Responses to "Carter and the Jews"-I
GLAZER, NATHAN & LEKACHMAN, ROBERT & FRANKEL, MARVIN E. & PERLMUTTER, NATHAN & ALEXANDER, EDWARD & BOOKBINDER, HYMAN & HAUSER, RITA E. & NEUSNER, JACOB & SAID, EDWARD W. & SPRAYREGEN, JOEL J.
Responses-I Below we present the first section of responses to our Special Issue, "Carter and the Jews: An American Political Dilemma" (NL, June 30); additional sections will appear in the coming...
...They weren't listening before...
...How fortunate we are to have at least one Jewish novelist who is interested in bodily ResponsesI above the waist...
...She correctly reminds us that this murderous organization has made clear -for all to see-its ultimate intention of destroying Israel...
...There must, as always, be such an agenda for us...
...With surgical precision she cuts through the cant surrounding the PLO...
...It all seems very bleak...
...There is a common good, a public interest, which is good for us too, and which is our interest as well-And it is our task to help shape it...
...Indeed, if William Satire's columns give any indication, with their powerful (also, one-sided) advocacy of Reagan for his hard-headed grasp of the centrality of the State of Israel as a strategic asset for American interests in the Middle East, there will not be much of a dilemma or "Jewish question" in the 1980 election...
...She owes me an apology for having the gall to put my political independence and my support for Palestinian rights in so venal a light...
...Wells: "The difference between us is fundamental...
...When young Israelis must ask themselves why they are commanded to enforce a government over people who do not want that governmentoccasionally, alas, with brutal means -they ask a question not so easily answered as Ozick wants us to think...
...In pursuing this end, we have no apologies to make for our contributions to the building of America, and the time is gone-or at least should be-when Jews apologize for sins they have not committed...
...Before the 1973 War, I did not think reaction time so crucial...
...First of all, Ozick is much too generous to those Jews she calls "Utopian idealists...
...If they genuinely believe that policy endangers Israel, they are more than negligent, they contribute to the quite adequate stock of Israeli difficulties in the world...
...But some of its heavy-handed efforts have reaped a whirlwind wherein a number of our intellectuals, from a comfortable distance of 6,000 miles, now prove their fairness by telling Israel where it can safely risk placement of hostile forces...
...Ozick's manhandling of American Friends of Peace Now advances no argument, analyzes no problem, raises no issue...
...Nixon appreciated Israel's military power and its will to survive amid shifting Arab regimes and intense in-tra-Arab feuds and rivalries...
...For there were, and are, alternatives...
...Nevertheless, even Jews holding that agenda clearly in mind continue to vote Democratic in large numbers, unable as yet to relate to the perceived image of the Republican Party...
...The litany of complaints and shortfalls????of President Carter mostly, but of others as wellbears remembering...
...Jews also know that should the PLO dominate a Palestinian state, Israel and Israel alone will face the consequences...
...And yet, the array of important and experienced Jewish leaders cited by Ozick (to be sure, mostly as straw-men and women) have much to say for Carter too...
...Eizen-stat falls well within the definition of the best of deeply-Jewish Jews of American Jewry...
...In the end, to mix Ozick's categories, it is both pragmatic and idealistic (as well as explaining why we have been and remain liberals) to acknowledge that what is good for America is good for Jews-in America and elsewhere...
...You hate mankind but think they are to be improved...
...Her damning reference to "free-floating anti-Semitism in the White House air" is not backed up with facts, only with references to unsubstantiated rumors -e.g., about Hamilton Jordan's alleged anti-Semitic statements, which no one can document...
...At least more Jews have access to him...
...Joel J. Sprayregen Practicing attorney, Chicago Just as war is too important to be left to the generals, Cynthia Ozick has proven that writing about politics is too important to be left to political writers...
...We are discomfited by his inability to inspire confidence, or even respect among Western European leaders...
...She says that just as the PLO "maintains UN observer Terzi in a fancy townhouse," and just as it "supports well-stocked military bases" in Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere (this list, by the way, from a supporter of a country that is slated to receive about 45 per cent of the entire U.S...
...It makes excellent sense, to be sure, if she wants to convey a mood of suspicion and churlishness...
