Hole in the Armor

It has been nine days since forty sticks of dynamite ripped an 18 foot square hole in the rear of the only Reform Jewish temple in Atlanta, Georgia. Damage in dollars is estimated at $200,000; damage in respect for law and order is inestimable.

Thus far, five men have been indicted by the Fulton County Grand Jury on a charge conviction for which can carry the death penalty under Georgia law.

Ralph McGill, the Editor of the Atlanta Constitution, described the incident as a "harvest of defiance of courts and the encouragement of citizens to defy the law on the part of many Southern politicians." He warned that "it is not possible to preach lawlessness and then restrict it. To be sure, no one said go bomb a Jewish Temple or a school. But let it be understood that when leadership in high places in any degree fails to support constituted authority, it opens the gates to all those who wish to take the law into their hands."

The men indicted for the act are all vehement anti-Semites. These five are local fanatics backed by an Arlington, Virginia printer who publishes reams of hate literature under the name of the National Committee to Free America From Jewish Domination.

The overt act of this and other bombings in the South during recent months is a product of two trends. One, as McGill and others point out, is the high-minded, quasi-legal defiance of the Supreme Court decisions by Southern political leaders. Their actions lead to violent defiance of law and order by those who lack the intelligence to act in a legal manner. As McGill observed, "You do not preach and encourage hatred for the Negro and hope to restrict it to that field. It is an old, old story.... When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe."

The other trend is an expression of pure and terrifying anti-Semitism, inflamed by sympathy to the cause of equal rights for the Negro evinced by the majority of the Southern Jewish community. Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, spiritual leader of the razed temple, has long supported the Supreme Court decisions. The blast is intended as a warning against Jewish sympathy to compliance with the Court decision.

McGill ended his first pronouncement against the bombers with these words: "For a long time now it has been needful for all Americans to stand up and be counted on the side of law, and the due process of law--even when to do so goes against personal beliefs and emotions. It is late. But there is yet time."

There is time, but precious little. The decent people of the South have a moral necessity to take their stand on the side of law and order; the alternatives of violence and destruction can lead only to disaster and death.