Newspaper Page Text
)
For health’s sake
Israeli doctor Robert Blumenthal examines children in the
Lebanese village of Marjayotin after a recent outbreak of hepatitis
there. O—jU
The Souther1
Israelite
The Weekly Newspaper for Southern Jewry
Our 55th Year
VOL. LV
Atlanta, Georgia, Friday, November 23, 1979
i
o
<
fN
cc
nj
N 00
in
*—*
Tf
-J
,
X
o
o
O LU
Z3
Z Z
O LU
-< >
1 4
z <
H
ZO
<
z
z
r o
z
LU
1—1
CE LU
o
oc hi
T-
-U _1
►—•
X o
CJ
of ‘New Barbarism’
by Joseph Polakoff
WASHINGTON (JTA)—The
seizure by Iranian students of the
U.S. Embassy in Teheran and their
holding of some 60 Americans
hostage with the approval of the
Iranian authorities is giving
Americans a sharper focus on the
meaning of terror, why Israelis are
so staunchly seeking defendable
borders and the means to defend
themselves against what is now
called the New Barbarism.
Despite the attacks and threats
inflicted upon Israel since the
Palestine Liberation Organization
was formed, Israelis have been
accused in the West of being
u —-* *■*- in
Although terrorists have been
striking in Germany, Italy and
Great Britain, these events have
apparently not affected the
thinking or action of governments
to stem the spread of the terroristic
means of acquiring power,
particularly in the Middle East and
against Israel.
Analysts familiar with the
politics of terror noted that the
seizure of the Embassy in Teheran
plus the shooting of the Israeli
Ambassador to Portugal, Ephraim
Eldar, in Lisbon, illustrates again
that the enemies of democracy
have abandoned the codes of
civilized behavior and are intent on
using any means to achieve their
aims.
In diennatfig the fate of the
Americans in Teheran, the State
Department’s chief spokesman,
Hodding Carter said: “Central to
our view, the first question before
us is the release of the hostages.
Their release is the major focus of
our efforts and our policy. That
task is paramount and overrid
ing....The vast majority of the
nations understand that the
hostages are held illegally and in
contravention of international
law. The violation is clear, the
remedy is clear.... We have nothing
to negotiate about. We have
nothing before us.”
Equally clear and similar,
analysts immediately noted, has
been the position of successive
Israeli governments on dealing
See Barbarism page 21
atCJF
I
by Murray Zuckoff
MONTREAL (JTA)—Of the
dozens of issues discussed at the
five-day General Assemb|v\of the
Council of Jewish Federations
(CJF) which ended here last
Sunday, the plight of the Jews of
Ethiopia (Falashas) and the
problems of Sephardic Jews in
Israel and in the Diaspora created
the most ferment and passion
among the 2,600 Jewish communal
leaders from the United States and
Canada attending the Assembly.
The plight of the Falashas was
presented with eloquence and
poignancy to the gathering by
Yona Bogale, the leader of the
Ethiopian Jewish community for
the last 50 years, who was allowed
to leave his native land less than
three weeks ago.
He urgently appealed to the
assembled leadership and to the
Jewish community-at-large to
increase efforts being made in
Israel and elsewhere to rescue the
25,000 Jews who remain trapped in
Ethiopia. The 72-year-old Falasha
leader related how current events
in Ethiopia make massive
emigration of the Falashas to
Israel a matter of highest priority.
“We have been killed, sold into
slavery, forced to convert to other
religions and physically threatened
even unto this day amongst
unspeakable conditions in a
country which is caught between
war, revolution and terrible
changing conditions,” Bogale said.
Continuing, he stated: “We were
once 250,000 people, Now we are
less than 25,000. Time is against us.
Every year, every month, every day
we lose our young people to war, to
discrimination and to persecution.
We cannot sustain much more
such losses and if the Jewish people
in America and throughout the
world and in Israel do not act quickly
to help us come to Israel, then God
forbid that perhaps in five or 10
years we might disappear.”
