramatic
story of three centuries of
developments.
Assembled are the historical
records of blacks who took pride in
Jewish friendships and encouragement
given them by Jews. There also were the
antagonists who treated Jews as "the
rich" who mistreated them.
The Peck-edited catalog of Blacks
and Jews: The American Experience,
1654-1987 is a totality of occurrences.
Peck, as the editor of the compilation,
introduces himself as a member of a
family of survivors from Nazism who
2
FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 1988
lived on the friendliest terms with
Blacks in an integrated American com-
munity. It causes him to point to the
need for communities to live together
in the interest of "a better America"
resulting in "positive relationships of
black Americans and American Jews as
they work together toward that end."
Nothing is hidden from the record.
There were Jewish abolitionists and
there also were Jewish slaveholders
who based their views on references to
the Bible. As Dr. Peck states in in-
troducing the Jewish eminents in both
spheres of thought, in the catalog por-
tion dealing with the years 1654 to
1860:
The first two centuries of the
black-Jewish encounter in
America were highlighted by a
fairly extensive record of Jewish
slave-holding. Indeed, during
the colonial period, in the small
Jewish community of the time,
almost every Jewish household
of any form, North or South,
possessed at least one slave.
There was little or no
ideological opposition to slavery
on the part of Jews during the
colonial period, but this chang-
ed somewhat during the na-
tional period, when a number of
Jews, as individuals, were active
in the abolition movement in the
earlier part of the 19th Century.
Fewer Jews were active in the
fervent abolitionist movement of
Abraham Peck
the 1850s, essentially because it
was strongly influenced by
religious Protestantism.
The debate that ensued between
abolitionists and defenders of
slaveholding is a valuable portion of the
facts relating to the years that preced-
ed the Civil War. The recognition of a
similarity between the oppressors of
Jews and blacks was soon evidenced
and the developing interchanges of at-
titudes is explained in another editorial
annotation in which Dr. Peck states:
As early as the antebellum
period, blacks had realized that
Jews alone, among American
whites, shared with them the
status of second-class citizen-
ship. In 1860, this point was
made clear by blacks who wrote
that "with the exception of Jews,
under the whole heavens there
is not to be found a people pur-
sued with a more relentless pre-
judice and persecution than are
the free colored people of the
United States."
Nearly three decades later,
in 1889, the New York Age, a
black newspaper, wrote that
"there is much similarity
betwen the Jew and the Negro.
One is despised almost as much
as the other" Indeed, Jewish for-
tunes seemed to reach a low in
America during this period, as
Jews began to be barred from
certain Christian hotels and
resorts and encountered other
forms of anti-Jewish
prejudice. . . .
By 1903, however, much of
this feeling had vanished.
Blacks did not react with great
sympathy to the massacre of
scores of Jews in a program at
Kishinev, Russia. The reason
was clear. A riot in Evansville,
Indiana, only a month after
Kishinev, drove hundreds of
blacks from their homes. Blacks
were aghast that the Jewish
community seemed to have no
Continued on Page 46