LETTERS
Hook Replies Editors: In your Summer 1988 issue I am showered with abuse by Gordon K. Haskell allegedly for lying when in a previous communication I mention in passing that I was called...
...There are several problems...
...ANDY PERRIN Brookline, Mass...
...JAMES BAKALAR Cambridge, Mass...
...After all, I was often targeted for criticism in its pages...
...the presidency is an important and powerful job, on which millions of lives could rest...
...q The Palestinians Editors: A comment in your box on page 274 of the Summer 1988 issue, referring to an article by Ruth R. Wisse in Commentary...
...Haskell reminds one of the insect who because an errant breeze had deposited him on Zeus at a climactic moment, boasted to all his friends that he and Zeus had ravished Europe...
...He characterized Johnson as "a completely irresponsible person," and added, "I vehemently protested about that when it happened...
...But the charge that Ms...
...My reference was to a piece by the well-known Trotskyist, J.R...
...I implied that the editors should have requested Kazin to identify by name the person he was victimizing so that Kazin would take full responsibility for his words and be unable subsequently to deny that he knew the person who was clearly identifiable by what he said of him...
...Finally, for the benefit of Mr...
...Assuming that I was referring to something he wrote, Haskell proudly repeats all the choice insults he directed at me and cites the fact that he did not call me a Fascist as additional evidence of the wickedness of my "intellectual knuckle-ball...
...Since its founding, I have been a member of Social-Democrats, U.S.A., and am currently its Honorary Chairman...
...This is confirmed in a letter to me by Irving Howe (April 5, 1949) in which he dissociated himself from Johnson and the whole incident...
...Johnson, who denounced me as a Fascist in the New International in the early forties...
...Wisse's reference to "people who breed, bleed, and advertise their misery" is racist misses her obvious intention: to say that Arab governments ("the Arab strategy") regard Palestinians as pawns who provide these services...
...Instead, with obvious delight, he rolls out a litany of insults hardly different from the choice epithets current in the Stalinist press of the time...
...Jackson is inexperienced...
...I too dislike Commentary's politics and believe its editors and writers are insensitive to the plight of the . Palestinians...
...Jackson is a reverend...
...The president should have proven that he/she can handle the job...
...A simple inquiry would have enabled Haskell to discover the truth...
...Nor have I ever referred to them in any way since their existence was unknown to me...
...We should take the separation of church and state very seriously in this case...
...Essentially all peace movement and liberal-radical literature presupposes support for Jackson...
...I don't know what conceit or desire to call attention to himself led Mr...
...Don't get carried away...
...So far as I am aware, I have never laid eyes on Mr...
...Thank you for publishing a more balanced view, in which you admit that it is possible for one to be left-wing, nonracist, and still not support Jackson...
...The third problem is Jackson's somewhat reckless handling of the Jewish question...
...Haskell to imagine that because I cited the New International, I had him in mind...
...She is accusing Arab leaders of contempt for the Palestinians, not displaying it herself...
...His comment on "Hymietown" and his flirtations with Farrakhan make me question his judgment...
...SIDNEY HOOK Stanford, Ca...
...The problem is not race...
...Haskell or read anything he or his colleague, Julius Falk, have ever written...
...q On Jackson Editors: As a peace activist of many years, I was deluged with charges that I was a racist when I decided not to support Jesse Jackson's campaign...
...Hook Replies Editors: In your Summer 1988 issue I am showered with abuse by Gordon K. Haskell allegedly for lying when in a previous communication I mention in passing that I was called a "Fascist" in the pages of the New International...
...Haskell and his friends, and despite his contention to the contrary, I am nor a "neoconservative...
...We scoff at Pat Robertson's campaign, yet not at Jackson's...
...It was factional practices such as these, together with their common Leninist doctrines that led me as early as the late thirties to declare that "Trotskyism is Stalinism manqu...
...The only reason I mentioned the incident was to object to the anonymity of Alfred Kazin's slander of Professor van den Haag...
...q FALL • 1988 • 511...
Vol. 35 • September 1988 • No. 4
