Newspaper Page Text
The Southern Israelite
The Weekly Newspaper For Southern Jewry • Since 1925
Vol. LXII
Atlanta, Georgia, Friday, June 27, 1986
No. ;
Congratulations
*
Incoming president of the Atlanta Jewish Federation Betty K.
Jacobson congratulates her predecessor Gerald Cohen on a job
well done. Mrs. Jacobson, officially elected at a June 24 meeting of
the Board of Trustees, is the first woman president of the Atlanta
Jewish Federation. Complete report on Federation’s annual meet
ing on pages 6 and 7.
Shin Bet head resign
Herzog grants clement
by Joseph Polakoff
TSl’s Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON—Israel’s Cab
inet accepted the resignation of the
country’s Secret Service chief and
closed its inquiry into the killings
two years ago of two captured
Palestinian hijackers after they had
murdered an Israeli girl soldier.
The Cabinet also moved to estab
lish a special governmental com
mission to oversee affairs relating
to the Secret Service in the future.
Avraham Shalom, the head of
the Shin Bet, which is approxi
mately equivalent in Israel to
America’s Federal Bureau of In
vestigation, resigned because of
the intense controversy over the
beating deaths of the Palestinians
after the hijacking of a bus. Sha
lom was immediately granted im
munity from prosecution by Presi
dent Chaim Herzog. At no other
time in Israeli History has the iden
tity of a Shin Bet chief been dis
closed while he was in office.
Three other Shin Bet agents,
who were not identified, also were
granted presidential clemency and
they cannot be prosecuted, Cabinet
Secretary Yossi Beilin said. Those
agents remain in the Service.
These developments followed all-
night consultations among Israel’s
new Attorney General Yosef Har-
ish, Prime Minister Shimon Peres,
Shimon Peres
Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir
and other senior Cabinet minis
ters. Shamir was prime minister
when the hijacking tcok place in
1984 and Peres was in that office
when the alleged cover-up was in
effect.
In a statement released by Peres'
office, Harish said that Shalom
had asked for clemency. “It appears
there’s no point to an investigation
now that clemency has been
granted,” Harish was quoted, ac
cording to reports received in
Washington. An aide to Minister
of Justice Yitzhak Modai said that
Herzog had granted “full clemency”
to Shalom.
Leftist members of the Knesset
Chaim Herzog
denounced the Cabinet’s decision.
“This decision is wrong and disap
pointing,” Yossi Sarid of the Citi
zens Rights Party said on Israeli
Radio. Calling it a “whitewash.”
Sarid said that the decision “was
intended to allow the political
echelon to escape investigation.”
Beilin said that Shalom resigned
because the “publicity and the
revelation of his identity would not
allow him to continue his job.”
Shamir and Peres had warned
that a public investigation could
damage Israel’s security because it
would reveal how the Secret Serv
ice agency operates. Both opposed
a public inquiry.
Welcome to America
The Temple adopts family from Laos
Temple member Beth Schwartz (left) with Luangsiyotha family. F'our-year-old Solaoda sits in her father's
lap. Three-year-old Tan is next to her mother.
by Luna Levy
and Vida Goldgar
When Sovan and Yaeng Luang
siyotha and their daughters, So
laoda, 4 years old, and Tan, 3,
landed at Atlanta’s Hartsfield In
ternational Airport Tuesday even
ing after a 26-hour trip, it’s a safe bet
that the Laotian family never heard
of the S.S. St. Louis. What this
refugee family did know is that
waiting for them were kind and
caring people ready to help them
undertake a new life in the political
safety of the United States.
Refugee resettlement is nothing
new for the Jewish community.
Displaced persons from Europe
were helped to a new start after
World War II; Soviet and Iranian
Jews have been helped over the
years, though regrettably in stead
ily declining numbers. But The
Temple’s S.S. St. Louis Project is
believed to be the first Jewish reset
tlement program that is geared to
help non-Jews as well as Jews.
Maxwell Schwartz, who chairs
the project, explained that the name
was chosen to commemorate the
tragic story of the ship, the S.S. St.
Louis, which sailed from Germany
in 1939 with some 900 Jewish refu
gees on board, headed for Cuba.
“However,” Schwartz, says, “the
Cuban government refused them
entry, and as it turned out, over the
next few months, the entire world,
including the United States, also
refused them entry.” With all doors
closed, the ship returned to Ger
many, where Hitler proclaimed, as
he had before it left, that the world
did not want Jews. “Approximately
750 of them died in the Holocaust
that followed,” Schwartz said, “so
we have taken the name, the S.S.
St. Louis, to denote the cause of all
peoples and we are endeavoring to
put forth our little bit of assistance
in refugee resettlement.”
This particular resettlement
program is coordinated in Atlanta
under the umbrella of the Chris
tian Council of Metropolitan At
lanta and. Schwartz says, all refu
gees have been “cleared” by the
State Department and the Depart
ment of Naturalization and Immi
gration, so they can enter the coun
try legally as long as they have a
sponsor.
The project, he says, is a contin
uing effort on the part of The
Temple membership to involve itself
in social action efforts. In a sense,
it is an outgrowth of The Temple’s
successful night shelter program,
which drew a number of Temple
members to seek an additional
See Laos, page 20.