THE PRESS: The Zionism Resolution:

...affected a mild surprise at "the Russians...

...For every argument there is a counterargument...

...Like Moynihan, it was not the act which journalists addressed, but the infamy...

...In Mark Twain's view the lamest possible answer to an insult, the dimmest, spindliest rejoinder was to set your jaw and say, "You're another...

...It is hard to describe the tone of Baker's article, and still harder to explain it...

...Was it possible that "another reason" was Arab rejection of Israel's right to exclude Palestinians from Palestine...

...The question of the Palestinians, and of their displacement in Palestine by European and Arab Jews, is one of the most complex in modern history, as well as one of the most sensitive...

...it is the history of the Jews, in fact, which gives the word its most horrific connotations...

...For some reason- or rather, for too many reasons to go into here-the American press is more than half-ready to believe the Arabs are anti-Semitic, but explodes in outrage at a suggestion the Jews may be anti-Arab...

...Hysterical is not too strong a word for it...

...In the same way, Israeli discrimination against Arabs (which most Israelis acknowledge, regret and to some extent try to overcome) is sweet benevolence compared to Syria's treatment of the Jews in Damascus and Aleppo...

...There is no simple solution to die problem-there may be no solution at all-but no useful purpose is served by denying, distorting, or ignoring it...

...carcinogenic...

...Why shouldn't dinosaurs float in mud...

...There are no frivolous belligerents there, no Hitlers...

...But that still does not fully explain the heated reaction to the UN's anti-Zionism resolution...

...No people have suffered more from racism than Jews...

...The Israelis had better start packing their bags if that's the best their Mends can do by way of defense...

...THOMAS POWERSstanding...

...When the Arab states sponsored the anti-Zionism resolution in the UN they were not simply trying to provoke the Israelis, mend local fences, spit in the eye of the United States and let off steam: they were trying to explain why this issue is so important to them...

...Israeli Arabs who are citizens (about 440,000 of them) are not discriminated against legally (except in the sense that they are not subject to the draft) but they do suffer in other ways...

...That question is: why did the Arab states sponsor the resolution in the first place, and what did they mean by it...

...ambassador to the UN, who said the United States "does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act...

...At the very beginning of the Zionist experiment, in 1896, Theodore Herd called Palestine "a land without people for a people without land," as if the local Arab population were invisible...

...That is not all there is to the conflict, but it is the part most difficult of resolution, it is the part which arouses the strongest emotions, and it is the part which explains why the Arab states sponsored the anti-Zionism resolution, and why the American press reacted as it did...

...The other reason was...

...The result was a three-day riot of recrimination, a nearly unanimous din of vituperation, name-calling and outright slander...

...The New York Daily News, for example, called the UN "a cesspool of malice, ignorance and prejudice...

...It is one thing to oppose the anti-Zionist resolution as provocative or pointless, quite another to attack its authors as murderous anti-Semites, summoning up wild visions of Hitler, new pogroms, a resurrection of the spirit of Buchenwald...

...Such charges only deepen the hostility and misunderstanding...

...In a similar spirit, Anthony Lewis in the Times said "plain old anti-Semitism" was "one reason" for the resolution...

...THE ZIONISM RESOLUTION PRESS An important question was overlooked-even willfully ignored-in the furor which followed the UN's passage November 10 of a resolution declaring Zionism "a form of racism...

...crawling into bed with Hitler again," and then zeroed in on Soviet duplicity even though "criticizing (the Soviet government) would be as pointless as criticizing a dinosaur afloat in mud...

...In fact, Israel does not exclude Arabs because they are Arabs...

...The best that can be hoped for is a recognition of the depth of feeling on both sides, of the conflict's tragic and complex history, of the terrible irony that the Jews of Israel, far from having found a safe home, are more threatened than ever...

...But the strongest reaction of all came from Russell Baker...

...No Israeli university uses Arabic as a language of instruction, for example...

...He reminded us of the Hitler-Stalin pact, noted that "here they were together again, swastika and sickle...

...it includes Jews because they are Jews...

...The fact that it has already lasted for at least 50 years ought to tell us the dispute is over matters of substance...

...I take that reaction as a sign of friendliness to Israel, but it seems to me a misplaced and misguided sort of friendliness...

...For that matter, what did any of them have in mind...

...The proper way to answer a charge of racism is not to ignore the facts behind the charge-in this case, the fact of Palestinian displacement-but to explain why they do not constitute racism...

...More importantly, Arab land has been expropriated in some parts of the country, most recently the Galilee region, in order to make room for Jewish settlements...

...The Arabs say that the stated Zionist goal of a national home for the Jews, "as Jewish as France is French...

...Why do we imagine the Arabs have been so single-minded and persistent in their hostility to Zionism...

...The arguments may not settle things but at least they substitute light for heat, and they are better than name-calling...

...Can it be that mud is...

...Within 50 years it was: by the end of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948-49 the Jewish population of Israel was around a million, up from a few thousand in 1880, while the Arab population was down to 150,000, from over a million...

...or "racism"-is almost by the way...

