Dear Editor

...Dear Editor Hard Line I was disappointed in Harry Hurwitz' remarks on the West Bank ("West Bank Autonomy and the Settlements," Gertrude Samuels, NL, July 2) It's not that I don't agree with what he says I do For the Israelis, the territorial dispute between them and the Palestinians calls into question the very nature of the Jewish State Their reponse to autonomy must take the following questions into account What is the bond between us as a people...

...It's bad enough that the members doted on their genius, their seminal importance, individually and collectively But for this generation of publishers, scholars and critics, including Daphne Merkin ("Writers and Writing," NL, July 2), to accord Bloomsbury the same status is simply absurd With the exception of John Maynard Keynes, there is not one world-rank figure among them Woolf can hardly be compared to her great predecessors, George Eliot and Jane Austen Lytton Stachey's little cameos hardly qualify him as Gibbon's modern torch bearer And so on down the line Hoboken, N J Elia Haverson...

...Is Israel a fulfillment of Judaism, of the Bible, or is it simply another secular state, which is obligated to act accordingly...

...But I think Hurwitz' hard-line aggressiveness, his we-are-the-law tone, does an injustice to his argument New York City Simon Arxik The Old Days In "Wasted Energy" (NL, July 2), Richard Mar-golis writes "Have you ever attempted to say goodbye to a friend or loved one taking off in a jet...

...What is the meaning of our history...

...At a railroad station that simple act of affection is relatively easy You can talk and touch until the very moment of departure, and then you can trot alongside the moving train for a spell But in airports such human gestures are out of the question The distance separating you is enormous It is dead space " Two things First, I wonder what railroad station Margolis has in mind I suspect it's the one in Casablanca, the same one that makes an appearance in hundreds of '30s and '40s movies The reality of train travel today is a lot different, at least in most cities The terminal is usually a large modernist cavern, very like an airport One's loved ones are not allowed past the track gate, very like an airport Even if one's loved ones were let by, there would still be no contact, since train windows are unconscionably high off the ground, and can't be opened in any case (the better to The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words choke you to death when the air-condmoning gives out midway through the journey) Second, Margohs' hymn to the days of yore strikes me as slightly silly The present always looks to the past and finds it good No doubt the invention of the plow thousands of years ago was bemoaned by some primitive forerunner of the social commentator, who mourned the loss of intimacy between man and spade If a faster mode of transportation is devised —say, beaming people from one place to another, as they used to do on Star Trek?Margohs will deliver a moving eulogy for the airplane New York City Alan Fishman Good Call Has anybody noticed that Silvio F Senigallia's predictions about the Italian political scene always turn out to be correct7 He called the current impasse over two months before it happened ("The Election Nobody Wanted," NL, April 23) Los Angeles Frank Ritteriv Bloomsbury Is the repulsive public relations effort waged on behalf of the Bloomsbury circle never going to end...