Editorials

...The Israeli move was a particular blow to President Mubarak of Egypt, already under fire from his Arab neighbors for his negotiations with Israel, and Egypt's statement of opposition to the annexation was particularly sharp...

...For over a year, the Reagan administration has simply been unable to recognize how much was at stake in Poland...

...demand that Israel rescind its Golan heights annexation to "a concept of the days of the Inquisition [ wherj our forefathers were burned at the stake and did not rescind their faith.'' The United States had no right to preach to Israel about civilian loss of life, Mr...

...No doubt Mr...

...spokesmen expressing particular American displeasure that the Israelis had acted while world attention was focused on events in Poland...

...We have also read the history of the Vietnam war, and your concept of body counts...

...He who threatens us will find us deaf to his threats...

...a return to more open political procedures would occur as soon as the emergency was over, and things really had been getting out of hand anyway, hadn't they...

...More complicated are the recriminations now passing among the various Western nations and statesmen It should be said from the start that there is no diplomatic or economic response to the Polish counterrevolution which is obviously the right one...

...Some of us believe that only in symbols do we express the most important realities...

...Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since the 1967 war, and it is small wonder that it should be unwilling to see it go back to a hostile Syria in the future...

...In his message to Washington, Prime Minister Begin referred to what he called "an ugly anti-Semitic campaign" in connection with the AWACS struggle, and he said: "No one will frighten the large and free Jewish community in the United States...

...THE JARUZELSKI COUP The struggle of Solidarity and the Polish people for freedom is not over...

...And this view ignores months of broken promises by the government, including withdrawal of a plan for economic reform and an offer for sharing power with Solidarity that was a sham and a cover for the prolonged painstaking preparations for Jaruzelski's coup...

...Begin does not make this support one bit easier...

...Never did it formulate an approach that conceived of the events in Poland as equivalent in importance to the development and deploy merit of new missile systems, and as deserving of large-scale economic and political investments...

...Not that very much should be expected from these sanctions...

...The fact that the same strategists who play out every hypothetical variation of nuclear "war-fighting" left the administration unprepared for the Polish martial-law variation on a Soviet intervention indicates the distortion of priorities...

...The United States , strongly disapproved of Israel's destruction of Iraq's nuclear reactor and of the air attacks on Palestinian headquarters in a Beirut residential neighborhood which resulted in the deaths of scores of innocent civilians, and as a result Washington cut off plane deliveries to Israel for a short time thereafter...

...and Willy Brandt were pathetically mismatched to the events at hand...

...What is worse, the administration had never even got around to considering the kind of "Marshall Plan for Poland" proposals that now, in the wake of disaster, are being advanced...

...Part of the reason for this Israeli surprise is lack of plain speaking on the part of the Reagan administration...

...The cover of the German weekly Der Spiegel declared that now it was the army s turn to "save" Poland...

...The foreign ministers of all nations in the European Community declared the action to be illegal and invalid...

...How responsibility is...

...But once again it must be said that Mr...

...But it is totally unacceptable that its neutralization be accomplished unilaterally rather than in some future peace negotiations like those with Egypt-just as it is unacceptable that the sins of either World War II or Vietnam be used to justify the present slaughter of civilians in Lebanon...

...Nonetheless, the busmess-as-usual, it's-only-an-internal-Polish-affair responses of Schmidt, Pierre Elliott Trudeau...

...This is the land of their forefathers, and they have a right and a duty to support it...

...No matter what he does, American Jews and other friends of Israel-like the editors of this journal-will continue to defend that nation's right to exist against all its enemies, to support the state of Israel in general if not in every particular action of every particular Israeli government...

...Besides, over the long-run it will not be to the benefit of peace and democracy to pour on Helmut Schmidt the reproaches that belong to Comrades Jaruzelski and Brezhnev...

...However much this previous silence may have contributed to Israeli surprise at the United States reaction, the tone and content of Mr...

...Will the next step in the Mideast be further annexations by Israel...

...He compared the U.S...

...The prestigious intellectual weekly Die Zeit editorialized about General Jaruzelski as "Poland's last chance" who deserved Germany's wishes for success and even discreet political support, lest the Soviets be provoked and detente be extinguished...

...had "punished" Israel, the prime minister said: "You will not frighten us with punishment...

...Has the Begin government given up any hope of peace with its Arab neighbors...

...Nothing, of course, would have provided as solid a basis for lasting detente as the example of a Communist nahon able to evolve non-violently from totalitarianism to a modicum of democracy...

...As usual, much of the world tried to put the best face on things: the junta that had installed itself in power would only be temporary...

