Dear Editor
Dear Editor Hooray for Marvin I get the impression that Marvin Kitman is underrated, or at least overlooked by the popular media, and I wanted lo write to let you know how terrific 1 think he is....
...and when war does occur, if they do have any effect, it is only after the toll in blood and destruction has been paid...
...As for placing peacekeeping in the hands of the UN, lo rely on that body is to lean on a thoroughly broken reed...
...Because boundaries are not and never were at the heart of the problem, no formula for them can produce peace...
...And when he is at his best, combining cleverness with insight—as he did, for example, in "The Thing About 'Calucci' " (NL, I-ebruary 4), and that Kitmanesque tour de force '"Stretching the Law" (NL, November 12, 1973)—mere is no one in the field who can match him...
...they have rebuilt their nation-state where in all the history of mankind no other nation-state except theirs has ever existed...
...Of course, Kitman is one small voice protesting against a multitude of huzzahs, and I suspect that CBS would rather glory in the praise of the blind than heed the warnings of a genuine and long-time fan...
...The patent illogic of this position has not prevented it from winning wide acceptance in even the most erudite circles...
...guarantees that no Soviet missile bases would be installed along the bank of the Suez Canal...
...practically a non sequitur...
...To begin with, agreement by the Arabs to demilitarized zones (or to anything else) must be evaluated with an awareness that they never honored the 1948 Armistice Agreement, the 1957 modus vivendi, the 1967 cease-fire, the 1970 cease-fire, the 1973 cease-fire, the Constantinople Convention, or the Geneva Convention...
...Boston Gerry S. Gilson Brzezinski Plan Zbigniew Brzezinski concluded his "A Plan for Peace in the Middle East" (NL, January 7) with the fiat that if anyone disagreed with him...
...In fact, the Arabs have been trying to destroy Israel from the first day of the Jewish State's modern recovery of sovereignty in 1948...
...This order, however, should not inhibit scrutiny of the premises on which he constructed his Rube Goldberg contraption of zones and phases...
...A UN peacekeeping force could not be trusted to be impartial between the two sides, much less to exert itself to protect Israel's rights...
...The very least they have earned is the right not to have their fate manipulated or dictated by far-distant, self-appointed international chess players who would have them gamble that what has repeatedly proved true in the past will for some inexplicable reason be reversed in the future...
...What will happen the next time the Soviets decide to instigate an attack, or an Arab government needs a war to distract the attention of its own people from their discontents and grievances, or two Arab leaders get into a who-hates-lsrael-most contest...
...the hostilities of 1967 were of their own making, with the announced intention of annihilating a nation and its people...
...I wonder if he feels as I do that the same is true about the other members of the cast...
...And what ever happened to the cease-fire on the Syrian front...
...New York City P. J. Berlyn...
...While everyone else is finally hopping on the Mary Tyler Moore bandwagon (1 even know some people who have iheir 9-year-old daughter tape the show for them when they go out Saturday evenings so they can listen to the audio portion Sunday mornings), Kitman was the firs!, and remains, 1 believe, the only commentator to point out the series has recently been going downhill ("Dragging Anchormen,' NL, March 4...
...Kit-man's job must be a frustrating one sometimes...
...Indeed, whether it would even try would depend on a concatenation of circumstances—domestic, political, economic, international, and personal—quite beyond Israel's control...
...Nonetheless, Brzezinski's plan grants everything of substance to the Arabs and demands genuine concessions from Israel alone...
...now, six months later, there is still i.o inkling of when the prisoners the Syrians have not already murdered might be released...
...He suggests that Arab acceptance of this cobweb would be "tantamount to abandoning the idea of the Jewish State's annihilation," yet the arrangements are so fragile this claim is...
...On the offer of "guarantees" by the United States or any other power, let it be recalled what came of the Tripartite Declaration, and of the 1957 promises on international waterways, the Sinai and Gaza...
...No nation must be asked to let its life hang so on the mood and convenience of any other's...
...It is questionable whether the United States would be able to take any effective action...
...Let it be recalled, too, that when a cease-fire was imposed in 1973 to rescue the Arab Armies from imminent collapse, the United States assured Israel that all prisoners of war would be exchanged within three days...
...Making aggression virtually free of risk is hardly the way to discourage it...
...Moreover, Kitman is a genuinely avant-garde television critic...
...His remarks about Ted Baxter becoming a caricature of a caricature were absolutely right...
...The legal, moral and historic rights and claims in the disputed areas are loo' complex to go into here, but it must at least be said that no just settlement can be made by accepting only the arguments of one side, while ignoring—or reducing to mere "security interests"—those of the other...
...and since 1967, Cairo and Damascus have been putting forth the line that the territories they forfeited as a consequence of belligerency are the reason for their belligerence...
...guarantees...
...they have long stood alone and fought to defend it against stupendous odds...
...In return, he offers a cobweb of "security arrangements.'' spun of demilitarization agreements, UN peacekeeping and U.S...
...The truth is that on acts of hostility short of all-out war—shelling across frontiers, terrorism, blockades, etc.—"guarantees" have no effect...
...To much of the land in question the Arab governments had but shaky title even before 1967...
...And it could disappear at any time— without any resolution or command—simply by the participating governments* calling their men home...
...His plan is based on the belief that the territories the Arabs lost in 1967 are the cause of war and the key to peace—a belief that rests on nothing more substantial than a susceptibility to a much improved style of Arab propaganda...
...Not only is he surprisingly willy (scoring as often as he does in a regular column on a subject as deadly as television is no mean trick j, but he is also a first-rate critic...
...To suppose they would honor demilitarization agreements any longer than suited them is fanciful indeed...
...The people of Israel have reclaimed their land from an empty wilderness of swamp and desert...
...Yielding all the disputed lands to the Arabs will merely accomplish two things: (1) It will place Israel's enemies in a far more advantageous position for the next round, and (2) it will teach them that whenever they start a war they can depend both on obtaining an imposed cease fire if they are suffering defeat (but not before then), and on gaining back anything tney lose during the fighting...
...The pledge was not kept for a single hour, and the guarantees dissolved into nothingness...
...The UN has not once met its most elementary obligations to Israel as a member state, and its .proceedings resemble nothing so much as the Disputations of Medieval Europe, those "debates" staged for the exclusive and predetermined purpose of condemning the Jews...
...Without those missile bases Egypt might not have started the Yom Kippnr War, or would certainly have lost it much more quickly than it did...
...Let him forever hold his peace...
...Let it be recalled that after Egypt reneged on the 1967 ceasefire and launched its "war of attrition," Secretary of State William Rogers compelled Israel lo accept Egyptian promises and U.S...
Vol. 57 • April 1974 • No. 9
