Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 38, No. 22, Ed. 1 Thursday, May 31, 1984 Page: 4 of 24
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TEXAS JEWISH POST THURSDAY, MAY 31, 1984 POSTORIAL PAGE 4
postoricils, opinions, etc
• ••
partoriQl
A Must For U.S.:
Appeal Sprongis Decision
The Justice Department’s Office of Special
Investigations, the government arm created in 1979 to
track down and prosecute Nazi war criminals living in
the United States, suffered a rare defeat at the hands of
the judicial system last week. It was attempting to strip
Elmars Sprongis of Brentwood, Long Island of his
American citizenship on the contention that he lied
about his collaboration with the Nazis during World
War II in then Nazi occupied Latvia when he applied for
U.S. citizenship in 1950.
The 69 year old Sprongis, a retired construc-
tion worker, the OSI said, concealed his role as assistant
police chief of Gulbene and police chief of Madona, both
in Latvia and that he had witnessed more than 100 Jews
being marched off to their deaths.
The U.S. District Court Judge, Frank Altimari, wrote
in an 87 page decision that “While it is evident Elmars
Sprongis. . .watched a hundred or a hundred and fifty
men, women and children being marched to an
execution site, the court does not believe that Congress
intended to exclude from citizenship persons who were
present when others were persecuted.”
Altimari said the government failed with its two
witnesses, both presented to the court in videotaped
interviews conducted by the OSI in Riga, Latvia, to
prove beyond a doubt that Sprongis had collaborated
with the Nazis.
The Judge must have surely had sufficient reasons to
have not been convinced by the testimony of the two
witnesses. The OSI, an extremely dilligent and
arduously working government agency, should seek an
appeal of the court’s decision and at the same time move
to find more witnesses, if possible, to settle any doubts
about Sprongis.
TEXAS JEWISH POST
Dedicated to Truth, Liberty and Justice
Editor and Publisher......................J.A. Wisch
Managing Editor and Co-Publisher........... Rene Wisch
Social Editor.......................Linda Davidsohn
Consultant..................... .....Steve Wisch
Dallas Manager.......................Chester Wisch
Typography.........................Wylma Hooker
Graphics........................... Mary Johnson
Food-Home...........................Susan Wisch
Advertising Representatives. .. Robert Brimm, Wylma Hooker,
Judy Levine, Judy Wisch and Noel Levy
Photographers.............Sharon Wisch and Judy Wisch
Circulation...........................Pam sheafe
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Texas Jewish Post
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monitor
From Time Immemorial
BY M. J. ROSENBERG
Joan Peters’ From Time
Immemorial has already
attracted the negative atten-
tion of John Campbell, who
was formerly with the
Council of Foreign Rela-
tions. His review of the book
appeared in the New York
Times book review section
on May 13. In a full-page
critique, Campbell managed
to miss virtually all of
Peters’ points simultaneous-
ly-
Peters does not claim that
Palestinian Arabs have no
rights to “Palestine.” She
does, however, argue and
prove that if those rights are
based on the supposed pre-
ponderance of Arabs over
Jews in the land prior to
1948, then the Arab case is a
weak one.
Her book is a much-need-
ed corrective. All pro-Arab
commentators (and even
many who are pro-Israel)
argue — or concede — that
the Jews came to Israel as
immigrants while the Arabs
are indigenous and have
been there “from time im-
memorial.” Peters’ conclu-
sion: it ain’t necessarily so.
Campbell’s damning re-
view in the Times was
predictable. An important
part of Peters’ argument
(and an indisputable fact) is
that today’s Jordan is part of
so-called Palestine. Camp-
bell, in passing, men-
tions that Israel now ‘holds
all” of Palestine. A question:
if Jordan is not part of
geographic and historic Pal-
estine, then what is it?
The Numbers
But Peter’s central point
is that Arabs did not greatly
outnumber Jews in those
areas of Palestine where
Jews settled (basically, pre-
1967 Israel). She goes ail the
way back to 1893 and, using
records from the period,
shows that there were
59.431 Jews in western
Palestine in that year. There
were 93,600 non-Jews (in-
cluding 37.253 Christians).
Jews, in fact, outnumbered
Moslems by a few thousand.
Moreover, the total popu-
lation of the Jewish-settled
areas was remarkably small.
