Jewish Army: Pro & Con

Many Americans of good will, shocked by Nazi atrocities and hopeful of wiping anti-Semitism from the face of the earth, last week flocked to a new cause: creation of a Jewish Army.

The year-old Committee for a Jewish Army, headed by aggressive Journalist Pierre Van Paassen (Days of Our Years, That Day Alone), found more than 1,500 distinguished citizens eager to sign its plea: they ranged from Episcopalian Bishop H. P. Almon Abbott to Sculptor William Zorach. At a dinner in Manhattan last week, about 1,000 of them applauded speeches which demanded immediate formation of the Army--made up of European refugees and Jews of Palestine and the Middle East--and criticized U.S. and British official delay.

Pierre Van Paassen, no Jew but a longtime friend of Zionism, set up his committee to seek, through U.S. pressure, what Britain has thus far refused. Britain permits Jews in Palestine to enlist as individuals (20,000 have); it has set up several all-Jewish regiments. But again last week it balked at an independent Jewish Army--largely because the British must also consider the sympathies of 30,000,000 Middle Eastern Arabs.

The Committee's arguments for a Jewish Army are that: 1) it would provide an effective and belligerent military force;* 2) by proving the military courage and heroism of Jews it would counteract antiSemitism; 3) by giving Jews a place of their own in the fighting, it would guarantee them a part in the peace. To Jews who back the Army proposal, a part in the peace means a Jewish state in Palestine: the Committee is supported by most of the 400,000 American Zionists.

The Opposition. Yet few of the non-Jewish pleaders for the Jewish Army presumably realized last week that they had taken sides in a dispute which finds Jews themselves in sharp disagreement. In Philadelphia last fortnight, a potent group of non-Zionist Jews met under sturdy, deliberate Rabbi Louis Wolsey of Philadelphia to form a new organization called the American Council for Judaism. Its credo, as stated by Rabbi Wolsey: "[We] will seek to identify and define the Jew as a member of a religious community and nothing else. . . . We are definitely opposed to a Jewish State, a Jewish flag or a Jewish Army."

From one of the council's members, Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson of Manhattan, came a summary of the case against a Jewish Army: "I have never been able to accept the doctrine that establishing a Jewish Army or making Palestine a Jewish sovereign state would solve the Jewish problem. . . . Problems of human maladjustments are not solved at a distance or by proxy. If solved at all, they are solved in the places where they arise and by the persons most affected.

"Zionists and the pleaders for a Jewish Army indirectly play into the hands of anti-Semites by furnishing them an easy and cheap way of solving the Jewish problem. They will feel freer to discriminate against Jews by the excuse that these people have a place to go and a place where they belong. . . . The Jewish problem must be solved in conjunction with all the other global efforts of readjustment and on the same democratic principles of freedom and justice."

* The Army Committee claims 85,000 Palestinian and 100,000 stateless Jews of military age are waiting to volunteer. But the Jerusalem Haolam, a Zionist publication, recently placed the number available in Palestine at 34,000.

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