...The New York Times denounced the "unholy alliance" of Arab and Communist nations in the voting, blamed the Communist support on "their endemic anti-Semitism," and described the 72 nations which voted for this "odious resolution" as a "foul parade...

...They find it harder to get jobs and housing and higher education...

...Whatever the Zionists may have done, Deir Yassin to the contrary notwithstanding, Zionism is not, it is not even a second cousin of "racism" of the naked, Nazi sort...

...Most Arabs probably see that as a sophistry, a distinction without a difference, but I don't...

...Common sense alone ought to tell us there must be more to it than that, but American journalists continue to slight or ignore the Arab position...

...What can he have in mind, I found myself wondering...

...and of the bitter resentment of the Palestinian Arabs, who have had to pay the price of European anti-Semitism...

...They fought for a public declaration of the "racist" nature of Zionism because that's what they think it is...

...Jews, after all, accepted the UN's partition plan of 1947, which would have given the Palestinians far more than the West Bank state some of them are willing to settle for now...

...In the Arab view Israel is a racist state because its immigration and internal policies are exclusionary, and the people who are principally excluded are Arabs, and especially Palestinian Arabs...

...Of course a great many other issues divide the two peoples, but every last one of them might be resolved without bringing peace, so long as the Palestinian question remained open...

...Sort of...

...No devious motives are necessary to explain the resolution...

...He began by saying, "Hitler must have had a good laugh down in Hell this week when the United Nations General Assembly formally endorsed anti-Semitism by a large majority...

...That is the result of the struggle of two peoples for one piece of land: the Jews live where Palestinian Arabs used to live, the Palestinian Arabs want to go back, and a lot of other Arabs sympathize with them...

...Violence has taught Arabs and Jews to dislike each other, but their mutual dislike -or prejudice, if you will...

...It is at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict...

...Do we really think it has been for shallow or frivolous or merely splenetic reasons...

...Far from being a racist conspiracy, Zionism is a history of failed attempts to reconcile Arab and Jew, or, failing that, somehow to divide the country in an equable manner...

...You would think Martin Bormann had entered the delegate's lounge with the Russian ambassador on one arm, and Arafat on the other...

...Where the Middle East is concerned nothing will settle things...

...the American bombing of Cambodia...

...Arab polemicists can extend the list of discriminatory practices, and while the wrongs charged are hardly on a level with what the Nazis did to the Jews, they are at least the sort of thing which has been called "racist" discrimination against Negroes and Puerto Ri-cans in New York, or Japanese and Mexican-Americans in California, or West Indians in England, Algerians in France...

...the steady expansion of territory controlled by Jews, and the displacement of the Arab population all speak for themselves, and what they say, in a word, is "racism...

...Lewis is an intelligent fellow and he made this apparent non sequitur sound sort of plausible...

...His sense of humor does not often fail him, but this was one of the times...

...The rest of the explanation, the part which most concerns me here, stems from something more immediate, not an uneasy conscience exactly (since Americans are hardly to blame for the awful situation in the Middle East), but something quite like it: an instinctive, unexamined and largely unadmitted reluctance to view the Arab-Israeli conflict, even for a moment, through Arab eyes...

...If we were talking about Argentine-British disagreement over the Falkland Islands it might not matter so much if the position of one side or the other were distorted in a sudden swelling of partisan emotion...

...Not just the columnists and editorialists cited here, but all the others who echoed their righteous anger and sputtering outrage...

...The Arabs weren't getting into bed with Hitler, or encouraging primitive anti-Semitism, or leading a foul parade, or joining an unholy alliance, or floating in mud with the Soviet Union, or anything else of the sort: they were expressing their position, and they deserved better than hysterical countercharges in response...

...And so on...

...THOMAS POWERS...

...In the first place, it is lame...

...it is, in fact, what the conflict is about...

...There has been injustice enough to go around in the Middle East...

...This brings me back to the central question with which I began: why did the Arab states sponsor the Zionism resolution in the first place, and what did they mean by it...

...Far from dealing with that question, which ought to have been central, the press followed the lead of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the U.S...

...The truth of the matter is that both sides are guilty in this regard, which is just what you would expect after four wars in 30 years...

...Not only is Israel "racist" now, in the Arab view, but it is the result of a conscious "racist" conspiracy to displace one people, namely the Palestinians, by another, namely the Jews...

...You may not think this, but the Arabs do...

...The Washington Post dismissed the General Assembly as "irrelevant" and attacked it for encouraging "primitive anti-Semitism...

...Part of this rhetorical excess can be explained by the resolution's passage on the 47th anniversary of Kristalnacht, and another part by the word "racist" itself...

...It is far from explaining the intractability of the conflict...

...But the Arab-Israeli conflict is not narrow and local, and it won't simply go away...

...When I was in the Middle East last spring, I was asked repeatedly if I thought it just that any Jew in the world might become an Israeli citizen under the Law of Return, while Palestinians who< had been born in Jerusalem or Haifa or Beersheba, whose families had lived there for centuries, were excluded...