Israel's Fate

...The Israel-Arab/Reader...

...It would be a far better world were Israel not thrust so mercilessly into this role, a fate Israel's founders did not conceive for the remnant of Nazi barbarism...

...If the Russians are going to make us cold," the head of the longshoremen's union said, referring to the oil boycott, "we are going to make them hungry...

...These statements are entirely in keeping with the Arab program outlined over the past six years...

...An indication of U.S...

...This is not a mere misunderstanding that could be corrected by more contact between Arabs and Israelis (though this would help...

...First, it represents a spectacular "gain for socialism...

...now it appears even to many liberals to be distressingly accurate...

...Narrowly defeated in the California legislature recently was a bill banning foreign banks from the state...

...The first problem is the challenge to Soviet leadership within the socialist camp...

...The doctrine may also have important implications should a I~ninist regime ever establish itself in the Middle East...

...The Nixon years, as we move into a period of international politics that is quite distinct from the postwar era of containment and bipolar confrontation, have surely become a watershed in American diplomacy...

...It managed to combine the behaviour of the ostrich and the hen...

...Eastern Europe is of fundamental importance for three reasons...

...home, what Albert J. Nock called "[the] great redistribution of power between society and the State...

...And second, the Soviets, through a massive airlift of materials, gave strong and immediate support to their Arab clients, which they had not done during the 1967 conflagration...

...The future Arab program, it seems, will now have to be divided into three stages...

...A measure of this value is that a book is produced in Israel about the life of each soldier killed in combat...

...This seems highly unlikely...

...A Yugoslav Middle East "expert" has observed that the departure of Soviet troops from Egypt would be "a great relief for everybody in or near the Mediterranean...

...Now commentators are comparing the fourth Arab-Israeli war to the Spanish civil war---a local war in which the world's major totalitarian power tested out its new weapons which, in the future, could be directed against the '~timorous" West...

...The doctrine is rooted in the Leninist concept of "proletarian internationalism" and was invoked by Khrushchev to justify the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution...

...The Administration might take its cue from the maritime unions which threatened to boycott all ships engaged in trade with Russia if the USSR continued to aid the Arabs...

...A number of Middle Eastern states, e.g., Egypt, have been associated with the socialist camp...

...China, on the other hand, poses different problems...

...Several years ago such a picture of the world would have been dismissed as a Cold War relic...

...Senator Henry Jackson has aptly compared the Russians to a thief who walks down a corridor checking all the doorknobs to see if one is open...

...During the first week of the war, the United States turned a blind eye to Russian irresponsibility in the hope of salvaging d~tente...

...Ra 'anan argues that the 1967 Arab defeat and the Soviet response (or rather lack of response) signaled to the dissidents in Eastern Europe (particularly Czechoslovakia) that Soviet influence could be rolled back without Moscow taking military action, i.e., that Soviet credibility had been undermined...

...Still, the Administration's response to the crisis was light-years ahead of the European response, with the exemplary exception of the Dutch...

...When Malik denounced Israel as an "international gangster" and stormed out of the Security Council, the delegates in attendance gave him an ovation...

...Virtually every African country has now broken diplomatic relations with Israel, despite what a Kenyan newspaper described as the impressive record of Israeli aid programs to Africa which "have been more successful than those of most of the major and richer nations...

...From Israel's point of view, the war showed a frightening erosion of international support...

...A frequent theme in the statements of Soviet leaders and the press is the need to protect "the gains of socialism...

...In a sense it is an honor, as it was to fight fascism, though it is one Israel accepts reluctantly, albeit courageously...

...She simply has no choice if she wants to live...

...The decision to proceed with the Moscow summit-10 The Alternative January 1974...

...The discussion will involve two dimensions: what may be called political or diplomatic objectives, and strategic or military objectives...

...As the postponed Israeli elections approach, there will be very few voices calling for the return of any of the territories occupied in 1967...

...Syria's Assad said on October 15 that a "war of total liberation" would follow the retaking of the Golan Heights...

...accommodation was Secretary of State Kissinger's remark, following inflammatory statements made by Soviet UN Ambassador Malik at the Security Council (Israel, inter alia, was said to have "ravaged entire civilizations") that the United States was favorably impressed by "the relative restraint that has been shown in the public media in the Soviet Union and in the conduct of their representative at the Security Council...

...The October War undoubtedly caused great consternation in Belgrade and Bucharest...

...Israel won the war, though less decisively than she would have had the Great Powers not imposed a cease-fire when they did...

...A more credible explanation is that it was the American alert---an oldfashioned tactic reminiscent of the Cuban missile crisis--that kept the Russians in line...