...Carter has surmounted formidable odds before...
...he will encourage it, as Carter has...
...Ozick may find herself perplexed, but only by her own counsels of perfection...
...And a President who finds it easiest to pay off his liberal supporters by packing the Circuit Courts with justices who can be counted on to support quotas will insure the elimination of the one possible barrier to the permanent imposition of racial and ethnic tests for jobs, admissions to universities, and contracts...
...I believe that what the State of Israel needs most is a secure and peaceful life, a context of acceptance within the society of nations and neighbors, a chance for inner development...
...We have been right, I personally think, to prefer Senator Edward M. Kennedy, for whom our issues are more real and who could probably organize a White House better equipped to cope...
...The electoral choice is thought to present no attractive alternative...
...American Jews can and do differentiate: Their commitment to Israel is unwavering, their disagreement with Begin on the West Bank issue is deepening, their objection to the PLO remains in the face of its unwavering refused to accommodate to the fact of the Jewish State...
...Answers to these questions do not come as quickly and uniformly as they once did to Jewish citizens...
...It is transparently clear that the Common Market tailors its Middle Eastern declarations to its hopes of oil supplies and profitable dealings with the Saudis, Kuwaitis and, in due course, the Iranians...
...A second consideration: How quick will an American President be to act militarily to save Israel...
...Among the other services Ozick has contributed in her valuable essay is a renewed challenge to open, candid, painful analysis of Israeli policies by Americans who happen also to be Jews...
...The best is the enemy of the good...
...Sadat comprehends this approach very well...
...and the disadvantages (inviting the Soviets in, selling arms to Arabs, etc...
...Some may still call our love of the American ideal and of Israel dual loyalty...
...Of course, should there be some major development affecting Israel in the months ahead that sharply divides the candidates, then Jews will, properly, give the Israel issue greater consideration in making their choice...
...All this said, from the standpoint of survival, Israel's current policies appear calamitous on several grounds...
...Surely the many Jewish supporters of Governor Reagan and Congressman Anderson have answers they can present, if asked, in a Special Issue of The New Leader...
...Is it just "a Jew-killing movement," as Ozick says...
...In the absence of such a development, 1 think most Jews will once again cast their votes on the basis of their general perceptions of each candidate's character, intelligence and sensitivity to the whole gamut of social and economic problems...
...this short confrontation strained our ability to resupply Israel...
...I do stand by my feeling that making a fuss over a handshake with Ya-sir Arafat is not the best way to use one's intelligence or emotions...
...Nathan Glazer Professor of Sociology, Harvard Graduate School of Education I am one of the American supporters of Peace Now, so it is clear where I disagree with Cynthia Ozick: It is inconceivable to me that Israel will ever have peace with its neighbors if it insists on ruling a million or more Arabs who don't want to be ruled by Israel, or on annexing any substantial part of the territory it acquired in 1967...
...Americans of all origins and persuasions, perhaps a substantial majority of us, sound notes of despair and resigned cynicism...
...Yet to many Jews-who have always considered themselves "liberals" -in early summer Ronald Reagan appears to be a plausible alternative to Jimmy Carter...
...Which candidate better defines America's role in the world, and shows promise of knowing how to play that role...
...But my reason is not Ozick's...
...The key question of the time?But if not Carter, who...
...It is no accident that one of us wrote "God Bless America...
...Since 1967, however, I have not set foot on the West Bank (exclusive of the whole of reunited Jerusalem), because I do not want to go where, at this time, under these circumstances, Jews are not wanted...
...Of all authoritarians, who are the Arabs to complain about Israeli transgressions of human rights...
...We regard Israel's security as a vital interest not only of Jews but of what used to be unashamedly called the free world...
...He attended very few sessions during the year of our work, and his comments concerned mainly the Soviet Union-his field of expertise...
...And peace for a mainly-Jewish State of Israel-one secure within agreed and defensible frontiers, one capable of allowing its citizens a private and prosperous life...
...Joseph Conrad once said to the Utopian H.G...
...If he has not been our first choice, we can remind him, with our support and our pressure, that it is not inconsequential to be our second choice...
...As Ozick points out, we have taken the American ideal at its word and now participate in the democratic process with vigor and purpose to help preserve that quintessential bedrock of Jewish dignity, the State of Israel...