The Assembly adopted a
resolution, notable for its brevity,
some 70 words, compared to a 400-
word resolution on the
Indochinese refugees, noting that
the Falashas “are currently in
danger of physical and spiritual
disintegration. We recognize the
urgency of this issue and re-affirm
our commitment to seek to
ameliorate their plight and to the
rescue and aliya of Ethiopian
Jewry. We give our full support to
the efforts being made by the State
of Israel and others on behalf of
Ethiopian Jewry.”
The situation of the Sephardic
Jews was also brought forcefully to
the attention of the Assembly in a
series of printed statements, in a
resolution, and in an angry con
frontation with Leon Dulzin at an
unscheduled meeting he agreed to
attend after spokesmen for the
Canadian Sephardic Federation
complained bitterly that no room
had been made on the Assembly’s
agenda for them to discuss their
grievances.
Led by Joseph Benarrosh,
president of the Federation which
claims that there are 24,000
Sephardic Jews in Montreal and
5,000 in Toronto, and Charles
Chocronl the Federation’s
immediate past president,
members of the Federation issued
a plea for concrete action to assure
the survival of Sephardic culture in
North America and in Israel.
In a leaflet widely distributed to
the delegates, the Federation
stated “that since the creation of
the Israeli State, Sephardic
Oriental Jews have been
condemned to a second class
citizen status." It noted that all
Israeli institutions “are and have
always been dominated by the
Ashkenazic Jews. Sephardic Jews
were led to believe that they were in
subtle ways less equipped to deal
with modernity than their
Ashkenazic brothers."
During an hour-long public
meeting with Dulzin, which was
frequently marked by shouting
matches between the Sephardic
representatives and Dulzin, the
entire list of their grievances was
repeated in full. Several Sephardic
spokesmen noted that although
their brethren in countries such as
France, the United States and
Canada were successful
businessmen, lawyers and doctors,
their brethren in Israel had been
unable to attain similar positions.
One said: “If we are good for
cannon fodder, then why-aren’t we
permitted to benefit in the society
we help to defend?”
Dulzin pointed out that the
Sephardim, in their written and
oral statements to the Assembly,
exaggerated the situation in Israel,
that the government was doing all it
could to ameliorate the conditions
of the Sephardim and that the
insistence on describing Israel as a
dichotomous Ashkenazic/Se
phardic society was erroneous.
“There was no Sephardim and no
Ashkenazim in Israel," Dulzin
declared. “There are only Jews in
Israel.”
Another event, also unschedul
ed, which drew wide attention at
the Assembly, was a meeting of
representatives of the Israeli Peace
Now movement, convened under
the sponsorship of Leonard Fein,
editor of Moment magazine; Dr.
Irving Greenberg, director of the
National Jewish Resource Center
in New York City, and Prof. Allen
Pollack, chairman of the Labor
Zionist Alliance and a member of
the Jewish Agency’s Board of
Governors.
The New York Timet, which
routinely insists on describing a
discussion in the Jewish
community as a debate, a debate as
a rift, a rift as a confrontation, and
a confrontation as a civil war, went
for broke on this meeting and in its
edition Sunday described the
meeting with a four-column
headline as, “North American
Jews Widen Debate on Israeli
Policy.” This was neither actual
nor factual.
Some 300 delegates attended the
meeting which could, at best, be
described as tepid and uninspired.
In fact, the Peace Now
representatives from Israel
appeared to be overly cautious,
innocuous and conservative in
their statements. Its importance
was less in the presentations of
Peace Now views or that of its
opponents than in the fact that a
year ago such a meeting would
either not have been held or if held
would have produced fireworks.
Many of the statements made by
the Peace Now representatives
from Israel could very well have
been accepted by members of the
Begin government. For example,
Gary Brenner of Israel, asserted:
“It is up to the (Israel) government
to determine, through the
negotiation process, what the
components of peace will be, and
what accommodations will have to
be made."
But, he continued, “we believe
that we must be willing and eager
to talk with any potential partner
in that process, with the
precondition: (I) renunciation of
terrorism, and (2) recognition of
the State of Israel as a sovereign
state."
Orly Lubin, also from Israel,
stated: “We acknowledge our right
See CJF page 21