I PURELY COMMENTARY
Traditions
Continued from Page 2
eminent personalities. The first two
presidents of the World Zionist
Organization have been quoted:
lb David Wolffsohn, who succeeded
Theodor Herzl, the pioneering
organizer of the political Zionist cause
is credited with treating the flag in the
sanctity of the tallit. He gave the flag
this deinition:
We have a flag, and it is blue
and white: the tallit with which
we wrap ourselves when we
pray — that is our symbol.
This is sanctity of an emblem in
prayer. No one would dare ask the
wearer of a tallit to salute it
demonstratively. Whoever carries the
flag or wears the tallit is judged with
dignity. His sincerity does not require
demonstration of loyalty. The mere
adherence to it is its loyalty.
Theodor Herzl also had a definition
when he defined the flag as:
With a flag you can lead peo-
ple wherever you want.
Dr. Herzl had another definition
when he proposed:
I would suggest a white flag
with seven gold stars: the white
field symbolizing our pure life;
the stars, the seven golden hours
of our working day.
It should be remembered that this
Herzlian definition was uttered 90
years ago, when people struggled
through a 12-to-15 hour work day, when
there was child labor, when there were
not just rights in the society of that
time for many in the working class.
THeodor Herzl pleaded in that op-
pressive age for just rights for the
worker, to make labor a service of digni-
ty and self-respect.
Aren't there the ideals that must
always symbolize the flag?
The flag is the instrument in the
commitment to human rights inherent
in human diginifed loyalty and the
glory of honorable citizenship.
Theodor Herzl pioneered in propos-
ing a basic human principle making
labor a devotion to live by. That remains
a remarkable human ideal advocated
by him under the symbol of "flag?'
'Palestine'
Continued from Page 2
with its boundaries that existed
at the time of the British Man-
date, is an indivisible territorial
unit."
One of the PLO's logos bears
another outline of "Palestine"
which includes all the land from
the Jordan River to the Mediter-
ranean, i.e., Israel, the West
Bank and Gaza Strip.
U.S. newspapers have begun
to refer to the West Bank and
Gaza Strip as "Palestine." The
Los Angeles Times has headlin-
ed a recent letters-to-the-editor
column "Deportations in
Palestine."
And now U.N. Secretary
General Javier Perez de Cuellar
has contributed his own inter-
pretation of "Palestine." In a
press conference following a re-
cent meeting with Yasir Arafat,
de Cuellar referred to the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, saying
"These are occupied territories
for me and everybody with the
exception, of course, of the
Israeli government. We call
them Palestinians and the land
Palestine."
This new definition, greeted
warmly by the PLO, was not
historicaly accurate nor
diplomatically proper. Heir to
the legacy of the League of Na-
tions, the U.N.'s de Cuellar cer-
tainly should have known
better.
When the League gave Great
Britain the Mandate for
Palestine in 1920, the territory
stretched from the Mediterra-
nean across the Jordan River to
the territories which later
became Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
In 1921, Britain lopped off two-
thirds of Mandatory Palestine to
create an emirate for the
Hashemite dynasty driven out
of Saudi Arabia by the Saud
clan and named the area Tran-
sjordan. (The country's in-
dependence was proclaimed in
1946.)
In 1947, Arab leaders re-
jected a U.N. resolution which
would have partitioned the land
to the west of the Jordan into
Arab and Jewish states. Follow-
ing the declaration of the State
of Israel in 1948, Transjordan
and five other Arab countries
invaded Israel in an effort to
eradicate the Jewish state.
Hashemite King Abdullah con-
quered the West Bank, and pro-
claimed himself king of "All
Palestine." Now astride both
banks of the Jordan River, he
renamed his country Jordan. In
1950, Jordan formally annexed
the territory. For the next 17
years, Jordan and Egypt
prevented the development of
an independent Arab state in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip,
respectively.
Some within the Palestinian
Arab camp now seem to be say-
ing, without authority, that they
might be willing to accept a
state in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip as originally envisioned in
1947. Many Palestinian Arabs
still cling to the PLO Covenant's
maximalist claims to "all of
Palestine" and this dissension
has led to political and military
clashes between rival factions.
In his reference to
"Palestine," Perez de Cuellar has
endorsed PLO effors for a
Palestinian Arab state in the ter-
ritories and has run rough-shod
over Israeli claims and re-
quirements. But siding with one
party to the Arab-Israeli dispute
he also has trampled on the
tenets of U.N. Security Council
Resolution 338 which calls for
negotiations between the par-
ties to establish a just and
durable peace in the region.
Ironically, the U.N. official said
he hoped to negotiate a settle-
ment to the Arab-Israeli conflict
as he has begun to do in the
Iran-Iraq war. But after his
unilateral declaration of
Palestine, how can he be regard-
ed as an honest broker?
The annual U.N. charade on
"the question of Palestine" has
always been an occasion to
deride Israel, not to promote the
Palestinians.
Palestine was not restricted
to a narrow strip of land bet-
ween the Jordan River and the
1948 disengagement lines.
Palestine started at the Mediter-
ranean and ended in the arid
Jordanian plateau. It embraced
Israel, Jordan and what became
known as the West Bank and
Gaza strip. The new, increasing-
ly popular use of the word
Palestine as a synonym for the
territories is a Trojan horse con-
cealing a threat to sovereign
states on both banks of the Jor-
dan River. Israelis, Jordanians
and Palestinian Arabs know it.
And so should Perez de Cuellar.
These are the established and cor-
rect historical facts that must not be
tampered with. Friends of Israel must
utilize them in every effort to
counteract propaganda that seeks to
undermine Israel's existence.
Rabbi Joachim Prinz
and served as rabbi of Temple B'nai
Abraham in Newark, N.J., for years,
retiring in 1977 but continuing his rab-
binic services until his death Sept. 30
at age 86.
He was dedicated to civil rights in
American and world Jewish
movements. He was an organizer of
demonstrative causes in support of just
rights for the black community, and he
risked attacks as a libertarian.
In the years of the witch hunts in
American politics, he sued Common
Sense magazine for calling him a com-
munist. He won a $30,000 verdict but
never collected.
He was always the researcher and
historian and his book on Jews and the
Joachim Prinz:
popes registered him as an authority on
Catholic-Jewish relations.
Courageous
It was as president of the American
Libertarian
Jewish Congress in the years 1958 to
abbi Joachim Prinz was the 1966 and afterwards as president of the
fearless fighter for justice whose Conference of Presidents of major
courageous career began in his American Jewish Organizations that he
defiance of the Nazis in his early years became one of the leading spokesmen
under Hitlerism in Germany and as a for American Jewry.
Dr. Prinz symbolized courage in
continuity in this country.
As rabbi in Berlin, in 1933, . Dr. leadership. He was a liberal in every
Prinz resisted the Nazi brutalities. He sense of the word and as such he in-
was in and out of German prisons, and spired many of his associates to action
it was among his good fortunes that he in periods of stress in Jewish history.
survived the tortures to which he was His name will be blessed with
subjected. At the invitation of Dr. memories of notable achievements in
Steven S. Wise, he came to this country Zionism and civil rights causes.
R
Vandals toppled 71 tombstones in the Mt. of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem last week. It was
the latest in a series of desecrations at the cemetery in recent months.