A Call for Wise Hearts

MIDDLE EAST

"It's like a cemetery in here," whispered a backbencher in Jerusalem's Knesset last week. And well it might be, for the legislature was facing the most painful decision in Israel's recent history--the question of close diplomatic ties with West Germany, a nation inevitably associated in Jewish minds with the hated Nazi past.

Premier Levi Eshkol was as conscious as anyone of the gravity of the matter as he rose to introduce the government's motion. Pressing logic on the glum Deputies who sat before him, he insisted that formal ties with West Germany would not only amount to a significant defeat for Israel's Arab enemies, but also would strengthen Israel economically and speed the day when it could win associate membership in the Common Market. "This is a struggle between heart and head," declared Eshkol. "Let us say that it is wise-hearted to go ahead with it."

Purim Eve. Eshkol could hardly expect unanimous agreement. Right-wing Nationalist Opposition Leader Menahem Beigin cried: "Before you decide on relations with Germany, remember that the millions of Germans who were the Nazis' Hitler Jugend, members of the Gestapo and the SS, will be represented by a German ambassador in Israel with a German flag and with Deutschland ueber Alles." When Deputy Premier Abba Eban suggested that the hymn could be played in Israel without offense since it was written by a German liberal,* he was hooted down.

Though it was the eve of the gay

Purim holiday, angry pickets outside the Knesset were in no festive mood as they jostled police and waved placards denouncing the government motion. But for all the emotionalism, in the end Eshkol's plea for wise hearts--along with party discipline--prevailed; by a vote of 66 to 29, with 10 abstentions, the Knesset voted to establish diplomatic ties with West Germany.

Predictably, Israel's decision also touched off demonstrations all over the Arab world. In Baghdad, 10,000 Iraqis stormed Bonn's embassy and set it afire, and 4,000 Yemenis gave the embassy in Ta'iz the same treatment. In Lebanon, there were riots in seven towns, one injuring 23 students and police. Only tough police action protected German embassies in Syria, Egypt and the Sudan from angry mobs.

Rocks in the Head? The Arab world's diplomatic response was more measured. One by one Arab envoys in Bonn packed their bags to come home, following an Arab foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo that had reached only limited agreement on a proposal to break diplomatic ties with West Germany. Ten Arab nations agreed to withdraw ambassadors from Bonn, but Morocco, Tunisia and Libya (which annually sells Bonn 35% of its oil output, or $245 million worth) refused to go even that far. Most of the foreign ministers were frankly appalled at Nasser's call for recognition of East Germany and an economic boycott of West German goods. "If Nasser expects us to do all that in the cause of Arab unity," growled one, "he has rocks in his head." What was emerging among the majority of Arab nations was a "no Germany" policy that would recognize neither East nor West.

After the Knesset vote, Erhard's personal ambassador, Kurt Birrenbach, flew back to Jerusalem to negotiate with Eshkol the terms of the protocol establishing relations. Among other sweeteners, he carried an offer to renew for ten years Bonn's $75 million annual economic aid to Israel. Meanwhile Erhard sent another of his agents, C.D.U. Deputy Rudolf Werner, to Cairo to mollify Nasser. Presumably Werner told the Egyptians what German ambassadors all over the Middle East have been privately counseling the Arabs--that though the German envoys themselves will, of course, have to go home as the Arabs break with Bonn, the West Germans hope to keep their presence in the Middle East alive by turning their Arab embassies into consulates, keeping as many trade and cultural officials in place as the Arabs will allow.

*Hoffmann von Fallersleben, a 19th century poet who wrote Deutschland, Deutschland ueber Alles in 1841 as a rallying hymn against the oppressions of the 300-odd petty fiefdoms comprising what is now Germany. It was made the Weimar Republic's anthem in 1922, and after World War II, the first two stanzas, containing the phrase "Deutschland ueber Alles," were dropped and the anthem was renamed Deutschlandlied.

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