' Page 2 - The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, January 13, 1983
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RABBI W. GUNTHER PLAUT
A group of religious leaders recently went to see Prime Minister Trudeau to voice their deep conciern with the laick of public discussion concerning our nuclear program. They wanted him to know that whatever his advisors say to him, a widespread current of worry runs
through the minds of average Canadians because they don't know enough about the direction of Canadian nuclear policy. The top religious leaders of other de-nominations were there ... but hot a single Jew.
Yet the project which these leaders
Rabbi Plaat
represent is called Ploughshares, after the injunction in Isaiah that the time will have to come when men will abandon their weapons of wa;r and "beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks." Operation Ploughshares is not a denominational enterprise, Are Jews not concerned?
After all, we were the first to hold up the possibilities of universal peace. The very word peace is the basis of our approach to life — yet we were not there.
I am sorry to say that Canadian Jewish Congress does not have a clearly defined and enmiciated policy on the subject. There is no reason why Congress should not join Operation Ploughshares. Individuals like CJC President Irwin Cotler have stated their concern; so has the ch^rman of the social action committee of Congress, Prof. Frederick Zemans. But Congress itself, rejpresentfng the Jeivish cpm-mimlty, has, so far, not acted ofiBcially.
It is encouraging therefore to know that individual synagogues as well as persons all oVer the country are taking the ball into their own hands. During the week of Jan. 16-21 there will be a nuclear awareness program sponsored by Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. The keynote speaker will be world famous Norwegian Johan Galfung, disarmament consultant to the Uhited Nations. All week long the public will participate in a great; variety of discussions, hear lectureis and raise their consciousness in this whole area.
the conference has been appropriately called uvacharta bachayim (V'therefore chdose life"). Significantly, it will not be a one-sided : plea for disarmament and denuclearization. Representatives of the department of external affairs and the director of program planning for Atomic Energy of Canada will- be present to make the case for strengthening our nuclear program.
I congratulate the planners and the participants. I trust the time will be close at hand — certainly no later than the Plenary Assembly of Canadian Jewish Congress in May ^ when our organized community will make itself part of this urgent inquiry and bring the Jewish community into the vortex of nuclear concern.
Isf aely Egarpt fflop^
Z:--;^^; By::; SHELDON KIRSHNER
Long before ■ Anwar Sadat broke ranks with r his fellow Arabs and signed a peace treaty" with Israel, Egypt and Israel sought to solve-tbeir problems through diplomatic channels, according to new information.":''
These efforts failed, leading Israel and Egypt down the slippery road to war, but disclosure of their existence proves that Sadat was working in a well defined historical context wben embarked on his mission of peace in November of 1977.
The Egyptians, like the Israelis, gave serious consideration to ending hostilities as early as September, 1948; And Gamal Abdel Nasser, the fiery apostle of Arab nationalism, seemed ready for an accommodation with* Israel as late as 1956, the year of the Suez war.
The stereotyped view that Nasser was not interested in peace with Israel, reinforced by events between 1956 and 1967, isn't therefore strictly true.
On Sept. 23, 1948, during a ceasefire in the first Arab-Israeli Conflict, a top-ranking Israeli dijplomat held a meeting with an erriis-sary of King Farouk in a Paris hotel.
The Israeli representative was Eliahu Sasson, head of the foreign ministry's Middle East department, according to Israeli archives published quite rcr certtly. The Egyptian official, whose name is excised from Israel — Documents, May-September, 1948, was empowered by the Egyptian court to sound out Israel's proposals for peace.
Sasson's draft peace treaty, which King Farouk accepted as a basis for a future agreement, was a wide-ranging document.
• Egypt would con-/ sider Israel's establishment as a fait accompli and would bring back its
troops from the front. The Egyptian army had invaded the newly-proclaimed State ofjsrael four months earlier.
• Israel would not occupy Ara^iands and would accept an independent Palestinian state in areas allotted to the Palestinians by the 1947 United Nations Pal -estine partition plan. Or Israel would accept the amalgamation of Trans-jordan and Palestine into a single nation.
• Both Israel and Egypt would agree to help solve the Palestinian refugee problem, and would refrain from signing treaties that were "contrary "to the interest" of either party.
Each side had motives for wanting to make peace.
Poor and underdeveloped, Israel solicited Arab recognition of its existence so that it could channel its energies toward the goal of nation-building.
Suspicious of Trans-jordanian and Iraqi poli -cies (the Hasihemite rulers of Transjordan and Iraq had claims to the Negev), Egypt was prepared to adopt a separate foreign policy, outside the framework of the Arab League con-' sensus. More than most Arab states, Egypt was open to the idea of peaceful coexistence with Israel.
Peace talks between Israel and Egypt broke down after Israel launched an operation in the Negev on Oct. 14. ISome months later, the Israelis and the Egyptians reached a ceasefire accord, but talk of a full-fledged peace treaty was by now passe.
In 1953, a secret Israeli approach to the new republican regime in Cairo brought the response that Egypt would focus on internal affairs and had no aggressive designs against Israel, writes Barry Rubin in The Arab States & the Palestine Conflict [Syracuse University Press, $10.95].
Egypt wanted military equipment from the U.S., and Gen. Muham-med Naguib, the Egypt-
David Ben-Gurion, for many years Prime Minister of Israel, was involved in secret talks with Egypt hi the mid-1950s through a U.S. emissary. [Werner Braun photo]
ian ruler, promised not to use the weaponry against Israel or Britain (which had a running dispute with Egypt).
John Foster Dulles, the U.S. secretary of state, was led to believe by Naguib that the Arab-Israeli conflict could be solved if Egypt gained a land corridor through the Negev to Jordan. These feelers were iabandoned when they leaked into the press.
In 1955, Nasser, who had succeeded Naguib,
contacted a prominent American Quaker and asked him to test the waters for a possible political settlement with Israel. The mid-1950s were tense years in the Middle East, with Israel and Egypt appearing to edge toward war, but Nasser did not rule out a diplomatic solution.
According to Elmore Jackson, a Quaker, Nasser was under heavy pressure from his generals for U.S. arms. "If he could get a basic
JERUSALEM [JTA] —
[.-Gen. Yehuda
Halevy has assumed the post of president and chief executive officer of the Israel Bond Organization , it was announced here by Sam Roth-berg, general chairman of the Bond Organization .Yitzhack Rager, who has served as president of the organization for the past three years, is to be stationed in Israel, after serving in New York.
ranks to become a brigadier general in the Israel Defence Force from which he is now retiring. He has fought in all of Israel's wars and was on active service during Operation Peace . > Durjng the Yom, Kip-
pur War in 1973, he served in the Sinai; Earlier, during the Six Day War of 1967, he Was with the elite Seventh Brigade, the first brigade to reach the Suez Canal.
Born in Shanghai in i 1937, to Iraqi parents, Halevy came to Israel in 1949. He went to high school at night and worked during the day. At the age of 18 he entered the army and has spent his adult life in the IDF.
He graduated magna cum laude from Bar-Ilan University, and married a sabra who was a sergeant and judo instructor in the IDF. They have two sons, one of whom is now serving in the army.
CJC tells French ambassador...
Terrorist attacks in France are part of pattern
MONTREAL —
The recent wave of terrorist attajtks on French Jews and-feraeH representative"s in France were not isolated incidents but constituted _: ai pattern that has developed'over the last few . yearsr Canadian Jew4sh Congress officials have told the French ambas> sador to Canada, Jeari Beliard.
"When you have 1,500 terrorist attacks over the last two years and half of them are against Jews or Israelis, then we are talking about
a pattern of terror that in a distinguishable way acts itself out against Israel and Jhe Jewish people,'' stated national president Irwin Cotler. CJC executive vice-president Alan Rose also i attended the meeting with Beliard hi Ottawa.
The CJC^eaders said the "French media's use of Holocaust metaphors to indict Israeli action in Lebanon has had ; the effecf^f^delegltimizing Israel and Jews ,^ereby making it possible for anti-semitic terror to. take'place." ^
It was further stated that the French government's Middle East policies had beeiufionducive
'-to the creation of 'ja-highly charged atmosphere inimical to the interests of Jews, and
-Israel."
Cotler also raised the
. issue of French Foreign M-rn ister CI a ude Cheysson's statement comparing the PLO to the French Resistance movement against the Nazis. "This statement constitutes a betrayal not only of the victims of both the PLO and the
Nazis, but, in fact, defames the French Resistance movement," said -Cotler,
The ambassador responded that the attacks against Jews were'car=.^ ried out by non-French nationalsFrance's traditional policy of giving refuge had resulted in the influx of a large number of foreigners, among whom are some terrorists, he said.
He also told the CJC officials that 18,00.0,000 border crossings take place every year in
France, making it difficult to control the entry of terrorists into the country.
Beliard stated that everything possible was being done to curb terrorism and^the govern-- ment recently initiated^ a new program to combat terrorist activities in France.
The question of anti-semitic terror taking place in France has to be seen against the larger background of international terrorism that no state can effectively control , he - said. Beliard
stressed however that there is no anti-semitism at the government level in his country.
Rose raised the matter of the New -Right in_ France, one—of whose platforms is anti-semitism. Agreeing with Rose, Beliard stated that the New Right was a concern tut should be seen in the context of the insignificance of the extreme right in F^ehch^N politics.
Beliard promised the CJC concerns would be conveyed to the French government.
settlement with Israel — or at least some acceptable modus Vivendi — he could ayoid having to turn to what he considered to be his last option — an arms supply agreement with Eastern Europe," Jackson is quoted as saying in The New York Times.
Undertaking his mission with the approval of the U.S. government, Jackson used commercial airlines and made three round trips between Egypt and Israel, changing planes in Cyprus or Greece.
His interlocutors in Egypt and Israel were Nasser, Moshe Sharett, the acting Israeli Prime Minister, and David Ben-Gurion, who, as defence minister, was nevertheless the chief political figure in Jerusalem.
Ben-Gurion, who would soon become PM again, told Jackson that he would go anywhere to meet Nasser, whom he described as "a decent fellow who has the interest of his people genuinely at heart."
The main issues back then were relatively simpler than those which plague negotiators today. They revolved around the resettlement of Palestinian refugees and the final demarcation of the armistice lines between Israel and the Arabs,
Ben-Gurion assured Jackson that Israel was willing to "live within existing borders, but there could be no cession of territory."
Jackson'S mission was a failure, because Nasser decided not to engage Israel in direct talks. He came to that decision after an Israeli retaliatory raid in the Gaza Strip. Robert Anderson^ a personal friend of President' D wight Eisenhower, went to the Middle East in 1956 as a mediator.' But he, too, failed.
Fearing overthrow or assassination, Nasser would not meet with the Israelis. Ben-Gurion was not interested in making concessions, says Barry Rubin.
The Sinai war was just around the corner.