Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 16 October 1985 — Page 11

The Lebanese Jewish Seven Radical Moslems holding seven Jews

By GEORGE GRUEN, Ph.D. In recent days hopes have been raised and then again dashed for the early release of several prominent members of the Lebanese Jewish community who have been held hostage for months by a pro-Iranian Lebanese Shi’ite

faction.

According to information obtained by the European Office of the American Jewish Committee, on Wednesday, September 11, the wife of Dr. Elie Hallak received a phone call in Beirut from the kidnappers, who then permitted her to speak directly with her husband and to Isaac Sasson. The two, who are respectively the vice president and president of the Central Committee of the Lebanese Jewish community, said that “we are all well.” The expressed the hope that they — as well as the Dther Lebanese Jewish men being held with them — would be released on the eve )f Rosh Hashanah (Sept. 15). They had hoped that their raptors, who are believed to ie affiliated with the Hiz»llah (the Party of God), would have responded to religious appeals to make a lumanitarian gesture in /iew of the fact that the Jewsh New Year corresponds with the first day of Muharam, which is the Muslim 'lew Year. However, the K>liday has passed and they

emain in captivity.

While the relatives were laturally disappointed, they ontinued to hope that intertational humanitarian eforts on their behalf might esult in their release by fom Kippur (September 25) vhich corresponds to Ashura lay, a day of special solemdty for Shi’ite Muslims. Unortunately, this day too ias passed and there is still io word of their release. This dds to the fears that their idnappers fail to be moved •y such religious appeals. It should be noted that the ewish community in Beirut as scrupulously stayed out f the factional fighting in ebanon or the Arab-Israel onflict. Moreover, none of le kidnapped Jews played ny partisan political role. For example, Dr. Hallak i a respected doctor, whose atients have come from le various ethnic and reli-

ious communities. Dme years back he

le son of one of the alestine Liberation Organiation’s leaders in the city. Ir. Sasson heads the pharmaeutical division of Khalil attal & Fils, a major Lebaese trading company, and •aveled freely in the Arab orld for the company. Isaac arrab is a respected retired rofessor of mathematics t the Ecole des Lettres rancaises de Beyrouth.

Indeed, treated

Who they are ✓Salim Jammous, secretary general of the Jewish community, was kidnapped on August 15, 1984, reportedly by three armed men who abducted him from his car near the communal office which is in the compound of the main synagogue in the Wadi Abu Jamil quarter of West Beirut. ✓Dr. Elie Hallak, 60, vice president of the Central Committee of the Lebanese Jewish community, was kidnapped from his home in West Beirut, around midnight of the Sabbath night of March 29-30. ✓Elie (Yussef) Srour, 68, reportedly was kidnapped on Saturday night, March 30. He was in charge of preparing the dead for burial according to Jewish religious rites. ✓ Haim Cohen, 37, also kidnapped on March 30. An accountant for a Beirut department store, he was well-liked and had friends among all segments of Lebanese society, and had known enemies, according to his family. His wife and three sons remain in Beirut. ✓ Isaac Sasson, in his mid-60’s, president of the Jewish community, was kidnapped by an armed gang on Sunday, March 31, while traveling to the city from Beirut International Airport. Mr. Sasson was returning to Beirut from a business trip to the United Arab Emirates on behalf of Khalil Fattal & Fils, a major Lebanese trading company, whose pharmaceutical department he heads. When news spread of the kidnapping of the other three Lebanese Jews earlier in the weekend, his friends sought to warn him not to go to West Beirut and the company sent a car with police guards to meet him and take him to presumably safer Christian East Beirut. Eye witnesses say that when armed men stopped the car and demanded Mr. Sasson, the guards in the car offered, no resistance. Mr. Sasson is believed to suffer from diabetes. ✓ Isaac Tarrab, 75, a retired professor of mathematics, kidnapped earlier in April or early in May. Nothing is known of the circumstances of his abduction. When he failed to return to his home one evening, the superintendent notified the authorities, who could find no trace of him. A Kurdish family took over the apartment a week later. Professor Tarrab’s family in Canada have had no further word from him. It is not known whether he is being held with the Jewish hostages taken earher. ✓We have not been able to obtain any confirmation concerning -the whereabouts of a seventh Lebanese Jew, Yehuda Benisti, 68, a former manager of Bank Safra in Beirut. It is feared that he too may have been kidnapped.