...The mood in Israel is grim and embittered, in contrast to the elation and confidence after the Six Day War...

...it is, I believe, part of a general pattern of Soviet global intentions...

...The third relates to the geographic proximity of China...

...As one American civil rights leader observed, the UN showed some resemblance to a southern lynch mob...

...Saladin was the Moslem warrior who defeated the Crusaders in 1187 in a great battle that led to the capture of Jerusalem...

...But in 1973 it is clearly property--and the defenses it affords liberty--that requires sustenance...

...The Arab goal in this war was the same as Saladin's eight centuries earlier: to expel the infidel from holy Moslem soil...

...The Russians have not merely armed and trained the Arab armies and provided technicians to man some of the more advanced weapons...

...The Economist characterized Europe as "trying to shut its eyes to what was at issue (between Russia and America), and then running round in frightened circles because the problem would not go away...

...Sadat, Assad, Faisal, and the rest exercised restraint in the beginning by defining limited objectives for the war: the ejection of Israeli forces from territories occupied in the 1967 war...

...I will speculate on the nature of Moscow's global policy and attempt to illustrate how Soviet Middle Eastern activities are part of a much larger pattern of concerns...

...But their vulnerability to blackmail and their blindness to the long-term implications of Soviet audacity and western division are certainly among the most distressing developments to come out of the October crisis...

...But what, one may well ask, are the objectives of the other superpower, the Soviet Union, in this new era...

...Israel might be forced by Great Power pressure into making territorial concessions, but it is unlikely she will do so if the Arabs do not meet her half way...

...C a r l Gershman Israel's Fate It is of some significance that the coordinated offensive launched by the Egyptian and Syrian armies on October 6 was called Operation Saladin...

...The Europeans no doubt felt that they had to remain neutral or pro-Arab in order to keep the oil flowing...

...The Soviets believe the Chinese-American rapprochement poses a significant danger to their global position...

...Chinese territorial claims, and the pressures of a population which may reach a billion by the year 2000, alarm the Soviets...

...J. Tim F e n n e l l Soviet Ambitions in the Mideast The "era of negotiation" is upon us...

...The Political Eastern Europe and China are the two areas given top priority in Soviet national policy considerations...

...Still, a peace of sorts could come to the Middle East were it not for one additional factor, and that is the Soviet Union...

...The war of last fall has probably not had the same effect for at least two reasons...

...Third, the Kremlin probably perceives that the undermining of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe will lead to upheavals within the Soviet Union itself...

...A leading Israeli Socialist, a left-winger in his own country, recently said in a speech before a New York audience that it was an "honor" for Israel to be in the vanguard of the struggle against the new totalitarian menace...

...The Arab offensive may not have destroyed Israel, but it did wipe out the Israeli doves, who are now, like everyone else, calling for secure borders...

...Almost everyone ganged up on Israel...

...In this era of monoliths--public and private--there are no easy solutions: Allende caricatured the idea of government even as 1Tr parodied the notion of property...

...They continue to see the Jews as outsiders, foreign invaders, who have no real attachment to the land...

...It is unclear whether multinational corporations have the backbone to resist beth expropriation and state-proferred favors--and in the long run the latter may prove no less destructive to individual rights...

...The implications for Nixon's d~tente policy are not encouraging...

...There has been some hope expressed that the recent war would move the parties closer to peace...

...Of course the entire Moslem world, responding to the declaration of the Jihad, was up in arms, and one holy "act of war" was committed as far away as Malaysia where it is reported that the American embassy was burned...

...About ten Arab countries joined the fighting, aided directly by the Russians, the North Vietnamese (who advised the Syrians), the North Koreans (whose pilots flew missions for the Egyptians), the French (whose Mirages, sold to Libya, were The Alternative January 1974 9 used against Israel on the Sinai front), and the British (who trained Egyptian helicopter pilots...

...Canada's Watkins Report reckoned "the most serious cost . . . resulting from foreign ownership is the intrusion of [foreign] law and policy...

...Kissinger would have us believe that the Administration's ddtente policy was responsible for preventing the U.S.-Soviet confrontation of October 25 from getting out of hand...

...Still, Israel occupied more of the Golan and about 750 square miles of the Suez Canal's west bank...

...The Middle East war has been the first major international conflict in which Russia has been able to throw around her newly-acquired political and military weight...

...There are reports that many in Rumania and Yugoslavia believe that continued foreign policy independence is contingent on a general ddtente between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the resultant relaxation of tensions in the Middle East...

...Finally, what of the impact of multinationals on local tradition...

...The Arab-Israeli conflict has opened the door of the oil-rich Middle East to the Russians, and they are now burglarizing the region...

