Perspective
Eban, Abba
PERSPECTIVE ABBA EBAN Arab nationalism faces two lines of possible approach to its predicament with Israel. There is the Anwar Sadat approach and there is the traditional orthodox approach, still...
...STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP...
...The trouble, of course, is that the wind carries your words in both directions...
...All this was achieved by a successful dramatic appeal to that instinct for peace which lies deep, sometimes latent, within the consciousness of the Israeli people...
...Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months...
...Our greatest need is for a reinforcement of our manpower...
...I am not here suggesting that there is any realism in the idea of liquidating the Diaspora—the word "liquidating" itself does not have a respectable genealogy...
...Single Issue Nearest to Filing Date...
...I doubt whether even the most successful summit meeting in history, that of ancestor Moses on Mount Sinai, would have been successful if after every one of the ten commandments he had to be interviewed by Barbara Walters and Walter Cronkike...
...While, therefore, we wait for the Palestinians and the Jordanians to move toward peace, the question of Jewish solidarity must be our special concern...
...Anybody who wants to settle a problem has to get as far as possible away from the strident atmosphere of the East River...
...United States Code) i. Date of Filing: September 26...
...It might seem that not all the other alternatives have yet been exhausted by the Palestinian movement...
...61.500...
...International pressure, therefore, should be much more exercised in getting the Palestinians to follow Anwar Sadat's policy than in calling Israel to accept a settlement fatal to its vital interests...
...What does compromise mean...
...A. Total No...
...7. Owner: Jewish Educational Ventures, 462 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02116...
...Boston...
...For the past three decades the record is consistent...
...Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months...
...of Copies Printed: Average No...
...We are still living on the pyramid of priorities createdin 1948, in which at the apex there is the financial and economic assistance...
...These are problems which must stand higher in our preoccupation even than the question of what to do in our relations with Egypt or Gaza...
...MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION (Act of August 12...
...Abba Eban, Member of Knesset and formerly Israel's Foreign Minister, is a contributing editor to this magazine whose reflections appear frequently in these pages...
...The great Jewish communities, like Israel itself, live within a democratic context...
...All of these were achieved by removing the negotiation from the proximity of the United Nations...
...C. Total Paid Circulation: Average No...
...All the ministerial pronouncements continue to reverberate from its rostrum, but it appears that all these statements pass ministerial lips into oblivion without even a temporary rest in the world press...
...It is a necessary and salutory exercise...
...Single Issue Nearest to Filing Date...
...The problem was how to avoid disaster by thousands of these immigrants being left without a roof, without a home, without a school, without hospitals...
...Six hundred and fifty thousand came into the country in just over two years— between 1948 and the end of 1950, 650,000 immigrants...
...Its flame is burning low...
...Simultaneously, you whisper to your anxious constituency that your concession is really trivial and only your adversary's folly and your own brilliance have given it any importance...
...Single Issue Nearest to Filing Date...
...I suggest that we liberate ourselves from any such insularity and emerge into the broader horizon of the broader Jewish universalism...
...Single Issue Nearest to Filing Date...
...Therefore, the refusal of Diaspora communities to replenish our strength is the greatest crisis in the story of modern Zionism...
...The pathos of Israel lies in the fact that we are only 3,000,000 and 3,000,000 are not enough—not enough for anything...
...Your adversary and your constituency each hears what you mean for the other...
...Massachusetts 02116...
...The desire of the Arab people to have a twenty-third Arab state is morally trivial compared with the right of the Jewish people to maintain the possession of its small but cherished home...
...I do not know of any national purpose that can safely be achieved by 3,000,000 Jews alone...
...To your adversary you say that the concession that you offer him is so painful as to be almost beyond endurance...
...There is the Anwar Sadat approach and there is the traditional orthodox approach, still adopted by all the other Arab states and with a special ferocity by the Palestine movement...
...There was a period during which the United Nations was both effective and resonant...
...And if he then had to bring the final text to the anxious Israelis down below for scrutiny by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, it would have been impossible...
...Single Issue Nearest to Filing Date...
...For many years there was a feeling in Israel that we had no further need of world-wide Jewish solidarity, that our freedom could flourish under our open skies, upon our sovereign earth, with all the emblems of our nationhood fluttering reassuringly in the breeze, that the muscular vigor of Israel would carry us through to our destiny and Jewish solidarity could be put in a smaller place...
