After the Mideast War
Howe, Irving & Plastrik, Stanley
At one point, shortly before war broke out in the Mideast, it seemed that the very survival of Israel was at stake. To say this was not merely an emotional reaction, though emotion was...
...and it cannot adequately be discussed in terms of absolutes, either positive or negative...
...or Jewish nationalists...
...Yet the frequency of past misuse is not, in any particular case, a sufficient argument against its relevance...
...they had improved their armies...
...The only issue at that moment was whether the Western powers—no doubt to their moral dismay and eloquent regret— would accept a slow strangulation of Israel which could lead to its demise...
...A Versailles-like peace could only lead to future wars...
...Anyone who favors U.S...
...Even those who have advanced the not-veryuseful slogan that "the U.S...
...To the Arab leaders it seemed that the time was at hand finally to destroy Israel...
...We are not Zionists...
...Except for a small segment of the peace movement which has whipped itself into a position favoring a kind of unqualified isolationism, the opponents of the Vietnam War have based their opposition on specific criticism of the character, the purpose, the methods of U.S...
...To say this was not merely an emotional reaction, though emotion was certainly and legitimately involved...
...Our hope therefore is that the Mideast crisis will in no way diminish opposition to the Vietnam War...
...For some of us, whom only an accident of geography kept from ending as bars of soap, the spectacle of Israel's development as a modern and democratic society, created in large part by survivors of the holocaust, was profoundly stirring...
...anyone who would like to see the U.S...
...intervened in behalf of Diem's dictatorship and the subsequent military puppets...
...they are presumably advocating grounds for a limitation or restraint upon the employment of U.S...
...it is time for the Arabs to recognize (which does not mean approve) the existence of Israel...
...2) Nasser's fiasco brings to a climax the whole wretched history of those "revolutionary-nationalist" dictators— Sukarno, Nkrumah, etc.—whose suppression of democratic rights has been justified as necessary for the development of the Third World...
...economic aid to, say, Yugoslavia, as we do...
...Into Vietnam the U.S...
...intervene through unilateral military means in the Mideast...
...Judging the war in Vietnam to be reactionary, we oppose U.S...
...But we believe that the destruction of Israel, coming after the holocaust of this century, would be intolerable...
...This did not mean U.S...
...Certain supporters of the Vietnam War have tried to make capital out of "inconsistencies" in the views of those who are hostile to U.S...
...no serious opponent of the Vietnam War proposed that the U.S...
...But it is very much our business to keep urging the appropriateness of such a policy...
...These dictators brought their countries to disaster by substituting for the hard task of social development a foreign policy of imperial braggadocio...
...intervene in the internal affairs of any nation in the Mideast...
...at stake in the Mideast was a democratic nation, remarkable for its morale and composed in significant measure of the victims of genocide...
...And the UN, unable to be more than a resultant of the conflicts among the major powers, proved ineffectual...
...or by any means uncritical of the state of Israel...
...At one point, shortly before war broke out in the Mideast, it seemed that the very survival of Israel was at stake...
...Nasser had blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba and grouped 100,000 soldiers in Sinai, as an announced preliminary to a holy war aimed at the extinction of Israel...
...Such decision can never be accepted easily, if only because national survival is a slogan too often used to cover up national aggrandizement...
...should not be the policeman of the world" have not thereby committed themselves necessarily to a foreign policy of total abstention...
...The Western powers were preparing to agree upon a resolution defending maritime rights, the exact import of which in respect to Aqaba was not clear...
...Perhaps the experience of Israel may be of use to those who wonder why injections of "revolutionary" rhetoric—even the dispatch of John P. Roche to help write a constitution!— does not inspire the people of Vietnam to fight for Marshall Ky...
...Surely, a child can see the difference between Vietnam and the Mideast...
...To be sure, a peace settlement does not depend on Israel alone...
...We were moved by the sight of an entire people, acting through the closest equivalent contemporary history offers of a citizens' ar my, rushing to defend their right to existence...
...Our general predisposition is to be very strongly inclined against U.S...
