Newspaper Page Text
UNI FIL extension
may get IsraeTs OK
by David Landau
JERUSALEM (JTA)-lsrael is
prepared to agree to a two-month
extension of the mandate of the
United Nations Interim Force in
Lebanon (UNIFIL), which is
scheduled to expire Jan. 14. Most
of the countries contributing
contingents to UNIFIL also want a
two-month extension, in view of the un
certain situation in Lebanon. Lebanon
itself would have preferred a six-
month extension.
Last week Israel accused
UNIFIL of laxity in preventing
terrorists from infiltrating the
areas it controls after nine
Katyusha rocket launchers were
discovered in southern Lebanon in
the zone patrolled by UNIFIL’s
Ghanian contingent. The army
disclosed that five of the launchers
were aimed at Kiryat Shmona, the
Israeli border town serving as a site
for negotiations between Israel,
Lebanon and the United States,
and four of the launchers were
aimed at an Israeli military base on
the Lebanese coast.
United Nations Undersecretary
General Brian Urquhart has been
visiting Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
Urquhart and U.S. special
envoy Morris Draper have
received, in separate conversations,
mixed and hesitant responses from
Israeli policy makers to the idea of
UNIFIL being given a change of
function in the context of an
mb ^w»ihw i w m iii^
Palestinian refugee camps to
protect the inhabitants following
the ultimate withdrawal of the
Palestine Liberation Organization,
Syrian and'Israeli troops from the
country.
Israeli policy makers are anxious
to remove UNIFIL from the
projected 25-milc security zone in
south Lebanon which includes the
Ein Hilwe and Rashmdiye camps
near Sidon and Tyre, respectively.
The Israelis believe the UNIFIL
presence in the zone would hamper
rather than help future security,
which Israel wants to be in the
hands of Lebanese forces with its
own army in a surveillance role.
The Israeli policy makers would
view more favorably, however, the
idea of UNIFIL moving into the
Palestinian camps north of the
zone, and especially in and around
Tripoli where the Palestinians fear
a massacre once the PLO leave the
area. Some well-placed sources in
Jerusalem indicate, though, that in
the Final analysis Israel might
accept a revamped UNIFIL role
as protector of the refugee camps,
extending through all of Lebanon.
The Lebanese government itself
is reliably understood to want
UNIFIL’s mandate extended so
that the force can play a role in the
context of an overall settlement.
Lebanon has been canvassing
support for the idea among the
contributing states and among the
permanent members of the U.N.
Security Council.
Informed sources told the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency that
Lebanon had virtually lost hope of
being able to persuade the U.S.
and others to imrmi ifca sios nf
looked to UNIFIL to provide
much-needed military presence in
the country while efforts are made
to reconstruct and train the
sovereign Lebanese army.
The Southern
Israelite
The Weekly Newspaper For Southern Jewry
'Since 1925'
Vol. LVIII
Atlanta, Georgia, Friday, January 14, 19*3
No. 2
Jewish leaders blam<
U.S. for‘talks’ impasse
by Joseph Polakoff
TSI’» WashiRflon correspondent
WASHINGTON (JTA) —
American Jewish communal
leaders have put it straight on the
line to Secretary of State George
Shultz and the State Department’s
principal Middle East policy
makers that Israel is being blamed
for the impasse in negotiations for
withdrawal of forces in Lebanon
when the fault rests with
Washington.
The confrontation took place in
Shultz's ofTice at a meeting that he
had asked for, and which lasted
four times as long as expected,
extending from a half hour to two
hours and five minutes.
Announcement of the session was
not made public by the State
Department and was withheld
froaa uim» «—<■! ■ stew
^Pcame'am^puHicTomments
by administration officials faulting
Israel and a report from Amman
that Jordan’s King Hussein
privately had disclosed that
President Reagan had pledged to
him in writing at their December
Berman
meeting that he would pressure
Israel on settlements on the West
Bank and withdrawal from
Lebanon. This report was not
denied of confirmed by the White
Department
uTMlfe 'US UdefNW-
officials said at the meeting, Julius
Berman, chairman of the
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations,
told questioning reporters that the
Arab states are procrastinating in
—Martin Luther King Jr.—
His extraordinary impact on the Jewish community
following up the Reagan peace
initiative and that the Lebanese
government is not getting the U.S.
help it needs to make an agreement
with Israel.