...What kind of Administration, Jews will ask, is more likely to create the type of American society and climate that will reduce Jewish vulnerability...
...It is made to appear as Israel's problem, and not that of the Western democracies...
...If I in fact said, "Everything the Administration has done on the PLO is eminently fair," I should be fired...
...To this day a considerable segment of the Jewish community looks upon voting for a Republican candidate as an irre-demable sin, yet considers a past history of support for the Utopian Stalin as a youthful sowing of wild oats and the sure sign of a generous nature...
...Is it sensible to expect Israel to negotiate with the PLO, whose actions much too frequently match rhetoric that its apologists, on dubious grounds, instruct us to discount...
...Yet I believe Ozick is correct in finding an unprecedented level of fear among American Jews about a second term for this President...
...Hyman Bookbinder Washington Representative, American Jewish Committee I found the Special Issue by Cynthia Ozick so generally intriguing that I am not as upset as I would normally be at her garbling my "quotes...
...The lesson of the 1973 War is that huge quantities of military equipment are used up rapidly in present-day combat...
...But there are other considerations affecting a choice for the Presidency...
...But a President who believes quotas the right course to follow certainly will never curb the bureaucracy...
...Some years ago, a Dickens scholar named John Bayley discovered that Fagin, the satanic Jew of Oliver Twist, was named after a real Fagin, whom the young Charles Dickens had known in the blacking factory where he spent the most wretched period of his life...
...Such things remain hallmarks of the Democrats, under Carter and others, not of the mainstream Republicans...
...That a sizable number of American Jews differ from the position limned by her and yet care as deeply for the security and peace of the State of Israel as she does, simply plays no role in this egregious part of her essay...
...It is Carter's righteousness that frightens the Jews, because it overrides the dictates of the changing politics and personalities in the Middle East...
...We'll know that, given all the failings, there is a core of humane idealism, alive and capable of nurturing, in the Carter Administration, and the entire opposite in Reagan...
...It is not the way of and for us survivors...
...Camp David and all that...
...it cannot attract and retain the vast majority of world Jewry as immigrants, and appears to have lost as much as 10 per cent of its population through emigration (300,000 Israelis are in the U.S...
...But, to state a simple truth, Carter has nothing to do with Connally...
...The final choice in the election booth, as Ozick reminds us, is a limited one...
...But when we wish to speak of "the web of American nuance" we cannot speak of Eizenstat...
...Besides, can the relatively modest efforts of the Palestinians to return to the homeland from which they were driven compare with the eradication by invading aliens of the native Arab society of Palestine, with the thousands in dead Palestinians, with the by now millions of refugees created single-handedly by Israel and by Zionism, or with the enormous apparatus of fund-raising and propaganda activities conducted by supporters of Israel...
...The Zionist Right, lacking any substantial constituency but seeking to prolong its day in the sun, has failed to enlist support for all the policies of the present Israeli government...
...Having said all that, I must also express some reservations about the article...
...Prime Minister Menachem Begin's settlements policy on the whole diminishes Israel's safety in the interests of staking a permanent claim to " Judea" and "Samaria...
...Because he is still in the White House, still closest to the President, and, despite that, not one of those "non-Jewish Jews" Ozick finds it so easy to dismiss (and so difficult to understand...
...But that is not the Jewish way...
...churlishness...
...If Ronald Reagan is clever enough to articulate these distinctions, he will win nearly half the Jewish vote in November and, with it, the election...
...That sort of peace is what Peace Now has in mind...
...American Jews have an uncommonly abiding faith in the vision of the United States as the arsenal of democracy, and thus many of us are especially uneasy over the specter of the self-Finlandization of America...
...The positive aspects of Carter's aims and achievements are substantial...
...With the PLO involved in so many anti-Western revolutionary fronts, American leadership should be concerned about its threat to U.S...
...She jumps from this to that, from here to there, arranging matters in such a way as to suit a larger, essentially other than public, intellectual purpose...
...Asa very active member of the group and a drafter of much of the report, I can state flatly that Zbigniew Brzezinski's influence was small indeed...
