The first full-scale debate in Israel’s Parliament on the issue of cultural relations with West Germany began today and revealed profound differences of opinion and feeling among Israel’s political parties. The debate was scheduled to end Monday when Education Minister Abba Eban will reply for the Government.
The debate on a Herut motion concerned the recent visit of a West German pastor who was a guest at some schools in Jerusalem. Herut deputies at that time protested the visit as contrary to Government policy. Avraham Drori, Herut deputy, told the Knesset that it was Minister Eban who was responsible for the change in the policy, who advocated fraternization with West German students and who sanctioned conducted tours of Israel by German educators.
Asserting that Israeli schools were struggling with the task of creating a consciousness of the Nazi genocide against European Jewry and that the trial of former Gestapo colonel Adolf Eichmann was supposed to bring this clearly to Israeli schoolchildren, the Herut deputy asked now this fitted the official friendliness to the West Germans.
Agudat Israel, Mapam, the Communists, Poale Agudat Israel and the Mizrachi’s Rabbi Mordecai Nurock supported the extreme position of opposing any cultural relations with West Germany. Middle roaders on the issue included spokesmen for the Liberal party, Achdut Avoda and the National Religious party.
MAPAI TAKES LENIENT VIEW; RELIGIOUS PARTY IS TOLERANT
The most lenient view on the issue was expressed by Mapai’s Yona Kesse, who argued that Israel should not preclude the possibility of relations, general or cultural, with the most powerful nation in Europe. He said this was a political necessity.
Moshe Kol of the Liberal party declared that while West Germany today was not Nazi, it was impossible to say that the present West German generation differed entirely from that which promoted the Hitler regime. However, he added, it was “inescapable” that Israel-West German relations must “sooner or later” be established.
Binyamin Shahor of the National Religious Party agreed that Israel should not foster cultural relations with West Germany but also that it should not dismiss outright “those who wish to repent,” Israel, he said, must try to build a bridge to the West German youth and intelligentsia “who are ashamed of the Nazi past.”
Mapam’s Mrs. Emma Talmi-Levin summed up the opposition view with a brief; “No arms, no teachers, no cultural relations” with the West Germans. Asserting that relations should be limited to those “dictated by necessity,” she criticized a recent mission of Israeli teachers to West Germany.
Rabbi L.M. Levin of Agudat Israel disclosed that he was the only Cabinet member to object to acceptance of reparations from West Germany and he reiterated the view that Jewry must never forget the modern Amalek, a Biblical enemy who sought to wipe out the Jews. Yaacov Katz of Poale Agudat Israel expressed the hope that such visits as that of the teachers would not be repeated. Another Mizrachi deputy asked where those German teachers were when more than a million Jewish children were sent to the Nazi furnaces.
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