“Our feeling," Berman said to
The Southern Israelite, “is that
Lebanon is prepared to discuss
normalization and needs U.S.
support to do that, but the
perception in our community is
that support is not coming."
Berman added, “We’ve pleaded for
such support” at the meeting.
On the broader peace issue,
Berman pointed to the “patent
procrastination of the Arabs since
September” after President
Reagan announced his initiative.
“The blame is being laid on Israel
when, in fact, Israel is ready to come
to the table at any time without
praewnditiona." Berman said.
representative in the effort to bring
Israel and Arab states into
negotiations on the Reagan plan,
had asked him if the conference of
See Jewish leaders, page 21
by Rabbi Benjamin A. Kamin
Martin Luther King Jr. would
have been 54 years old on Jan. 15.
Since his death at the age of 39, Dr.
King's dreams have evaporated
and most Americans have turned
inward.
It is getting harder and harder to
remember how King ignited us,
changed us, and returned
American Jews to their prophetic
tradition. But he did.
The Jews, a people with
generally decentralized patterns,
responded to King as to no other
American in the country's history.
In effect, he became the living
moral flagship for the nation— and
especially for the liberal Jewish
community in the 1960s.
The Jews had applauded Harry
Truman's courageous endorsement
of Israel in 1948 and gathered
around Bobby Kennedy in the
1960s, but had never involved
themselves emotionally and
physically as was the case with Dr.
King. With uncharacteristic
exuberance, and real bravery, Jews
trusted and worked for Martin
Luther King.
Albert Vorspan, vice president
of the Union of American Hebrew
Congregations and director of its
Commission on Social Action, was
an associate of King in the civil
rights movement. He recalls that
the black-Jewish alliance was at
the heart of the movement. “He
had an extraordinary impact upon
us," Vorspan recalls. “Like no
other non-Jewish partner,
American Jews gave to Dr. King a
blank check of commitment."
A remarkable black-Jewish
partnership was galvanized by Dr.
King. In the great struggle to de-
segregate the South, rabbis were
hosed and beaten and jailed
alongside King and the many other
freedom fighters of all
backgrounds who joined the battle
against the tyranny of racism.
Jewish representation was
disproportionately high in the
dangerous Mississippi summer of
1964 and in every anti-
discrimination effort of those
times.
Dr. King
The notorious and cold-blooded
executions in Philadelphia, Miss.,
of three young civil rights workers
in 1964 took the lives of two Jews
and one black. At the great March
on Washington in 1963 and in St.
Augustine and Birmingham and
Selma and Montgomery and
Memphis, Jewish involvement in
the lifeline of Martin Luther King’s
campaign for human dignity was
signal. Through it all, it was the
vision and awesome dynamismics
vision and awesome dynamism of
Dr. King himself that moved Jews
and others beyond themselves.
The admiration Jews felt for Dr.
King, and the strong historical
affinity of the Jews to the black
experience, was by no means one
sided.
When he spoke at the
convention of the Union of
American Hebrew Congregations
in Chicago in 1963, King related
his dream to the proven ability of
Jews to transcend discouragement
and despair. In his later writings,
the black preacher wrote: “The
lesson of Jewish mass involvement
in social and political action and
education is worthy of emulation."
King encouraged his own brothers
and sisters to become active
politically, as Jews had done, in
order to assure a more equal role in
society.
In 1983, however, it can befairly
asked what has become of Dr.
King’s historic struggle. Does the
dream he articulated and shared
with so many of so many differing
backgrounds speak to us still?
Certainly, the times are different,
the issues blurred by overriding
economic obsessions. But one is
saddened by those whose
recollections of those urgent and
heady days have diminished into
nostalgia.
Not enough youngsters, black or
white, know much about Martin
Luther King today, and America
in general has fallen into a resigned
non-concern.
That Martin Luther King's
dream of full equality in a free
society for all Americans remains a
vision too far from realization is
our failure, not his. But because we
Jews shared so much of what was
his, we remember him now, on his
birthday, with special warmth artd
identification and love.
n d h UiC LAEcCO
bncfi IJM uN COL. LlbriArtV