These areas “which today
hold the majority of nearly
four million souls in Israel,
contained less than 155,000
before the turn of the
century.” In 1948,98 percent
of all Jews in Israel lived in
those original Jewish-settled
areas.
Still, the fact is that by
1948 the number of Arabs
living in these areas had
risen to 463,000 — five times
the 1983 number. This
increase of 400 percent has
always been attributed to
the phenomenally high Arab
birth rate. Peters shows
that this increase could not
have been caused by natural
means alone. She notes that
during the same period, the
Arab population in the areas
of Palestine not settled
heavily by Jews (i.e. the
West Bank and Gaza) had
only doubled from 233,500 to
517,000.
She writes: “The Arabs
within the Jewish-settled
area should have multiplied
at roughly the same rate,
because the rates of increase
— natural increase — of a
group within the same small
country at the same moment
do not vary more than a
marginal amount.”
Had the Arab population
in the Jewish areas grown at
the same rate as the Arab
population in the non-Jewish
areas, the Arab population
would have risen to 249,000
rather than 463,000. The dif-
ference between those two
figures is 213,700.
Peters demonstrates that
those 200,000 plus Arabs
came into the Jewish areas
from outside the country or
(the majority) from other
parts of the country i.e. the
West Bank and Gaza.
The importance of this
finding can hardly be over-
estimated. In essence it
means that several hundred
thousand Arabs came into
Jewish Palestine to benefit
from the increased oppor-
tunities made possible by
Jewish development. As
Peters puts it: “The Jews
could not be said to have
“displaced’ those people who
only came after them.”
The Refugees
Peters’ findings bear
heavily on the argument
over the Arab refugee prob-
lem. Since 1948 the claim has
been made — and accepted
— that some 600,000 Pales-
tinian Arabs “fled” Israel
before and during the Israel
See Monitor Page 17
Energy Self-Sufficiency For U.S.
BY MORRIS J. AMITAY
After years of scant
coverage in the American
press, the Iran-Iraq War
exploded into headlines with
both sides attacking oil
tankers in the Persian Gulf.
While our government
offered to escort the tankers
through the Gulf and the
Straits of Hormuz, the
“moderate” Saudis refused.
Apparently, even in a crisis
the Saudis do not wish to be
associated too closely with
the United States.
But the situation in the
Gulf is not only a Saudi
problem or a Japanese and
European one — it is also an
American problem. With
eight million barrels of oil a
day going through the
Straits of Hormuz, short-
ages elsewhere will impact
rtnnno it »\F «i.*.*.1 »* »»».*»**
on U.S. consumers.
Hopefully, the current
scare headlines will make
more people in the Adminis-
tration and Congress realize
that the United States has
just not been doing enough
to achieve greater energy
self-sufficiency.
While supplies are ade-
quate today, there is in truth
no “oil glut” in the United
States as long as we import
about one-third of the oil we
need. Ominously, imports of
oil to the United States are
on the rise again. We now
import about the same
percentage of oil as we did
just before the Arab oil
embargo of 1973.
In the ten years since we
have made some progress —
notably in lowering gasoline
consumption. But the threat
to our diplomatic and econ-
as long as we continue to
depend on oil from Arab-
OPEC nations and unless we
take some very practical
steps to achieve energy
self-sufficiency. This means
the Administration must
take the lead and Congress
must implement the neces-
sary legislation.
A blueprint for helping
solve our still heavy depen-
dence on foreign oil supplies
consists of the following
steps:
Exploration of the vast,
as-yet-undiscovered oil and
gas resources, onshore and
and offshore, must be
encouraged. There are no
practical alternatives now
to oil and-gas — which,
together, supply about
70 percent of our en-
ergy needs. Obviously
solar energy will play a
and current tax incentives
for its development should
be continued. But it will not
be a significant factor until
after the year 2000.
Price controls on produc-
tion of ali domestic natural
gas should be removed. Gas
is the only primary fuel still
under complicated govern-
ment price regulations,
which has discouraged gas
development. When controls
were removed on oil a few
years ago the effect was
positive on both price and
supply.
Unlike our nation, other
countries — most notably
Canada and Great Britain —
are becoming energy self-
sufficient through develop-
ment of their offshore oil
resources. But the Congress
— reacting to some degree
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 38, No. 22, Ed. 1 Thursday, May 31, 1984, newspaper, May 31, 1984; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth753225/m1/4/?q=%22Religion+-+Denominations+-+Jewish%22: accessed July 10, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .