EDITORIAL:
O'Gara, James
CORRESPONDENCE Israel's Options Waverly, Mass. To the Editors: In the "Moral Meaning of Israel" [Mar. 14] Michael Novak writes that Israel is "perhaps as fully democratic, as fully socialist and...
...Israeli policies toward the Palestinians have often been unenlightened and even wrong...
...Is Israel a sacred cow...
...What fellowship there is derives from the enlivened sense of sisterhood among feminist women and that communal feeling possible in some personal relationships...
...GARY MITCHELL...
...When they plead "oppression," Arab words cannot be taken at face value...
...EDMUND R. HANAUER Executive Director, Search for Justice and Equality in Palestine Reply There is justice on both sides in the Near East...
...It is tranquil, but I doubt very much that it lacks the "moral passion" cited in the editorial...
...Still, the picture Mr...
...Why should Commonweal carry such an apologia for oppression...
...But justice demands Israel evacuate the occupied lands and repatriate Palestinian refugees...
...Novak fears that Americans might pressure Israel for "oil dollars," not "justice...
...I was alienated by much of the peace movement by an absolute hate for those "morally corrupt" politicians in Washington...
...They would rather avoid controversy and, in so doing, avoid both the curriculum and leadership dimensions of the questions posed, too...
...That they have sinned is not new to the human race...
...Novak feeds those illusions...
...To the Editors: The writer of the March 28 editorial, "Moral Education," suggests that "this new age of tranquili-ty" lacks "moral passion," as if the two were mutually exclusive...
...Not only the Israelis sin...
...Arab nations have refused to assimilate or to assist the Palestinians, who are the only refugees among millions in this century to be denied assistance by their brothers and sisters...
...All of this has been amply documented in the Western media and by Israeli civil libertarians...
...Can Jews do to non-Jews what is clearly anti-Semitism when Jews are the victims...
...No other Near Eastern nation has achieved comparable democracy or equity...
...No other could bear the scrutiny of Lord Acton...
...MIKE MAYER New Brunswick, N.J...
...Is he serious...
...It is therefore in the interest of Israeli Jews as well as Palestinians that people like Novak cease viewing Israel through rose-colored glasses...
...Is a peace march any more "productive" or involve a more acute moral consciousness...
...The alternatives we face are not a "betrayal of Israel" versus the kind of support for Israel's annexationist policies that led to the 1973 War...
...Israel needs constructive criticism, not eulogies, from her friends...
...Michael novak Campus Climate Syracuse, N.Y...
...I was relieved to see that the concern for "moral passion" still prevailed somewhere and that the cynicism spawned by the scars of the sixties had been resisted at Commonweal...
...In this Bicentennial year as we celebrate a resort to violence by colonists who suffered little in comparison to the Palestinians, it is not just "realists," as Novak would have us believe, that are turning against Israeli policy (not Israeli Jews' human rights...
...A high percentage of the Israelis is Arab Moslem, Arab Christian, and Arab Jewish...
...I see students attending church, discussing moral issues-in short, becoming involved in a subtle, hopefully growing, revival...
...and hundreds of thousands of Jews have been driven out of Arab countries...
...To the Editors: I read your editorial on "Moral Education" with much interest, relief and gratitude...
...yet he is silent about the actual past and present "betrayal" of Palestinians by American politicians seeking "Zionist dollars...
...Israel is a democracy only for Jews, just as South Africa is only for Whites...
...In every democratic country of Europe and the Americas there are inequities-the migrant workers, the French-Canadians, blacks, and others...
...No nation less than Israel deserves the accusation Hanauer quotes from Acton...
...Nonetheless, any hate directed against individuals is ugly and the hate generated on both sides during the conflict was a tragedy of the highest order...
...Other Israelis come from every culture on the planet...
...I was glad to hear your voice raised to once again challenge those among my instructors who, in the aftermath of the enervating '60s, seem now unwilling to structure an education from the premise that our society is a "far-from-just" one...
...Novak warns about a possible future "betrayal" of Israel...
...Granted, war is an ugly and unwanted tragedy, the Vietnam war being perhaps the ugliest...
...Chardin maintained that the secular thrust must coincide with the spiritual thrust and it is our responsibility to see that neither is neglected...
...Does he mean to say that meditating and going to church smack of passivity and non-involvement...
...Arab nations have not recognized Israel in law, nor permitted the establishment of stable borders, nor chosen a policy of peace...
...Israel represents only one one-hundredth of the Arab territories, and not the richest part...
...But Palestinian Christians and Moslems are either second-class citizens of Israel, or worse, exiled from their homeland, or oppressed in the occupied lands...
...As for community, it is rarely evidenced-there is no public witness, no engagement of each other, of opinions, of feeling and thinking persons, that is engendered by the institutionalized authorities, the deans, faculty or student organizations...
...Israelis, like Whites in Southern Africa, live in a dream world if they assume they can oppress indigenous peoples without opposition (Continued on page 222) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 195) from Western peoples or even from the native peoples themselves...
...Israel is perhaps the most pluralistic nation on earth...
...Israel is a "state compassionate toward and responsible to its citizens...
...For the most part, I find that this hate has dissolved and I find this "tran-quility" refreshing...
...a state which does not include them is destitute of the chief basis of self-government...
...14] Michael Novak writes that Israel is "perhaps as fully democratic, as fully socialist and as fully free in its institutions and in its ideals as any Western State...
...Is that too much for the Arab nations to have ceded in 1948, or now...
...The danger, I believe, lies in equating mere physical action (devoid of the deeply felt spiritual dimension) with moral passion...
...Many of us are humanists, liberals, socialists, Jews, and Christians who believe with Lord Acton that "A state which is incompetent to satisfy different races condemns itself...
...Han-auer paints seems to me unfair...
...In this imperfect world, and under extreme conditions, the Israelis have been extraordinary in their moral, civil, and democratic accomplishments...
...a state which labors to neutralize, to absorb, or to expel them, destroys its own vitality...
...Moreover, Israel has pledged to return the "occupied territories" in exchange for that legal recognition of the state of Israel that guarantees future peace...
...There is a third alternative, the realization that justice for Palestinian Arabs and security for Israeli Jews are interdependent and not mutually exclusive...
...Other than this, the editorial hits the bull's-eye, especially with the emphasis on an improved core curriculum...
...True, a danger...
Vol. 102 • June 1975 • No. 7
