New York Post

FRIDAY, APRIL 16, 1948

Lake Success–or Lake Failure


Day of Judgment Opens in Shadow as Nations
of World Debate Doom of Justice

By OBSERVER

IT IS LIKE a scene on the Day of Judgment. The time is the day after World War II, that had been fought on land, on sea, and in the air. A shadow lies over a desolate world, for already it is the twilight before the darkness of another World War that will eclipse the previous ones and may mark the end of the age of man on earth. The world with its two billion human beings sends emissaries from all its nations to its greatest metropolis. For a year and more they debate, and search, and argue for and against giving a little strip of land, 12 miles wide, to a stateless nation that lives there, the most ancient of them all, to be called home.

* * *

THE SUN rises and goes down; the streets are filled with people; cars run on winding high-ways; trains speed underground; and life goes on its way. But the sand runs low in the hour glass, and the weapons of destruction are piled high, and still the Conscience of the world deliberates. To give the people of the Bible their Promised Land as agreed to by 55 nations at San Remo 28 years ago? To give them, perhaps, only the part that is this side of the Jordan? Or maybe only a strip twelve miles wide?

The nations of the world send emissaries from 12 of their number to investigate on the spot and to report. The emissaries return: the nations of the world again deliberate in commissions and vote, in committees and vote, in the plenum of the Assembly and vote. Finally, they appoint emissaries of live nations to give the narrow strip of land to this most ancient people.

The nations around the Holy Land move their bands there to destroy what Israel has built; and those on the isles of “The Ten Lost Tribes” (as the English say of themselves) send arms to the aggressors to make the destruction possible; and those in the land of the Star Spangled Banner put an embargo on arms needed by the ancient nation for the defence of its home.

* * *

THE NATIONS of the world reconvene. They are given a last chance to make good the evil which they and their fathers and their forfathers did to a homeless people, to wanderers over the face of the earth since the day they lost their home in war of independence with Rome and through all the generations when they were persecuted for being true to their faith and to their heritage.

But the nations repent of their openhandedness. A twelve-mile strip? Too much! They were too generous! Return the judgment of the nations for reconsideration. Let us assemble together again at Lake Failure; it is certainly too much, a twelve-mile strip.

SAYS THE Prophet Isaiah (Chap. 43) “Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled. . . O, Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee. . . Fear not: for I, am with thee. . . I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back; bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth.”

In these days, in dark store rooms, missiles by the thousands are heaped, one of which sufficed to snuff out the breath of seventy thousand people of Hiroshima. Whoever c r e a t e d this world—or did it create itself?—man can destroy it.

If the nations of the world, Christian and Moslem and Buddhist alike, sitting in their Tribunal in this year 1948, will twist justice and empty it, and will stretch out their hand to extinguish the hope of the eternal people to return home, then:

“Behold the nations are as drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance. . . All nations before Him are as nothing; and they are counted to Him less than nothing, and vanity” (Isaiah 40)