...57.812...
...F. Copies Not Distributed: (I) Office Use, Left Over, Unaccounted, Spoiled After Printing: Average No...
...of Copies During Preceding 12 Months...
...Extent and Nature of Circulation...
...5. Location of the Headquarters or General Business Offices of the Publisher: 462 Boylston Street...
...Single Issue Nearest to Filing Date...
...462 Boylston Street, Boston Massachusetts...
...Jewish economic aid, although priceless for what it expresses, has become quantitatively marginal...
...There is no compromise without concession...
...Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months...
...19.671...
...Not enough to guarantee our long-term security, not enough to protect our culture from inundation by the Arab flood, not enough to create a viable domestic market as the springboard for a prosperous technology and export trade...
...61.500...
...You cannot get agreement without compromise...
...E. Total Distribution: Average No...
...3. Frequency of Issue: Monthly except January-February and July-August when bi-monthly...
...That is what I mean by saying that we have got to break out of the routine, out of inertia, in order to embark upon a new confrontation between Israel and Diaspora Jews about their respective and their common responsibilities...
...at a level slightly below there is the political assistance, also institutionally expressed...
...1,600...
...The question is whether we have a joint understanding of our responsibility to consolidate and to redeem and to ratify that which has been so arduously achieved...
...2. Title of Publication: moment...
...Israel would make a grave error if it were to cut itself loose from the sense of its Jewish universalism...
...What does the United Nations want to be...
...There was even a feeling that Jews abroad should expiate their absence by taxation without representation— that we were interested in their political and financial support and were not interested in their views...
...The traditional approach is to try to get what you want by force, by siege, by war, by attempting to isolate Israel in an embattled solitude, by mobilizing world opinion, by hostile pressure...
...2) Mail Subscriptions: Average No...
...Boston...
...The other method is that which was tried in a great exercise and audacious example of originality by Anwar Sadat, who chose, not by war but by diplomacy, to break through the barrier that had forbidden negotiation, to shatter the taboo, to play upon the profoundly passionate mystique that grips the Israeli mind and heart whenever they come face to face with the prospect of peace...
...8. Known Bondholders, Mortgages, or Other Security Holders Owning or Holding 1% or More of Total Amount of Bonds, Mortgages, or Other Securities: none...
...There are some who ask whether Diaspora Jews should express themselves about Israel's predicaments at all...
...On the other hand, 30,000 Jews each year from the United States would transform the whole social atmosphere and environment...
...Let us not cut ourselves off from each other in our minds or in our hearts...
...Diaspora Jews are not giving Israel that of which Israel stands in greatest need...
...6. Publisher: Leonard Fein...
...Suffolk County...
...22.171...
...The intrusion of the media into preliminary and intermediate stages of negotiation is making international agreement almost impossible...
...This means that they are familiar with the idea that decisions are reached not by the blind acceptance of authority but by the interaction of contradictory and alternative choices...
...Israel has ceased to become the destination not only of Jews in distress, but also of Jews in freedom...
...Palestine instead of Israel...
...Let us acknowledge that the great bulk of Jewish resources—political, material and intellectual resources—still lie within the Diaspora communities...
...An Israel which was receiving 20 or 30,000 American Jews annually would be receiving a greatly increased financial and economic aid as well, because that influx would galvanize and inspire the American Jewish community...
...4. Location of Known Office of Publication: 462 Boylston Street...
...I recognize fully that this depletion of the Israeli strength comes not only through lack of immigration, but also a very disturbing flight of Israelis from their homeland itself...
...This is the clear lesson of Anwar Sadat's approach...
...In 1948, our priority was for economic support...
...We must rearrange Israeli priorities...
...23,382...
...of Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months...
...2) Returns From News Agents: Average No...
...Do they mean Palestine side by side with Israel...
...I hope that I do no injustice to any of my colleagues on that committee if I express doubt whether all of the ten commandments would have achieved a majority vote...
...the liberation of Egypt from odious dependence upon Soviet arms programs with their consequent domination...
...Dissent is the essence of our political regime...
...G. Total: Average No...
