Israel: Afro-Asian Bridge
FRANK, M. Z.
By M. Z. Frank Israel: Afro-Asian Bridge Talk with Abba Eban points up country's new position HAIFA SOME TIME ago, in New York, I heard Henry Steele Commager say that the role Israel is now...
...Today, the entire world recognizes Israel's role as the transmitter of Western science and Western democratic institutions to them...
...We can help them in that...
...This, plus Israeli emphasis on socialism and cooperation, makes the country an increasingly important link to the new nations...
...In my conversations with them, I have been trying to urge them to create, each nation for itself, a small elite of scientists...
...how to fight malaria and soil erosion, how to organize and run clinics, and most of all how to use communal and semi-communal settlements...
...One of the pitfalls of Israel's new role was pointed out to me by Esther Herlitz, formerly Israeli First Consul in New York and now Director of Foreign Relations for Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's Mapai party...
...The socialist and cooperative trends appeal to Afro-Asians more than the individual enterprise of America...
...The scientists of the world...
...Of course, it will take some time to train the elite, and after that they won't need our help...
...By now we have almost solved the problem...
...And Israel has had both experience and success with many of the problems confronting the new nations: soil conservation, land reclamation, reforestation, water control, malaria, as well as the social and cultural adaptation of new populations...
...I am inclined to think this is sound statesmanship, though there are people who are concerned lest it be complacency: the complacency of a new nation attempting to bring together two worlds, the complacency which arises from youth and a good number of accomplishments...
...Eban approached the subject from a slightly different tack...
...She thought Eban's plan for an International Scientific Conference was excellent public relations in the West...
...Some of the new nations, especially in Africa, tend to look on science as something unattainable for them, the exclusive domain of the white man...
...Eban also noted that in the five months he had been at the Institute, he had received 17 scientific delegations, 14 of which came from Asia and Africa...
...Eban told me, are keenly aware of the danger facing Africa from soil exhaustion...
...But...
...she said, "if the Africans and Asians come away with the impression that they have not been treated as equal partners, who can give as well as receive, we shall have lost more than we have gained...
...What's the use of talking about harnessing the atom to a nation that hasn't got a single secondary school...
...They are duly impressed by the achievements of the latter, but Herlitz comments, "When we show them the community center at Mazmila in Jerusalem, they remark, resentfully...
...I spent a week in Rehovoth, chiefly to learn about the Weizmann Institute, and there had a talk with Abba Eban, former Israeli Ambassador to Washington and the UN, and now the Institute's president...
...At any rate, we now have a surplus of trained and experienced agriculturists who could be of use to the new nations of Africa and Asia...
...Israel has successfully vaulted the barrier of hatred erected by the surrounding Arab countries and established contact with the new African and Asian nations...
...It would only hurt him...
...By M. Z. Frank Israel: Afro-Asian Bridge Talk with Abba Eban points up country's new position HAIFA SOME TIME ago, in New York, I heard Henry Steele Commager say that the role Israel is now playing in forging links between the non-Communist nations of Asia and Africa and the West is of far more importance and interest to the historian than anything the Zionists have to say about themselves, their ideology or their work in the past...
...I did not realize the extent to which his comment was true until I arrived in Israel...
...Eban had to tell me was that he was organizing an international conference scheduled for the end of 1960, to deal with the problems of science in the underdeveloped countries, and that he had received enthusiastic response from some of the greatest scientists in the world...
...Eban was elevated to Minister Without Portfolio...
...We, in Israel," he said, "have had experience with that problem since the beginning of modern Jewish colonization in Palestine 80 years ago...
...Afro-Asian leaders on all levels come to Israel to learn how to "make the desert bloom...
...But in the interim, we can help them and gain their friendship...
...Subsequent to our conversation, which took place late in November...
...They trust Israel far more than they would trust the West, and in Israel they find much to emulate...
...After an absence of more than two years, I discovered a number of developments which have great potentialities, though they are not free of possible pitfalls...
...There are places I wouldn't dare take an African to...
...But we can't have such a thing...
...We don't get that kind of money from America.' (The center is supported by the American Hadassah...
...The most important thing M. Z. FRANK, whose most recent book was Sound the Great Trumpet, is currently on an extended tour of Israel...
Vol. 43 • March 1960 • No. 10