...Few people took Soviet novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn very seriously last year when he condemned "the spirit of Munich" in the West and chastised the "timorous civilized world [which], faced with the onslaught of a suddenly revived and snarling barbarism, has found nothing to oppose it with except concessions and smiles...

...In reality, of course, while a distinction is analytically useful, military and political interests blend together and act upon each other...

...Indeed, the whole problem with our approach to detente is that it has not made use of what Andrei Sakharov has called our "trump cards" America's economic leverage on Moscow...

...The most recent Arab-Israeli war emphasizes that the greatest potential source of conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States is the Middle East...

...The answer to these two vital questions will largely determine the success or failure of attempts to erect a "structure of peace...

...The fact that his exploits were chosen as the model for the recent Arab offensive says volumes about Arab psychology and intentions, not to mention Israeli fears...

...The extensive Soviet resupplying of the Egyptian and Syrian armies during the course of the war threatened to destroy the new super power "ddtente...

...By the middle of the eighteen-day war, when the tide had begun to turn in Israel's favor, the Arab leaders reverted to form...

...Soviet foreign policy is opportunistic in that it exploits whatever opportunities exist for expansion...

...The historical reasons for Soviet preoccupation with Germany are well known...

...Unfortunately, this is still the only language the Kremlin leaders understand, which makes Moscow's behavior during the war not very surprising and the road ahead for ddtente quite difficult, if not treacherous...

...If he finds one, he walks in...

...Stage one, the regaining of the territories, would correct "the 1967 problem:" Stage two would correct "the 1948 problem," which of course is the existence of Israel as such...

...If uncorrupted by the State, it will serve beth our wants and our liberties...

...They have not yet, nor is it clear that they ever will, accept the presence of a non-Arab state in "their" Middle East...

...Consequently, the aspirations of the Soviet Union in the region are of manifest importance...

...India also lined up solidly with the Arabs who have opposed India in all of its three wars with Pakistan...

...The losses suffered have been heavy, especially for a small country which places tremendous value on every life...

...It would be amusing to witness "progressive" secularists in the West go overboard in their support for this Jihad (holy war), were not Israel's survival and the lives of its people so gravely endangered...

...The Middle East can be related to Eastern Europe in several ways...

...It is an article of faith in which has been invested Arab dignity, pride, and visions of future grandeur...

...However, Soviet policy in the Middle East is not made in a vacuum...

...The second is the seemingly implacable Chinese animosity...

...It's clear who's playing the role of Hitler, and there are a number of actors competing for the part of Neville Chamberlain...

...Brezhnev became identified with the doctrine following a November 1968 speech in which he professed that the Czech intervention was undertaken in the name of the "class struggle" and "proletarian internationalism" in order to "protect the gains of socialism...

...The first is what Uri Ra 'anan identifies as the "doctrine of irreversibility," or what has been more generally known as the "Brezhnev Doctrine...

...President Nixon has repeatedly emphasized that the primary foreign policy objective of the remaining years of his administration will be the consolidation of a "structure of peace...

...All indications are that they helped plan the aggression, and they threatened full-scale intervention when Israel appeared on the verge of victory...

...The case for property becomes less compelling as business forsakes the boardroom for the lobby, the market for the commission...

...First, less Soviet prestige was involved as a result of the partial expulsion of the Soviets from Egypt in the summer of 1972 and the withdrawal of advisers from Syria a few days prior to the Arab offensive...

...And, in addition, are there areas of tension which might still lead to confrontation...

...If anything constructive came out of this terrible war and the depressing events surrounding it, it is that some gravely mistaken ideas about international affairs have been shot out of the water...

...There's the nub of the difficulty, for the Arab leaders still see themselves in the role of Saladin fighting the Crusaders...

...As to the restraint in the media, one may observe sarcastically that Kissinger may have been referring to the failure of the Soviets to report anything about their massive resupply of the Arabs...

...Spain, whose prime minister has said that the aim of the Jews is to destroy Christian civilization, declared its "unshakable friendship" with the Arabs...

...Second, Eastern Europe provides access to and a buffer between the Soviet Union and a dismembered Germany...

...New York, Bantum, 1969...

...Sadat emphasized "the restoration of the rights of the Palestinians," a euphemism for the destruction of Israel...

...Yet it is a fate that might be given some meaning if the West, stirred by Israel's example, can regain the moral vision without which democratic civilization cannot survive...

...A Soviet defeat or setback in the Middle East might reverberate to Eastern Europe...

...Once a state joins or is associated with the "socialist commonwealth" it cannot slip "backwards" into a neutral or prowestern position...

...Sadat and others have defined a two-stage struggle...

...This is a Soviet version of the "domino theory...