...This generation has not been without its successes or diplomacy: the Austrian State Treaty, the Trieste Agreement, arms controls agreements, the American opening to China, the Rhodesian settlement, the Egyptian-Israeli treaty...
...1,600...
...Suffolk County...
...Editor: Leonard Fein, 462 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02116...
...60,312...
...Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months...
...Publisher...
...But between the acceptance of such division and the reconciliation with this terrible sense of static deadlock in the movement of human resources from the perimeter to the center, there is a vast area for an improved dialogue...
...Public controversy is not a substitute for private conciliation...
...21,271...
...We didn't have a manpower problem...
...I can only say this: If we say to Diaspora Jews that we want your money and we want your political support but we don't want to hear your opinion, if we say that Jewish support must have a financial and political but not an intellectual dimension, then the Jewish Diaspora will probably accept that limitation but will subside into silence, leaving the Israeli cause diminished...
...I certify that the statements made by me are correct and complete...
...1970: Section 3685, Title 39...
...There are many things that both of us must change in our relations with each other...
...In the first few years of our independence, the aid that we secured from American Jewry sometimes amounted to 45 percent of our total foreign currency imports...
...If Israelis exceed Diaspora Jews in the strength and authenticity of their devotion to the national faith, let us admit that Diaspora Jews are not giving Israel that of which Israel stands in greatest need...
...the renewed operation of the Suez Canal with its huge revenues...
...The division of Jewish life between the homeland and Diaspora seems to be normal by dint of experience...
...We should be set upon the road of negotiation and dialogue which was opened between Israel and Egypt many months ago...
...Now both its effectiveness and its resonance have gone...
...It is not something that politicians like to be photographed doing...
...It is the Jewish destiny which is here vitally at stake...
...Then there came a period during which it lost its operative effectiveness but continued to resound...
...Single Issue Nearest to Filing Date...
...Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months...
...1980...
...This is because the excesses of an irresponsible majority have degraded the bright vision that illuminated the original charter...
...D. Free Distribution By Mail, Carrier or Other Means: Average No...
...23.382...
...B. Paid Circulation (l)Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors and Counter Sales: Average No...
...Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months...
...and immigration is right at the bottom of the pyramid...
...then a certain educational effort...
...the use of oil fields returned to Egypt in much more fertile condition than when they were lost...
...Our answer is clear...
...The Palestinians and their friends have the opportunity of emulating that example, but my experience teaches me that men and women and nations sometimes behave wisely only when they have exhausted all the other alternatives...
...This method has not secured one grain of sand or one substantative concession for any Arab government...
...Diversity has enabled the Zionist movement in Israel to go forward to its diplomatic victory...
...It can not be compensated for by anything else...
...Nor do I think there is any contradiction between financial support and immigration...
...An instrument for solving conflicts or an arena for waging them...
...Managing Editor: Carol Kur, 462 Boylston Street...
...Single Issue Nearest Filing Date...
...This would be a good time in which to ask the international community to elicit from the other Arab states and the Palestinians the same transformation of attitudes and ideas that has had such revolutionary effect in our relations with Egypt, but there is in the international system today a great vacuum of authority...
...There were days when 1,000 Jews were coming into Israel every day...
...Today, that aid, although absolutely greater, does not exceed six percent of our annual expenditures...
...Israel has got to present American Jews with a new order of priorities...
...By this method, look what Sadat has achieved: The restoration of thousands of square miles of territory...
...Massachusetts 02116...
...Boston...
...If this were the policy, a whole range of options would arise in the context of our relations with them and with Jordan...
...The problem wasn't manpower...
...Compromise means that you accept today that which you swore last week you would never accept...
...59,412...
...Single Issue Nearest to Fit* ing Date...
...If so, why do they not say so...
...Now what is it they want...
...No thank you very much, nothing instead of Israel...
...Leonard Fein...
...Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months...
...Massachusetts 02116...
...It is time for us to say that with all respect to our negotiations and to our budget and to our inflation and to our labor relations, there has to be a central issue of burning priority, the burning priority of the Jewish people: Diaspora-Israeli relations and the effort to utilize that relationship for the replenishment of our human resources...
...When something goes on for 2,400 years, I begin to accept it as normal...
Vol. 6 • December 1980 • No. 1