...That being said, President Reagan has now done the right thing in instituting sanctions against both Poland and Russia...

...Every measure has some drawbacks as well as advantages, and so one must leave room for reasonable disagreement...

...That there are so few practical measures available for restraining the executioners tempts us to vent our frustration elsewhere - on the more or less complacent onlookers, for example, or even on the victim himself...

...Which brings us to Washington...

...Indeed, the French have complained that the U.S...

...Good enough...

...reaction has been lax...

...And in what must have been the harshest statement ever made by an Israeli prime minister, and one endorsed by the entire Israeli cabinet, Mr...

...International reaction to Israel's annexation of the Golan heights was universally negative...

...Thus the lament, often from sources that have never exhibited much sympathy or familiarity with living social move...

...They are unlikely to get much better unless the Begin-directed Israeli foreign policy makes an abrupt shift...

...The president was also wise not to entangle the conflict over .Poland with the European disarmament talks, which, like START, should proceed on the basis that East and West are pursuing their self-interest (in survival) and not trying to bridge the many other deep differences as well as the chasm of distrust between them...

...Leave it to others to dismiss them as "symbolic...

...Of course, it issued warnings against Soviet intervention, and obtained allied agreement on a list of reprisals in case of such an intervention...

...The sanctions are a minimal expression of decency...

...Reagan for discussion...

...It is true that no one argues for the use of arms in Poland, but as the editor of the left-wing Le Nouvel Observateur noted, we can at least arm our own spirits and protect ourselves from a form of moral corruption...

...they should at least affect the West...

...You have no right to punish Israel, and I protest the use of this term...

...The guillotine requires both its deadly blade and the board that holds the victim's head in place...

...Brandt's comments, in effect, were disavowed by the Socialist International (of which he is president) which thought that the crushing of a socialist workers' movement deserved something better...

...But never was it able to focus attention on the possibilities in Poland in a positive sense...

...They are mild, and leave plenty in store for what is still a real possibility: a full-fledged Soviet intervention following a renewal of Solidarity's strength...

...They will stand by our side...

...Yet at the Reagan-Begin summit meeting in Washington a few months ago, the official report said that neither topic was brought up by Mr...

...Interestingly enough, the strongest protests of the Polish repression, aside from those of the pope, have come from the Socialist government of France - and from the notoriously left-wing French intellectuals...

...ments, that Solidarity "went too far" or had reduced Poland to economic chaos...

...Begin said:'' We have read the history of World War II, and we know what happened to civilians when you took action against the enemy...

...Begin went on to accuse the Reagan administration of treating Israel like a "vassal state...

...And if so, how is the United States to respond...

...in the end, divided between the Polish general and the Kremlin leaders is not terribly crucial...

...On that date Poland, like so many other nations in the world fell victim to a military coup...

...There is no doubt that the Heights in the hands of an enemy of Israel would be a grave danger to that nation's security...

...Begin's response was astonishing...

...Blaming the victim won't do...

...But it is important to be clear about what has happened since December 13...

...There is no way the United States can seem to tolerate such actions if it is to retain any credibility in the area, and President Reagan was right to take prompt steps to make that point clear...

...The next move should be up to the Begin government, but there is solid reason to feel serious concern as to what that move might be...

...When the day of reckoning actually arrived, the Reagan administration was no more prepared than Carter had been for Afghanistan - despite a much longer time to consider the possibilities...

...Noting that this was the third time in six months that the U.S...

...Not every move of Solidarity was tactically wise, but even its proposal for a referendum on Communist rule was never formally adopted by the union...

...And nothing has undermined any genuine detente as much as Jaruzelski's and the Soviets" brutal repression of a brave movement for elementary dignity and liberty...

...The Israeli prime minister has always regarded the Golan Heights as part of Israel, but so too does he view the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and who knows what else...

...Nonetheless, by all accounts the government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin was stunned by the United States decision to suspend the American-Israeli strategic cooperation agreement as a punitive measure for Israel's action...

...Begin is right...

...Instead, the administration has been sinking in its supply-side quicksand, or playing Punch-and-Judy with the Ogre Quaddafi, or undermining its own moral credibility by hinting at an invasion of Nicaragua and shipping arms to the soulbrothers of General Jaruzelski in El Salvador and Guatemala...

...No one will succeed in deterring them with anti-Semitic propaganda...

...At the United Nations the United States supported a unanimous Security Council resolution terming the annexation null and void, with U.S...

...As usual, the aim of that coup was to protect the Old Order from the vital force of a popular movement...

...We are willing to listen only to rational arguments...

...And if the sanctions affect no one else...