Expert on Terrorism Says Loss of Identification Among Jews is Greater Threat Than Terrorism

Yehoshofat Harkabi, one of Israel’s leading experts on Palestinian terrorism, warned today that the loss of identification among Jews is a greater threat to world Jewry and Israel than terrorism.

“Terrorism is not a major problem for Israel,” Harkabi, a Hebrew University professor, said in a discussion on international terrorism in the final day of the four-day biennial meeting of the Board of Governors of the World Jewish Congress. “You cannot destroy a state by terrorism.”

But Harkabi warned that there is a problem in maintaining Jewish education. He said where once identification was cemented by religion, it is now based on support of Israel. But he added where Israel had been a “source of pride” to Jews around the world it is now “embarrassing them.”

Harkabi said now was the time to seek a settlement with the moderate Arab countries. He said if this does not occur, the radical Arab states which realize they cannot destroy Israel will now turn their attention to seeking to radicalize the moderate Arab states. He said they believe that if this can be accomplished they will have a united Arab world against Israel.

It is better to make a realistic “compromise” now than “wait for the showdown in the future,” Harkabi said.

Both Harkabi and Frank Perez of the State Department’s Office for Combatting Terrorism agreed that terrorist attacks against Israel and Jews will rise again as a result of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s defeat in Lebanon. They both said the recent attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions in Europe were not done by the PLO but Palestinian splinter groups.

WARNS THAT ANTI-SEMITISM IS NOT A PASSING PHASE

In introducing today’s discussion, Kalman Sultanik, a WJC vice president, said that anti-Semitism is not a “passing phase.” He said no country lacks anti-Semitism no matter the size of its Jewish population nor the make up of its political and economic structure. He said it is in the democratic countries where anti-Semitism is most seriously manifested because “any statements of democratic governments that criticize Israel play in the hands of anti-Semitism.”

In a discussion yesterday of anti-Semitism, Dr. Stephen Roth, director of the London-based Institute of Jewish Affairs, said that “after the events of the past nine months, we have a right to be alarmed — but not alarmists.”

He said that according to figures compiled by the Institute, which is operated by the WJC, there was a record 104 terrorist attacks against Jews in 1982, half of them in West Europe. He said 25 persons were killed and 400 were wounded. In more than 75 percent of the cases, the terrorist acts were committed by Palestinian terrorists occasionally helped by local gangs, Roth said.

MAJOR THREAT TO AMERICAN JEWRY IS CITED

Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg of Englewood, N.J., a WJC vice president, said that while most Jews believe anti-Semitism is “more menacing today than it has been since the end of World War II,” he expressed belief “the comforting probability is that the institutions of American democracy will withstand future shocks — and that anti-Semitism, despite Jewish fears, is not likely to burgeon in the United States.”

He said the major threat to Jewry is that unless major population trends are soon reversed, “American Jewry will soon lose a million people, or perhaps more by the end of the century.” Hertzburg declared that the American Jewish community “cannot afford such losses. Such large energies will be mustered in the efforts of self preservation.”