Handlin Article Claims Danger to All Jews From Eichmann Trial

"The way in which the Eichmann affair has unfolded provides substantial grounds for fear that justice will be the least of the ends at which the trial will aim," Oscar Handlin, professor of History, charged today.

In an article in Issues magazine Handlin pointed out that Israel's jurisdiction in the case is extremely shaky. The Zionist claim to be acting in the name of all Jews fails to include "those who consider themselves as Jews but who are not committed to the Zionist ideology."

"Jews were not the only suffers by the Hitlerite savagery," he said.

"Even the worst of criminals has rights, violation of which may have serious repercussions," he stated, citing the recent anti-Semitic disturbances in Argentina as evidence of concern there with the age-old problem of dual loyalty.

"Potential Threat"

Handlin emphasized that the attitude of the Israeli government is a potential threat to all overseas Jews. Punishment by a Jewish state of crimes against Jews elsewhere might well "constitute an abandonment or qualification of the rights of Jews to full and equal citizenship" in countries other than Israel.

"It would leave the way open to implication that the countries in which Jews live do not own them protection other than as foreigners in their midst."

For more than a century Western Jews strove to avoid isolation as victims of persecution, Handlin added. They associated themselves with public feeling and "made the cause of other oppressed groups their own." "Involved in all such issues was an appeal to common conscience and a common stake in human decency.