President Chaim Herzog of Israel hinted very strongly in a major speech here that America’s policy of standing tough against Soviet and Cuban activity in central America deserves the support of the Jewish people. But he stopped just short of explicitly endorsing the Reagan Administration’s current policy as the official Israeli position.
Nevertheless, his address here to 3,000 delegates at the 52nd General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations Thursday night was seen by many as an effort to bring into harmony the foreign policies of Israel and the United States and was also viewed as a speech uncharacteristic of a President of Israel who usually delivers ceremonial and non-political addresses to American Jewish audiences.
In a tough, no-nonsense, sledgehammer attack on the Soviet Union and its allies and surrogates in the Middle East, primarily Syria, Herzog told the Jewish communal leaders from the United States and Canada that, “what you have been experiencing in your own vicinity is not new to us. Already, in 1974, we faced Cuban armored brigades on the Golan Heights, not to mention the inevitable North Korean and North Vietnamese elements.”
In 1974 Israel also faced Soviet missiles on the Golan Heights in the hands of the Syrians, Herzog recalled, and today the Damascus regime “is backed, armed and trained by the Soviet Union, with some 7,000 Soviet military advisers in its armed forces. It has one of the fastest growing armies in the world in addition to being host, on its own soil, to Soviet combat forces and a concentration of Soviet-manned missiles which threaten not only Israel and Jordan but also the Sixth Fleet in the Eastern Levant.”
Herzog stressed that Israel has “no illusions whatsoever about the purpose of these forces here or elsewhere and we, in the midst of all our national debates on many issues, have no debate whatsoever, as to the real purpose of these forces and how to stand up to them. I think it is about time, too, that we as Jews realized the nature of these forces and that we should finally call a spade a spade.”
The real purpose of these forces, the Israeli President declared, is “to kill Jews and to create the conditions for a new Holocaust. I would ask my fellow Jews to remember this when they view the activities of these evil forces in the world, wherever they might be, and react to efforts to neutralize them.”
Behind all the forces of evil, “as everywhere, including in your own hemisphere, not so far from here, looms the ominous Soviet presence, pouring in the weapons of death, sabotage, of terror, of hatred and of subversion,” Herzog said.
“Our bitter experience has been that this purveyor of death will stop at nothing as long as it feels that it can get away with it. It is not for us to tender evidence to others. We are only a small nation, fighting for our existence. What we can do is to apply the lesson that we have learned from bitter experience, namely that there can be no truck or compromise with these forces of evil.”
Herzog noted that for a long time Israel has been accused of being intransigent for refusing to compromise with terror. “Now that the United States and France have also had to make a painful and tragic sacrifice (in the terrorist bombing attack on their armed forces in Lebanon last month), perhaps some of those in the world who were so ready with criticism in the past will begin to understand the nature of the enemy we have faced alone for years and to appreciate our motivation,” the Israeli President said, to sustained applause.
TWO-FRONT ATTACK ON JEWS
Discussing the situation of world Jewry, Herzog said the Jewish people is under attack on two fronts and that attack has “assumed sinister dimensions.” One is the open Soviet-inspired attack which found its full expression in the November, 1975 United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning Zionism as a form of racism.
“The other arm of the attack which, in my view, is the more serious and the more sinister, because it is so much more subtle, is the process of disinformation in the West, which creates the atmosphere in which the more brutal political and physical anti-Semitic attacks can be mounted with comparative impunity,” Herzog declared.
He noted that when in recent years terrorists attacked Jewish installations in Western Europe, killing and wounding innocent passersby, “the Jewish world, indeed the whole world, awoke to a realization that the cruel and malignant malady of anti-Semitism had spread wider and had penetrated deeper than had previously been credited.”
The gravity of the situation is intensified, Herzog said, because “these evil elements which brought on the Holocaust and brought the world to the most terrifying war that mankind has known, did not raise their heads” as long as the Holocaust and the destruction of Europe 40 years ago was a “real memory.”
But now that the Holocaust and the war “have receded from the memory of much of mankind, even in those countries which were destroyed and decimated by the advancing Nazi armies; now that the bulk of the youth of the world knows nothing about the Holocaust — the scene is set for the forces of evil which brought this Holocaust on the world, to raise their heads,” Herzog said.
CHARGES MEDIA ROLE IN ‘DISINFORMATION’
Parallel to “the onslaught of the anti-Semitic coalition of fascists, left-wingers, Communists and Arabs to which we are witness, is the process of disinformation afoot in the free world, which is misleading the world not only about Israel and our conflict and distorting Israel’s image, but is presenting developments in the Middle East to the world in such a manner as to give rise to gross errors and false political evaluations on the issues of the most vital importance to the security of the free world,” Herzog charged.
This process of disinformation, in which the media plays a role, has resulted in an image “in which Israel’s alleged intransigence is seen as endangering the peace of the world, and at the same time the terrorist activities of the PLO are endorsed as liberation movement activities,” Herzog said.
What Israel does, therefore, whether successfully rescuing hostages in Entebbe, or engaging in activities which are unpopular in the world, such as the war in Lebanon, “inevitably reflect, in their turn, on the Jewish population” positively or negatively, the Israel chief of state said. “This places a very heavy responsibility on us in Israel, and hence, in my view we cannot and dare not ignore the effects of our actions and policies on world Jewry.” This statement was greeted by applause.
Herzog pointed out that “it is true that certain aspects of Israeli society, as they come to expression today, are not always best calculated to arouse the enthusiasm of world Jewry …. but while many of these aspects of Israeli society are overemphasized, the very impressive positive aspects of our society are frequently ignored.”
Herzog called upon world Jewry to be aware of new challenges “and act in order to strengthen the future of the Jewish people both here and in Israel.” The Jews in America and Israel together must rise to meet these challenges so that in years to come, “the historians and our successors will look back and say that we did not betray the trust put in us by thousands of years of Jewish history,” Herzog declared.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
