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Still no clues in attack on synagogue sexton MILWAUKEE(JTA)—Police here have not yet caught any of the three men who beat and burned Sexton Buzz Cody of Reform Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun when he refused to give them access to the synagogue’s Torah scrolls. Cody was hospitalized and released six days after the attack. The investigation, by a pair of detectives on each of the force’s three shifts, has produced no leads so far. The incident, on Dec. 7, however, generated a storm of protest when Police Lt. William Vogl, who was not assigned to the case, told the Milwaukee Journal that he doubted Cody’s story. After the congregation’s Rabbi Francis Barry Silberg protested this statement, the police department repudiated it, and Police Chief Robert Ziarnik assured the Mil waukee Jewish Council that the case was being investigated. According to a report in the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle by its editor, Andy Muchin, 35-year-old Cody, who converted to Judaism 12 years ago, was accosted shortly after 8 a.m. on Saturday morning, Dec. 7, in the synagogue’s sanctuary, by three men. They demanded access to the Torah scrolls, four of which are stored in the ark behind locked brass doors. When Cody, who had a key to the ark, refused to open it, the men beat him, then dragged him up the stairs to the second floor, which serves as a storeroom, and choir and organ loft. There, holding a knife to his throat, they cut his hand and leg, tore off his shirt and poured a caustic liquid drain cleaner on his barechcst, Muchin reported. Cody kicked one of the men. They fled, taking the $100 they had robbed him of. Cody crawled to the elevator and made it to the lobby, where the janitor found him. He was taken to the hospital with second-degree burns. The synagogue’s security system of exterior and interior alarms was turned off at 7:45 a.m. on Dec. 7 by the janitor, who entered through the door facing the congregation’s parking lot. Cody arrived at about 8 a.m. The attackers apparently entered just before Cody, according to Milwaukee Detective Dorsey Tisdale. Tisdale thought such an attack was a strange occurrence for broad daylight, but he acknowledged that the attackers might have known that the alarm would be turned off. The police, who came to the synagogue when Silberg called them, found a can of lye crystals, a carving knife, two yellow rubber gloves and a bottle of liquid drain cleaner on the second floor, apparently left behind by the attackers. Cody said the attackers had “Middle Eastern accents” and spoke in Arabic. Cody later told police that the men mentioned the initials “PDL." These initials, said Randy Kahn, Wisconsin coordinator for B’nai B’rith’s Anti- Defamation League, could stand for Palestinian Defense League. The Chronicle, wrote Muchin, received a telephone call the day before the attack from an unidentified man who, said secretary Pam Burns, had said, . .Defense League is at war with the Jewish community.” A similar declaration by the Palestinian Defense League was received in a letter to a Colorado Springs newspaper in March 1983, according to Kahn. The attack on Cody followed the unsolved July spray-painting of swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti on the exterior of the Je'wish Com munity Center and the adjoining Helfaer Community Services Building and a restaurant, and a similar incident a year-and-a-half ago in volving a suburban synagogue. Judy Mann, executive director of the Milwaukee Jewish Council, called the Cody attack “more than alarming” but urged Jews, as she had, as well, afterthe July incident, to remain calm and keep it in perspective. She said that Police Chief Ziarnik had “reassured” her about the investigation of the Cody attack. Ziarnik subsequently told the Jewish Chronicle that he did not “know what was at the bottom of this. . . . We’re going to work at it. Somebody was seriously hurt.” County Deputy District Attorney General Thomas Schneider told the Chronicle that the police depart- e Southern Israelite The Weekly Newspaper For Southern Jewry 'Since 1925' Atlanta, Georgia, Friday, December 20, 1985 No. 51 c: i Z- £ C. :r, c O' c c. rr, c X c. Vol. LXI c. > C c Pressure builds in U.S to move against Arafat by Joseph Polakoff TSTs Washington correspondent WASHINGTON—The U.S. Department of Justice, encouraged by political allies of President Reagan, including Colorado Republican Sen. William Armstrong and the National Jewish Coalition iri the Republican Party, is examining two packets of privately collected information and legal opinion that could result in proceedings vastly reducing Yasir Arafat’s influence in countries friendly to the United States. Central to the examination by lawyers on Attorney General Edwin Meese’s staff is whether the United States government under federal anti-terrorism laws can issue a warrant for the arrest of Arafat for alleged complicity in the cold-blooded tnet~nromcie that tne police depart- alleged complicity in the cold-blooded formal federal exposure of Arafat’s ment has assureohim It believed murders 12 years ago in Khartoum alleged role in the killings. Cody’s complaint to be valid, but that he would “monitor” their investigation to make sure it was “thorough.” Schneider added that detective Vogl had no authority to comment on the case, as he had not been assigned to it. Vogl had said he doubted Cody’s story of the attack on him because “when you’re talking about something involving a radical group, they don’t operate in this manner.” of two high-ranking American envoys and a Belgian ambassador by the Black September gang, a Palestine Liberation Organization segment under Arafat’s control. Basic to the case in general is whether elements in the Reagan administration, who long have shielded Arafat from political extinction and want him brought into the “peace process” along with Jordan’s King Hussein and Egypt’s Yasir Arafat President Hosni Mubarak to deal with Israel about the West Bank and Gaza, can nullify or mitigate federal t eged role in the Killings. Contrary to an official denial two weeks ago by the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division that such an effort existed, Meese’s spokesman, Terry Eastland, has confirmed that the Department has received “new allegations” about Arafat’s personal role and that the matter “is under review.” In a letter Dec. 11, Armstrong urged Meese “to determine whether criminal charges can be brought ^ I n ninnin.i.iMr-fi-iiini- -nr Mil' 'WSIraW TORAH DAY SCHOOL OF ATLANTA Atlanta’s latest addition Sunday was a happy day at Torah Day School. See story, page 6. against Mr Arafat.” He referred to President Reagan’s statement July 8 to the American Bar Association: “We must act against the criminal menace of terrorism with the full weight of the law, both domestic and international. We will act to indict, apprehend and prosecute those who commit the kind of atrocities the world has witnessed in recent weeks.” Noting news reports of “existing evidence linking Arafat personally to a specific crime,” the Khartoum murders of March 1973 of U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel; the deputy chief of the U.S. Embassy, George Curtis Moore, and Belgian Ambas sador Guy Eid, Armstrong wrote Meese: If the allegations contained in news reports “can be substantiated by the Justice Department, then certainly the policy outlined by the president should be applied in this instance.” Richard Fox of Philadelphia, chairman of the National Jewish Coalition, urged the Justice Depart ment “to act promptly” on the Arafat case. Noting reports that a tape recording exists of Arafat directing Black September terrorists to execute the three diplomats, Fox said: “If the tape’s existence is confirmed and if it does, in fact, link Arafat to the crimes in question, 1 strongly encourage the admini stration with all due speed to issue an indictment against him.” In conversations with The Southern Israelite including Charles Lichen- stein, former deputy chief of the U.S. mission to the United Nations and now with the Heritage Foundation, the leading conservative research and public policy organization here; retired Army Lt. Gen. Vernon Walters, the present U.S. represen tative to the U.N., who was the CIA’s deputy chief at the time of the K hartoum murders; a top-ranking foreign service officer with ambassa dorial expertise on the Near East, who spoke on background, and others in the State and Justice Departments, the following outline of the situation has emerged: Among Lichenstein’s duties while with the U.S. mission was supervision of its decisions of which foreign nationals should be invited and who should not be invited to the U N. Following the rejection by consensus by the U.N. General Assembly in October of a proposal to invite Arafat after Reagan warned he would not go the U.N. if Arafat See Arafat, page 5.