...3) Obviously the UN did not cover itself with glory yet we dislike the muscular realpolitik of those who dismiss it as a mere talk shop, for even if it is no more than a mere talk shop, that in itself proved useful insofar as it provided an agency through which the major powers could help to patch up a truce...
...But that is surely no reason to claim that this binds us to a policy of inflexible abstentionism in other circumstances...
...intervened in what is, to a considerable extent, a civil war—and a civil war in which a large portion of the Vietnamese people oppose the regime propped up by the U.S...
...It is time for the Arabs to end the brutal pretext that they are in a permanent state of war with Israel, thereby justifying border raids and sea blockades...
...On the contrary: the Israelis urgently need to prepare—at the moment they cannot really effect—a rapprochement, or at least a truce, with the Arab nations...
...but it cannot be discussed in the wise-guy style of Roche...
...policy there...
...The question of interventionism is, of course, difficult...
...policy in Vietnam yet wanted the U.S...
...thrust half a million soldiers...
...and they counted, perhaps rightly, upon the likelihood that the Western powers (especially in view of de Gaulle's newly-proclaimed neutrality) would not seriously impede their effort to put the squeeze on Israel...
...intervention...
...military intervention—e.g., Vietnam and the Dominican Republic...
...The Syrians were steadily shelling border kibbutzim...
...Empty windbags, these "leftist" demagogues have proven capable neither of peace nor war, reform nor revolution...
...But problems of foreign policy involving the application of pressure, the employment of economic aid, and the use of moral sanctions must be solved in terms of specific goals, specific situations...
...John P. Roche, the President's semi-attached intellectual, emerged from deep freeze to sneer at "doves for war...
...If a return to the old borders seems unrealistic insofar as it would leave Israel once again open to terrorist harassment, the Israelis would nevertheless do well to forgo the temptation of large-scale territorial conquest...
...In Vietnam the U.S...
...It would be foolhardy, in the middle of June, to pretend to a complete perspective on what has happened, but a few tentative conclusions may be ventured...
...In these circumstances, our first reaction was concern for the survival of Israel...
...But in turn the Israelis should take a constructive and humane attitude toward the problem of the Arab refugees—who, even if exploited by the Arab governments, are suffering human beings and deserve more sympathy and active help than they have gotten from a nation itself comprised of refugees...
...And that is why, at the moment of crisis in early June, we hoped that the United States would take a stand in behalf of Israeli sovereignty and her right to innocent passage in the Gulf of Aqaba (an issue important less in its own right than as a preparation for the show-down the Arab states were threatening...
...to exert its influence in order to prevent the extinction of Israel...
...would act in behalf of Eshkol with the force it had employed in behalf of Ky...
...No one has proposed that the U.S...
...This is neither the moment, nor are we equipped, to spell out details of a policy that might lead to rapprochement...
...military intervention in the Mideast, something that Israelis neither wanted nor asked for...
...If there is indeed a conflict within the Israeli government between Eshkol and Eban, who propose a generous policy toward the Arabs, and Dayan and the military, who seem to be flirting with the idea of "a greater Israel," then we stand with the civilians...
...1) We support the survival of Israel as a people, but that in no way signifies acquiescence in the "tough" and chauvinist outcries that have emerged among certain Israeli political and military leaders...
...It is time that the myth created in their behalf by Western intellectuals nostalgic for revolution but indifferent to freedom should be put to an end...
...They were laden down with Russian arms...
...One need only imagine what might have happened if there were no UN in order to be glad that, for all its grave failings, it was present...
...Such talk, in our view, is sheer nonsense, utter demagogy...
...4) The Mideast and Vietnam...
...apply limited nonmilitary sanctions against the racist government in Rhodesia favors "intervention" of a kind...
...And in fact there was no possibility whatever that the U.S...
...power...
...It is all a matter of where, in what way, toward what end, and within what limits...
...In Vietnam the U.S...
...Nor was Israel, with all its numerous faults, in our eyes merely another "small nation...
...For it is a simple fact of geography that in a war an Israeli victory would not threaten the survival of Egypt or Syria while an Arab victory could easily signify the end of Israel...
...The Israelis decided to act alone...
...The Russians were goading the Arabs toward a show of assault...
Vol. 14 • July 1967 • No. 4
