Stealthy War

Two Jews were marched up the 13 steps of a public gallows in Baghdad one morning last week and hanged.

"Judicial murder," cried Israel's Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett. In Paris, Israel's delegates at the U.N. General Assembly boycotted all meetings for a day in protest.

Iraq's answer was that the two men had been fairly tried, in a three-month trial. Five other Jews got five-year prison sentences, twelve were acquitted. The men were accused of working in a Zionist underground organization which, said Iraq, had been engaged in sabotage and espionage on behalf of Israel. Those convicted were found guilty of taking part in a series of bombings which killed several persons. Iraq said the underground group had cached large stocks of arms and explosives in Jewish homes and a synagogue in Baghdad.

Although it has been three years since the heavy Palestine fighting stopped, the hangings were a reminder that a stealthy-war between Arabs and Jews is still in progress. Almost every night blood is spilled along the Israeli borders, particularly those facing Jordan on the east and Egypt on the south.

The Arabs insist that the Israeli army is staging planned forays into Arab territory to terrorize and keep the population off balance. One night early last month a party of Israelis crossed into the Arab village of Beit Jala near Bethlehem and blew up three houses, killing three men, two women and two children. The Arabs said they were Jewish soldiers; Israel conceded that the raiders were Jews but said they were marauders. In the past few nights, similar groups killed five Arabs in & about Jerusalem, through which the border runs.

The Israelis insist that their army is confined to its side of the border, is constantly harassed by Arab infiltrators intent on stealing food and construction materials, smuggling or visiting friends inside Israel. In communal settlements near the borders, Israelis play searchlights along their protective fences from dusk to dawn. The Israel government said last week that in the final three months of 1951, the war between infiltrating Arabs and Israeli border guards had cost the lives of 130 Arabs and 18 Israelis; 782 Arabs were captured. Thefts and damage committed by infiltrators in 1951 cost Israelis more than $2,000,000.

The bloodshed settles nothing, but proves one thing. In its brief life as a new nation, Israel has succeeded against staggering odds in building a modern republic in the sandy squalor of the Middle East. But it has not yet found a way to erase the mutual hatred, extremism and distrust that make it an island of 1,390,000 in a sea of 30 million enemies.

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