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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Nov. 4, 1964
A Journey Completed
"... Thou mayest go in unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, a land that floweth with milk and honey; as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee." (Deuterotomy 27:3)
And with these words, the wandering Jews of the vast desert triumphantly entered into Israel. Centuries later, after living under the splendor and freedom of Saul, Solomon and David, the Jews suffered under the conqueror's heel for thousands of years, the most devastating of these being the Roman conquest in the time of Christ. Throughout these conquests, the Jews remembered the divine promise concerning their chosen race. Their lack of respect for their conquerors stemmed from the belief that they were directly ruled by God, and only God.
But in 70 A.D., it seemed they no longer could survive the conqueror's sword and edict. Jerusalem, the Holy City, was leveled by the Roman legions, as Christ had prophesied in His time on earth. And with the destruction of Jerusalem, millions of Jews again, as in the time of Moses, became wanderers, and were known as the Jews of the Dispersion. Seemingly, they were banished forever from their land.
One thing remained intact for the Jewish people during their almost two centuries of banishment from Israel. It was their tenacious faith that Israel would again someday become the national homeland of the Jewish people. From the time of their dispersal to their homecoming in 1948, the Jews became the scapegoat for many political, religious and social fanatical movements, from the Middle Ages to Auschwitz.
Two thousand years later, the dream of the Jewish people was realized and they returned to Israel, then known as the Arab state of Palestine.
Throughout their persecution, their passionate sense of national dignity and destiny was passed from one generation to another. Whereas most people assume their nationality from their country, the Jews assumed their legal right to settle in Israel from the fact that they were Jewish.
Armed not with trumpets but with shovels, the Jewish people returned to a land laid barren by the ravaging conquerors of almost two centuries. The southern half of the state, the setting of the New Testament, had deteriorated from the rich farmlands and groves of ancient times to the deserted sand wastelands of the present days. In all the time of the Jew's dispersion, no one had ever claimed Israel as their national state. It had been conquered many times, but the majority of the conquerers had simply left military outposts and a few settlers and passed onto more fertile lands. It was often the political and military outcasts who drew duty in Israel.
But the Jews did not see the barrenness, the waste of Israel. As they stated in their declaration of independence: "In the land of Israel the Jewish people came into being. In this land was shaped their spiritual, religious and national character. Here they lived in sovereign individuality. Here they created a culture of national and universal import..."
Since the founding of Israel in 1948, international emotion has catapulted to a peak more than once. The kibbutz, the collective farms of the 1950s, presented a very real threat to the Arabs then living in the reclaimed state. The entrenchments surrounding the farms and the rifles slung on the backs of the workers were ample proof that the Israeli Jews meant to establish a national state in the midst of Arab hatred. The United Nations, a little fearful of the question, which involved religion as well as territorial rights, was embroiled in the struggle from the first moment of Israel's audacious declaration of independence by Ben-Gurion.
The question was forced upon the UN as a result of the British withdrawal from the area in 1948. The problem of the Jewish right to Israel had been discussed for some time, but the British did little about it.
Four months before the termination of the British mandate, the Arabs staged a 600-man attack on the northeastern border of Israel. The hit-and-run attacks continued for many months, sometimes repelled and sometimes succumbed to. Both forces fought with the firm belief of the injustice done by the other. Finally, a truce was signed and both nations settled back for the uneasy truce that was to follow. The Sinai conflict of 1956 was the next, and, so far, the last armed conflict over the Jewish state.
In an effort to appease both sides, the UN
partitioned Israel, giving more than half of it to the Israelis. Jerusalem, the site of both Christian and Moslem religious shrines, has not yet been settled. The proposal to establish Jerusalem as an international sector was angrily opposed by both Israel and the Arab state. It yet remains a moot point.
The latest involvement of Israel in international news was the visit of Pope Paul VI to the Holy Land in 1963.
The visit came immediately following the first session of the Ecumenical Council in Rome. The Pope's decision was a surprise to everyone. Some say it came because the Pope wanted to illustrate the overall unity of the Church. The best way to illustrate this would be to visit the shrines of the Holy Land where Christianity had its beginning.
Israel, understandably, was not too excited by the prospect of the visit. As one diplomat said: "The history between the Church and us is very long, and very one-sided. If the world thinks us cold, we cannot help it."
The visit came off without a diplomatic hitch. Both sides emphasized and re-emphasized their peaceful intentions.
It is a strange paradox that the race which had been stereotyped as the "nation of small shopkeepers" entered into Israel with seed and spade, not accounts and money. It also is paradoxical that the people who had been so closely associated with the usury of the Middle Ages came into a land of pure socialism. The kibbutzes rose from the desert in the hundreds. And in each kibbutz were young people devoted to the idea that Israel would become again the state of the Jews, as it had been promised to them millions of years ago. And their dream, for the most part, has come true. Olive and orange groves now stand in the irrigated land where sand dunes were so recently blown by the relentless winds of the Mediterranean Sea. The state which could not possibly survive the rigors of practical government has now survived, indeed prospered, for more than a decade.
