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.