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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.