The idea of the Jewish state was irresistible even to those unable or unwilling to forfeit their assumed nationality. From the United States alone, the contributions equaled more than $950 million. Although most chose cultural freedom outside of Israel's boundaries, the majority are sympathetic. The state has become a final refuge for the Jews should they ever again have to face the horrors of another Germany.
Israel now faces the inevitable problems of a young nation, economic stability, cultural assimilation, housing, etc. Perhaps the biggest problem the nation faces is the cultural integration of the Oriental Jews and the Western Jews. The political beliefs and cultural outlook of the Oriental and Western Jew have been separated by 2,000 years. The traditional standard of living is also widely separated.
Another pressing problem is the integration of those oriented to an urban culture and those oriented to the land. The kibbutz of the land is now, for the most part, only an emotional link with the past. Eighty-four per cent of the Jews live in the city. Less than 4 per cent live in the kibbutz. The functions of the kibbutz have now been assumed by the corporations who provide benefits for their workers. And yet, the idea remains. Everyone in Israel has a part in the building of a nation, and everyone takes it seriously. It is no longer the devotion to the land which marks a good man, but his involvement with his factory or professional job.
Another of the problems facing Israel is the tension which continues to erupt between the Arabs and the Jews. Israel exists in a region which the Arabs regard as entirely an Arab world. The unabsorbed Arabs in the Jewish state have twice inspired armed conflict. It is not unlikely that it will happen again.
The pioneering days of Israel are over. The land has been conquered and forced to yield the food for a nation. Israel now faces a harder and more intangible test of national strength, whether the economic, political and cultural diversities can be molded into an integrated, united state.
And so, for the first time since the Babylonian captivity, the Jews can "take the harps from the willow trees and sing of Zion and joy."
After two thousand years of wandering, the Jews have returned to Israel, the land of their fathers . . . the land of "milk and honey."
- Leta Cathcart
"Same To You, Wise Guy"
The People Say...
To the Editor:
Much criticism has been advanced in the past few years about student apathy on this campus, and, I believe, justifiably so. However, very little has been said about a situation which is just as prevalent at KU, a situation of which perhaps all too few people are aware. I am referring to "faculty apathy." This has never been so obvious to me as last Wednesday evening in Hoch Auditorium during the speech given by Dr. Malik. To begin with, the crowd was embarrassingly small; but even more noticeable was the fact that only a few members of the faculty were in attendance. Surely a great statesman and "citizen of the world" as Dr. Malik deserves much greater attention and respect of at least the faculty of this renowned university—to say nothing of the responsibility of the student body in a matter such as this.
I hope I speak for others as well as for myself when I say that, for the University, I was extremely embarrassed and, to say the very least, greatly disappointed.
Jim Tharp Wichita senior
Dear Sir:
In the relatively few weeks that I've been at KU, I have been grossly disillusioned as to the supposedly democratic, undiscriminatory policies of student government.
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
Roy Miller, Managing Editor
Don Black, Leta Catcath, Bob Jones, Greg Swartz, Assistant Managing Editors; Linda Ellis, Feature-Society Editor; Russ Corbitt, Sports Editor.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT Jim Langford and Rick Mahbub Co-Editorial Edito
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bob Phinney ... Business Manager
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Nancy Holland, Circulation Manager; Gary Grazda, Merchandising Manager.
On many days virtually every class break sees a captive audience forced to listen to highly amplified recordings.
Regardless as to whether or not the majority of the student body approves of the type of cacaphony played, the fact remains that a segment of the university population has not yet had its auditory discrimination dulled to the point where it wishes to listen to a communist type of coerced, systematic, "Presley-Beetle," brainwashing.
Besides being undemocratic in that it rams a certain type of rhythmic carrion down the throats of unwilling listeners, the practice is also of a definitely discriminatory nature.
Why should students with classes in Bailey be coated almost daily by this outoouring of sound wave refuse while people with classes in Murphy, Fowler, etc., can escape practically all contamination by judicious schedule manipulation?
If on certain days 1/6 of the students' (and professors') daylight hours must be desecrated by blasts of sub-human sound, why pick on the school of education as the prime target? If we must have our semicircular canals soiled by the foulest dregs of tonal vomit why not be mischurc the campus evenly?
If our goal is to render $16\%$ per cent of our day unsuitable for the pursuit of any intellectual activity by the mechanical and electrical reproduction and magnification of the maniac utterances of the temporally demented, then in all fairness, steps should be taken so that all schools and personnel would be equally assailed and debilitated.
Orv Wiebe Garden City Graduate student
Editor:
For the past six years, the SUA Minority Opinions Forum has attempted to provide a means for persons and organizations with unpopular ideas to openly express their opinions. This policy places confidence in KU students—feeling that they are capable of separating logical from fallacious ideas.
The recent straw vote conducted by the ASC Current Events and Student Opinion committees, with its limited ballot, did not place this confidence in the student population. The ballot should have been the same as the official Kansas ballot with the Prohibition and Labor Party candidates for President and Conservative and Prohibition candidates for governor along with Democratic and Republican nominees for these offices.
Phil Harrison
Lawrence senior
Dave Pomeroy
Overland Park senior