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The Southern Israelite
The Weekly Newspaper For Southern Jewry • 'Since 1925
The mood In Israel
Shamir passes his first real test with flying colors
by Yaakov Ben Yosef
Special to The Southern Israelite
JERUSALEM -Lebanon has
become America’s war, no longer
Israel's. This week the United
States and Syria engaged in some
of the fiercest confrontations since
Israel invaded Lebanon in June
1982. The Israelis watched from
the side.
The mood in Israel is clear. The
emphasis is on non-involvement and
steering clear of more fighting in
Lebanon. When Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir returned
from Washington last Friday, the
big concern in Israel was that he
had—secretly—promised the
Americans that Israel might fight
side by side with the Americans
against the Syrians.
No one here wants that. So
Shamir—as well as Israeli Defense
Minister Moshe Arens—have
spent the last few days trying to
dispel these notions of secret
Israeli-American collusion. Israel
has "assumed no military
obligations,” Shamir reported in
the Knesset Monday.
On Tuesday of this week, a
bomb exploded in a Jerusalem
bus, killing four and wounding 46
others. It was the first time in many
months that terrorists have struck
Four killed by PLO bomb
on packed Jerusalem bus
by David Landau
and
Gil Sedan
JERUSALEM (JTA)—Four
persons were killed and 46 were
injured, many seriously, when a
virtually dcuokiMag the vehicle.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir
vowed that the perpetrators “will
not go unpunished.” A statement
released by his office said security
forces were “making every possible
effort to uncover the perpetrators
of this criminal act. They shall not
go unpunished.”
The Palestine Liberation
Organization claimed credit for
the outrage. Its Cyprus-based news
laying that a un* of the “Mnriyr
Halim” commando group was
responsible for the bus bombing.
The PLO claimed it was an army
bus and that 40 Israeli military
personnel were killed.
The bus, a No. 18 which follows
a circuitous route around the city,
was blasted into the air by the
explosion while waiting at a stop
light on Herzi Boulevard at 12:50
p.m. local time. Another bus,
immediately behind it, was also
Bkihaged by the explosion and a
mwnhwofhvp m iwgirn—mined
injuries.
The injured were rushed to the
See PLO bomb, page 20.
in the capital. For Israelis, the
attack was a grim reminder th.’t,
split or no split, the PLO still could
function, and still wage successful
terrorist warfare against Israeli
targets.
The Israelis have done well in
the past few weeks. The Shamir-
Arens visit to Washington was, by
any standard, a big success. The
American-Israeli relationship is
flourishing, and Israel is getting
almost everything that it wants
from the U.S.
When the prime minister
returned to Israel on Friday, he
could not contain himself. The
period Israel is going through
now, he said, is “one of the finest
hours in U.S.-Israeli relations.”
The facts spoke for themselves.
Decided during the Shamir-
Reagan talks last week was a
record American military grant to
Israel, $1.4 billion. This is less than
the SI.7 billion Israel wanted, but
more than the $1,275 billion Israel
Yaakov Ben Yoaef
of loans.
In addition to the happy
outcome in military aid, Israel won
assurances from Ronald Reagan
that he was not about to insist that
the May 17 Israel-Lebanon
agreement be modified, shelved, or
abandoned. The Arabs have
insisted on that, but Israel, and
now the U.S., are standing fast.
felt was a jmnimum. TlK $1.4 Wl*n Reagan mct wWt Amin
k ""°" iTJSA:
M
the 1985 budget.
For 1984, Israel received $1.7
billion in military aid from the
U.S., but half of it was in the form
with Shamir were concluded, the
American president told the
See Shamir, page 21.
—‘Give me your tired, your poor...’—
Emma Lazarus-poet of freedom and nation
by Dr. David GefTen
"The spirit is not dead, proclaim
the word
Where lay dead hones, a host of
armed men stand
/ open the gras’es, my people,
saith the Lord
And I shall place you living in
your Promised Land!"
These words by an American
Jewish poetess called Emma
Lazarus reflect her concern for the
return of the Jewish People to its
ancestral homeland. Yet Emma
Lazarus is far better known for the
verses she wrote in 1883 in tribute
to the Statue of Liberty, verses
which are inscribed at the base of
that well known symbol situated
on Bedloes Island in the New York
harbor. Emma Lazarus, an
American poetess of liberty, was
deeply Zionistic in the last decade
of her brief life—calling on her
fellow Jews to revitalize the
homeland of ancient days. It is this
unexpected combination of
loyalties to the U.S.A, and to her
own Jewish People which makes
Emma Lazarus such a fascinating
personality.
Sephardic family in 1849, she
displayed her literary talent quite
early and was already writing
poems in her teens. When a
collection of her verse appeared in
1866, Ralph Waldo Emerson
reacted very positively to it. In fact,
Emma dedicated her second
volume of poetry, “Admetus and
Other Poems” (1871) to Emerson,
the well-known thinker and writer.
He' specifically praised her
sensitivity to the hellenistic ideas,
themes which she continued to
pursue in her writing throughout
the 1870s.
In 1876 she read George Eliot’s
new novel, “Daniel Deronda,” in
which the topic of the Jewish
homeland reborn touched her
spirit very deeply. A key character
in the story stresses in a moving
dialogue, “There is a store of
wisdom among us to found a new
Jewish polity—grand, simple, just
like the old—a republic where there is
equality of protection, an equality
which shone like a star on the
forehead of our ancient
community, and gave it more than
the brightness of Western freedom
amid the despotisms of the
organic center.” Furthermore, as
his character developed, Daniel
takes on himself the responsibility
“of restoring a political existence
to my people, making them a
nation again, giving them a
national center , though they too
are scattered over the face of the
globe.”
Emma Lazarus caught the
fervor of Jewish nationalism from
George Eliot’s novel. She was
touched by the settlement schemes
in the Holy Land suggested by
Laurence Oliphant in his book,
“The Land of Gilead,” and she
read the essays of Leo Pinsker.
(Theodor Herzi wrote that had he
known of Pinsker’s “Auto-
Emancipation,” his own writings
might have been superfluous.) AH
these, together with her growing
awareness of the persecutions
perpetrated against the Jews, now
turned her into a major advocate
of the Jewish cause.
In 1881 and 1882, as the Jewish
immigrants began to arrive in large
numbers in New York, she spent
many hours with them, to link
herself more closely with her
See Emma, page 20.