The Worse May Be Yet to Come, Visiting Jewish Leaders Told

Tel Aviv Mayor Shlomo Lahat warned a visiting delegation of American Jewish leaders Monday that “the worst hasn’t happened yet. There will be more missiles and probably even chemical weapons” aimed at Israel.

“We must get rid of Saddam Hussein,” Lahat stressed, “for if we don’t, the results will be like another Hitler, and millions of people will be killed.”

Lahat spoke to a delegation of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which came for a two-day factfinding and solidarity visit. The group met Lahat in a neighborhood of the city where several public buildings were damaged, two of them severely, by Iraqi missiles.

Members of the delegation said that warnings about further missile attacks and the possible use of non-conventional weapons had also been voiced in briefings by senior military officers.

The group also visited one of the residential areas hit by a missile in Ramat Gan, a comfortable suburb adjacent to Tel Aviv.

Shoshana Cardin, chairman of the Conference of Presidents, stood on a site in Ramat Gan that took a direct hit on the first weekend of war.

A three-story apartment building that had stood next to the spot was heavily damaged and torn down last week. Close to 100 people were wounded in that attack, and three died of heart attacks.

Next to the empty lot was a three-story apartment house with one half of the building completely caved in and the back walls ripped off. A stairway running up the middle of the building was exposed. Books, bottles, toys, clothes and other personal belongings peeked through heaps of plaster, cement blocks and pieces of furniture piled on the ground.

In nearby buildings, shutters and roofing tiles had been ripped off, and windows shattered.

‘SHOCKED AT THE DESTRUCTION’

Surveying the damage and debris in the surrounding buildings, Cardin said: “I am shocked at the destruction one missile can create and at the number of people whose personal possessions were wiped out.

“It is important for us to see this, so we understand what Israel faces on a daily basis,” she said. “This is war. It is difficult for Americans to understand what this means just by looking at it on television.”

Cardin vowed that American Jewry would help in the reconstruction. “American Jewry should realize that not only Soviet immigrants should be helped. This is also a real need at this time — helping those made homeless by the missile attacks. I can’t say yet what form this assistance will take.”

Ramat Gan Mayor Zvi Bar said that 650 people in his town had to be housed temporarily in hotels and that 1,300 apartments had been damaged, 120 of them beyond repair. Ironically, a majority of the town’s residents are of Iraqi origin.

The damage in the Tel Aviv neighborhood the conference visited was mainly to public buildings funded by New York philanthropists through the United Jewish Appeal’s Project Renewal program. Among the buildings damaged were a gymnasium, community center, auditorium and school for those with mental disabilities.

Mayor Lahat said that about 2,500 apartments in Tel Aviv had been damaged and that 1,100 people had to be evacuated to hotels. “Thank God that there were not so many killed and wounded,” he said. “Buildings can always be put up again.”

U.S. ENVOY PRAISES RESTRAINT

The Conference of Presidents delegates had lunch with U.S. Ambassador William Brown, who praised Israel’s leaders for the restraint they have shown in not retaliating for the repeated Iraqi missile attacks.

“I must ask,” he said, “whether any nation under such provocation had exercised as much restraint and maintained it under such circumstances. Other nations have shown such restraint, but these were weak ones. Israel, however, has the capability and the courage to respond, which it has demonstrated over and over.”

He said the United States is “going after those Scuds, and the results (of allied air strikes) will continue to improve.”

Earlier in the day, the delegation visited a Patriot missile installation near Tel Aviv, which is operated jointly by Israeli and American crews. Some of the delegates met with the American soldiers and sang “God Bless America” to express their thanks for the job they are doing.