Beginnings
I have just returned from an especially full trip to Israel. In next month's issue. I expect to share my impressions with moment's readers. But one event, which falls outside the scope of that...
...one day they may persuade him, or another government may come to power, with different views...
...Last month, 57 percent of Israelis registered their opposition to the continued building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank while peace negotiations are under way...
...Which is the intransigent hand...
...Some of us think that Mr...
...In the current context, that makes critics of us...
...And because Western Europe, and sometimes even the United States, ignore the distinction, the extremists and the exclusivists gain strength...
...Henry Rosovsky (p...
...Begin but by an amnesiac world that chores to whet the appetite of the authors of murder, the killers of children...
...It is the shocking absence of such sentiment—on the record, once and for all—that is and remains the principal obstacle to peace...
...The enduring and lamentable fact is that the Arab nations have officially transferred their power of attorney to the PLO, and the PLO has repeatedly asserted that it is Israel's existence—not its policies, not the settlements, not Jerusalem, not the Begin government—that maddens it and brings it to murder...
...And our best wishes for summer's balance...
...But I do want to share with our readers one post-script to the event, an Op-Ed piece which I did for the New York Times and which appeared there on July 19...
...The most moderate Palestinians—on the record—are ready to "start" with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip...
...By contrast, mainstream Zionism long ago accepted the principle of partition as the path to peace between the Mediterranean and the Jordan...
...Such debate as we pursue takes place amidst a growing cynicism and frustration that are not provoked by Mr...
...the correct spellings are (on p. 25) David Kazhden and Evan Cohen...
...Last year, the United Jewish Appeal raised more money—most of it targeted for Israel—than it did the year before...
...Let Israel's enemies take no comfort...
...We perceive, to our distress, that the world is moved by convenience rather than concern, that the vulgar appetite of terrorists is whetted, not sated, by concession to their threats...
...Begin's harshest critics within the Jewish community reject as preposterous the notion that Israel's policies represent the principal barrier to peace in the Middle East...
...He is still, he says, a moderate...
...Where is the corresponding voice, however small, among the Palestinians...
...Begin's critics live, and speak...
...It does not, it seems to me...
...They will not say—on the record—where they will stop, not even those of them who teach in such enlightened places as Columbia University...
...on the other, murder...
...Begin has made very serious mistakes during his tenure in office, and continues to...
...to ignore the context is to misinterpret the debate...
...The support of the Jewish people for a free and independent Jewish state of Israel is profound and enduring...
...Debate...
...Next year, it will do better still, its dollars gladly provided by critics and non-critics alike, a testament to our ability to distinguish between timeless commitment and ephemeral dispute...
...But he tells me that were he to plead his cause out loud, the PLO would mark him for assassination...
...Long since abandoned by the Third World, more recently abandoned by Western Europe, denounced by the Soviet Bloc, Israel stands nearly alone...
...Last week, in a town in the West Bank, I spoke with a Palestinian moderate whose moderation landed him, years ago, in a Jordanian prison...
...But one event, which falls outside the scope of that article, has aroused a fair amount of controversy, and leads me to depart from my usual practice of reserving this page for diverse comments regarding the issue at hand and the general fortunes of this magazine...
...Yet even Mr...
...Begin, and believe that his grasp of current reality and future possibility is inadequate, that does not mean we endorse the curious and contemptible doctrine that his limitations are the central impediment to peace...
...With that off my chest, several corrections: In last month's article on Jews at Harvard, several names were misspelled...
...From time to time, some American Jews have similarly expressed themselves...
...Israel's enemies, they tell me, are gloating...
...Our quarrels with each other—more settlements or less or none, a Greater Israel solution or a Jordanian solution or an independent Palestine solution—reflect the anguished search of a beleaguered people for a corner of safety and quiet in a world where Jews have been, for the most part, dispensable...
...he would settle for an independent Palestinian state next to the Jewish state of Israel...
...There is debate and division among the Jews, and these will continue, for the matters at issue are momentous...
...But let Israel's enemies take no comfort: Critics and non-critics alike await, with diminishing hope, the expression of decent sentiment from within the organized Palestinian people...
...But they take place within a context...
...The event itself has been widely reported, and rather widely misreported as well...
...Steven Gould (p...
...Our apologies to the aforementioned, who, by any other spelling, are as estimable...
...require still another go-round...
...we, critics and non-critics alike, do not, will not...
...So if some of us are critical of Mr...
...And now, as they see it, even Israel's one undoubted ally, the Jewish people, is divided by open debate over the wisdom of Israel's policies...
...Western Europe may have trouble with the distinction...
...Division...
...On the one hand, debate...
...But my friend dare not speak...
Vol. 5 • July 1980 • No. 7