The other kidnap victims were Jewish communal officials and businessmen. Although the Jewish kidnap victims are believed to be held by persons affiliated with the Hizbollah group who hijacked the TWA plane and are still holding several Americans, there is one significant difference: In the case of the Americans, specific and repeated demands were made for the release of Shi’ite terrorist suspects held by Israel (and since released) and for the release from prison of 17 Shi’ites convicted of terrorist acts in Kuwait against American, French and Ku-waiti-owned facilities. In the case of the Lebanese Jewish hostages, no political demands have been received by the Jewish community or their relatives. Indeed, precisely because the Lebanese Jews play no role in local or regional politics, the kidnappings have outraged Muslim as well as Christian leaders in the country. In fact, Nabih Berri, the leader of the Amal, the mainstream Shi’ite militia, explicitly condemned the kidnapping of four Jewish leaders at the end of March. Mr. Berri, who has served

in the Lebanese Cabinet as Minister of Justice and Minister for South Lebanon Affairs, declared on April 4 that the kidnappings “falsify the image of Beirut, which is built on co-existence.” He concluded that “whoever kidnaps a Jew just because he is Jewish only helps Zionism and has nothing to do with patriotism or the struggle.” However, as became evident during the TWA hostage crisis, the more pragmatic and Western-educated Mr. Berri has himself been facing a challenge to his leadership within the Shi’ite community posed by fanatical, pro-Iranian fundamentalist groups such as the Hizbollah. Some of the latter apparently have been so blinded by hatred that they make no distinction between Israelis and Jews in general, despite Ayatollah Khomeini’s clear injunction that under an Islamic Republic Jews and Judaism are to be respected, so long as they do not actively aid “the Zionist enemy.” The family of one of the Jewish hostages, Haim Cohen, is of Persian origin and he holds an Iranian passport. They have appealed to the Iranian authorities Continued on page 13

U.S. Arab leader slain CALIFORNIA — Following his justification of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s role in negotiating the surrender of the hijacked ship, the Achille Lauro, the West Coast leader of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee was killed in a bomb blast that ripped through his office. Alex Odeh, 41, had appeared on a California television station discussing the sea jacking and called Yasser Arafat a “man of peace.” The next day a bomb exploded in the offices of the 13,000 member American-Arab AntiDiscrimination Committee, killing him and injuring eight others. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but the national chairman of the Jewish Defense League, Irv Rubin, said, “The Jewish Defense league cannot cry about this act...Our tears have all been used for the mourning of Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old wheelchairbound Jew who was brutally slaughtered and his remains thrown into the Mediterranean by PLO terrorists.” The American Jewish Congress has condemned the attack. Kahane sues to get citizenship NEW YORK — Israeli Knesset member Meir Kahane, who was recently stripped of his U.S. citizenship, is suing the federal government to get it back. The 53-year-old Kahane had his citizenship removed because he became a member of another government, which is prohibited under United States law. In papers filed by an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer in Brooklyn, N.Y., Rabbi Kahane claims that his citizenship should be restored because he never relinquished it. Kahane frequently travels to the United States for fund-raising tours.

Justice Department knew of crimes NEW YORK — Transcripts never released by the Justice Department of their interrogation of Arthur Rudolph, the former NASA rocket engineer who gave up his American citizenship and returned to West Germany, reveal that he admitted requisitioning slave laborers and knew that they were dying of maltreatment at the factory where he directed rocket building for Hitler during World War II. According to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report, the transcripts show that Rudolph admitted committing acts which constitute crimes against humanity under the Nuremberg charter. Rudolph, who directed the Saturn moon rocket program for NASA, returned to West Germany and surrendered his U.S. citizenship in March 1984 as part of an agreement by which he avoided standing trial on U.S. Justice Department charges that he had worked slave laborers to death at a German V-2 rocket factory. More than 20,000 prisoners died at the concentration camp connected to the factory.

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