.. Thursday, December 15,1977->~THE BULLETIM-3
NEW YORK — Black African states that broke diplomatic ties with Israel tmder Arab pressure are likely to resume normal relations with the Jewish State in the wake of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's precedent-shattering visit to Jerusalem, it was forecast. ^
Bayard Rustin, civil rights leader and an e^rly organizer and supporter of Black African liberation movements, and Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, president of the American Jewish Ckingress, made the prediction at a news conference.
They said they based theu* forecast on the "positive response-' by members of the Organization of African Unity to the Sadat trip and on the "eagerness" of many Black African states to renew Israeli assistance pro-ams emphasizing economic development and public health.
Hertzberg announced publication of a new study
BBVSf aids Soviet
prepared by the AJCongress — "To Serve, To Teach, To Leave" — documenting Israel's extensive development-aid programs in 31 Black African states.
The 125-page report, written by Moshe Decter, highlights the large-scale technical, scientific and other assistance provided by Israel beginning in 1957, nine years after Israel achieved its independence, when — at the invitation of the Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah — Israel created Ghana's Black Star Shipping Line and helped to organize Ghana's Trade Union Ckingress.
In 1973, all but three Black African states ~ Lesotho, Malawi and Swaziland—ended diplomatic relations with Israel under strong Arab pressure following the Yoin Kippur War, thus bringing to an end. Israel's developmental assistance projects in Africa.
Under that program, thousands of Black Afficans were trained in Israel and thousands more took
part in training courses in their own countries given by visiting Israeli experts.
According to Hertzberg, Israiel's program included: courses and field work in nutrition; early education; community welfare; agricultural pioneering; r^ional planning; management of water resources; training of doctors, nurses and paraprof eissionals; manpower training in trade unions and cooperatives organization; planning and construction of urban sanitation projects; and training in microbiology and engineering.
Rustin noted that Black African states had reacted with "enthusiasm" to Sadat's visit to Jerusalem. The governments of Kenya, Zambia, the Sudan and the Ivory Coast, he said, had publicly praised Sadat.
Rustin added that no Black state in Africa had criticized the Eg^tian President for his peace initiative or endorsed the position of Syria and Libya in attacking
Sadat.
Rustin also cited several instances in which Black African nations expressed interest in resuming ties with Israel even before the Sadat visit..He recalled that Nigeria had declared at a conference of the United Nations Economic and Social Council in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in August 1976 that it would seek to erase all. references to "Zionism as a form of racism" from international resolutions in the future.
Nigeria was one of the countries that had voted in favor of the United Nations General Assembly resolution in November 1975 whidi equated Zionism with racism.
In Zambia, a group of members of Parliament, led by Valentine Cafoya and John Mwanaktaway, urged the government to bring back ttie Israeli agricultural experts who had worked successfully since 1964 and who had been forced to leave when Zambia broke off
diplomatic relations with the Jewish State.
Earlier this year. Ivory Coast President Felix Houphouet-Boigny met with then Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin to discuss the mutual interests of Israel and Black African states. The meeting was viewed as a step toward resumption of diplomatic ties.
Hertzberg explained that the title of the AJ Congress study, "To Serve, To Teach, To Leave," derived from the principle articulated by Prof. Isaac Michaelson, an Israeli ophthahnologist whose clinics and training programs helped mpe out eye diseases in half a dozen Black African countries:
'To serve in helping developing states organize and build; to teach the scientific, technical and administrative skills necessary to make it work; and to leave when the developing country says it is readty to take over."
UJ. firitis in deal with Egypt
WASHINGTON —Egypt has entered into ah unwritten understanding with five U.S. corporations — Coca Cola, Ford, Xerox, Motorola and Colgate Palmolive — to help tfaem get off the Arab boycott list if they will inyest in industrial activities in Egypt, according to reports from Cairo. The five corporations are rea^ to invest in Egyptian projects, ev&i if unprofitable, if Egypt can open the way to lucrative markets in the rest of the Arab world, it was reported.
Oil find In Suei couSd be eommereiaBly feasible
SOVIET EMBASSY looms in background as members of B'nai B'rith Women executive board join vigil for Soviet Jewry. The board, meeting in Washington, D.C., heard a report from Alfred Friendly Jr., former P^ewsweek bureau chief in Moscow and now deputy staff director of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, who told them that, "the noise made by government and private groups somehow pays off for Soviet refuseniks«
^FERUSALEM — Finance Minister Simcha Ehrlich called on United Jewish Appeal to double its income in 1978 to help implement a plan for a slum clearance project involving 45,000 housing units throughout Israel.
TEL AVIV — The government and private oil prospecting companies are moving rapidly to exploit what appears to be a major oil discovery in the Gulf of Suez off A-Tur in the Israel occupied zone of Sinai;
Upwards of .IL 500 million will be invested in further drilling in 1978, half of it by the government. The money is provided in the budget approved by the Cabinet recenOy.
According to Energy Minister Yitzhak Modai, the new oil strike will not be an impediment to an eventual peace agreement with Egypt. Modai told an Engineers club luncheon here that if Israel retimis Sinai to Egypt under: the tenns of a peace treaty, the oil could be brought to Israel by a pipeline.
He disclosed that the new well initially produced about 130 barrels an hour. If drilling in the area
WASHINGTON The Soviet Union, for years rductant to permit Jews to leave the country, is now attempting to make Jews — past, present. and future — disappear altogether.
This is the finding of a new study by Dr. Louise I. Shelley, who recently received her doctorate from Univ^raty of Pennsylvania. The study was conimissioned by B'nai B'nnth International Council as part of its program to monitor Soviet human rights practices, particularly as they concern the Helsinki Agreement.
Dr. Shelley's stusfy discloses a
systematic effort by Soviet authorities to remoye all traces of Jewishness from history texts. "The expurgation of Jews from Soviet, textbooks is now so far advanced that it is difficult to teU that the Jewish people ever played a rde in Russian history," she says.
"Distortions of Jewish history .. . reflect the institutionalized anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union."
As an example, she reports that czarist pogroms are "legitimized as the spontaneous reaction of the oppressed strata of the toiling population to their barbarious
exploitation by the Jewish bourgeoisie."
In a letter acoompanymg a copy of the report sent to Rep. Dante B. Fascell (D.-Fla.), chairman of the Conmiission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the agency established by Congress to monitor adherence to the Helsinki accord, B'nai B'rinth president David M. Humberg pointed out that the accord requires the signatories to recognize the contribution of nati(mal minorities and "to focilitate this contribution."
Despite this injunction, this provision is being observed in reverse by the Soviet Union, Hiimberg tdd Fascell.
"It is part of the massive Soviet campaign to deny the Jewish community any shred of viability
in Soviet life," Blumterg Added. "Over two years after the sighing of the Helsinki Agreement, the Soviets still permit no Jewish schools or even Jewish classes, no institutions for culture, art or publication, and not a single Jewish communal establishment."
yields additional wells, the oil field will be commercially feasible, he said.
The drilling was done by the Neptune Oil Prospecting Co., a , Canadian firm that holds a 25 percent interest in the fields off A-Tur. The Israel-owned Jordan Exploration Co. has a four percent interest and the balance is controlled by the Israel National Oil Corp.
A-Tur lies 50 miles south of the Abu Rodeis oil fields that Israel returned to Egypt in 1975 under the second Sinai interun agreement.
Neptune has been drijUng in; an off-store sector known as Alma II. It will soon begin operations in Alma HI to determine the size of the A-Tur field.
406 ISRAEL FUGS SENT TO CAIRO
JERUSALEM — First Israeli presence in Cako is by some 400 Israeli flags sent to the Egyptian capital by a Jerusalem flag manufacturer.
The flags were ordered by a foreign dipolmat serving in Jerusalem, following an order from Cauro. The flags were taken by a special m^enger to Cairo, to be raised m Egypt once the Israeli delegation arrives.
HISTORIC PEACE VISIT of President Anwar Sadat to Israel has been commemorated in a^ symbolic manner through acceptance by the Egyptian leader of a special Jewish National Fund certificate marking the plantfaig of 180 trees in the JNF's Peace Forest, overlooking slopes of Jerusalem. The gesture was made by Yekutiel X. Federmann» owner off King David hotel in which the Egyptian President was staying.
MINISTER'I WSFE JEWISH
PARIS — The wife of the new Egyptian Foreign Minister, Pierre Boutros-Ghalli, comes from a traditional Jewish family and still remembers some of the Hebrew she learned in her childhood. Bom Lea Nadler, she is the daughter of a prosperous Jewish industrialist, who was active until his death in Jewish communal affairs. Mrs. Boutros-Ghjalli and her brothers belonged to Jewish youth niovements and learned Hebrew in theur youth. Her mother and brothers now live in New York City.
SADAT'S PERSONAL PHYSICIAN, Prof. Mahmmid Attiya. hears an explanatk>n of medical equipment on a visit to the cardiology department of Hadassah hospital ia Jerusalem. Attiya accompanied Sadat during the Egyptian leader's recent historic visit to Israel.
[Jerusalem Post]
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