...I opposed the Six Day War in a letter to the New York Times that appeared, serendipitously, on June 5, 1967...
...But I have explained why I regard the contrary position as irredentist chauvinism, Jewish messianism carried to the extreme of unalloyed Erasti-anism...
...The Carter Administration and all other interested parties are perfectly aware of the divisions of opinion in the American Jewish community...
...The tangible accomplishments of the Carter Administration-e.g., Camp David, aid and arms for Israel, Soviet Jewish emigration????on their face appear to warrant substantial support from Jewish voters...
...There must be ways to peace...
...Whoever is elected, American Jews had better be prepared for a tough period after the election when the "new realities" (or, if you prefer, "oil") will be used by any Administration to apply unprecedented pressures on Israel...
...If Carter has had too many of the wrong teachers, we must see that he has more right ones...
...It behooves us, from a diversity of motives, to keep on working and caring about the masses of our fellow Americans, fellow Jews, fellow humans everywhere...
...We are not nearly as sure of what's good for the Jews, let alone the country, as we used to be...
...That is why Ozick's incapacity to sustain a single, carefully framed argument, or to pursue to its end a coherent problem of analysis so disappoints...
...Then everyone will know how un-monolithic we have become...
...A last point...
...Jacob Neusner Professor of Religious Studies, and The Ungerleider Distinguished Scholar of Judaic Studies, Brown University Cynthia Ozick presents not an argument but an attitude, not a case but a shrill cry????in all, a mere confused emotion...
...But we care for a society of justice and peace, one not engaged in ruling over a million and more people who want to rule themselves...
...Nathan Perlmutter National Director, Anti-Defamation League What has been on Jewish minds these past couple of years...
...The world will overhear us...
...Confronting that, we'll know what needs to be done...
...Representative, UN Committee on Human Rights Cynthia Ozick tackled a big subject by using perhaps the only method available-A subjective, impressionistic brushstroke that leaves the reader with many points of accord, but not quite satisfied that the field has been covered...
...The only boy who befriended Dickens in that blacking factory was named Fagin, whose kindness he repaid in this most peculiar way...
...Yet her caricature of the position of someone she does not like????leonard Fein of the American Friends of Peace Now-And her playing fast and loose with facts (of which more in a moment) may well give a reader the notion that all Jews adamantly opposed to dealing with the racist murderers of the PLO share her hyperbolic traits of mind, and thus can be ignored...
...It is fair to state that the Brookings group was not in favor of continued Israeli occupation of over one million Arabs for all the obvious reasons, and many more American Jews than Ozick hints at are today profoundly disappointed with Begin's approach to the issue as well as fearful of the near total lack of support worldwide for his settlements policy...
...I think the masses of American Jews see beyond these publicity-grabbing antics...
...Edward Alexander Professor of English, University of Washington Cynthia Ozick's "Carter and the Jews" is one of the very few necessary, indeed indispensible utterances on the subjects which it treats...
...Charitably, however, I can only suppose that the combination of her psychological distress and ignorance, rather than personal vindictiveness, is to blame for what she has said about me...
...But to my mind, all these are American interests-And fortunately very many Americans, aside from the 2.7 per cent who are Jews, agree...
...But her essay is offered as a political tract, an important one at that...
...But in their lust for accommodation to the oil sheiks, or for trade with Arab markets, or out of what in some cases is simply recycled anti-Semitism, some policy-makers refuse to see this and rationalize away every PLO statement affirming its deadly intentions as merely innocuous talk "for home consumption...
...Another distressing aspect of this "blinders on" assessment of the PLO is that its role as brain trust of the "terrorist international" is rarely mentioned...
...A rejoinder by the author of that issue, Cynthia Ozick, will conclude the final section...
...A final Jewish issue—quotas...
...In other words, as Milton Himmelfarb wrote in the "Liberalism" symposium Ozick mentions: "If you don't want someone to dislike you, you don't do him favors...
...As new settlements multiply, hopes of territorial compromise, a la the proposals of the late Yigal Allon and former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, dim...
...There are no divisions in the Palestinian population of 4 million...
...If the "half-filled, half-empty" cliche ever truly fit anything, it is the question of whether the Jews have really made it politically or socially or any way...
...Ozick doesn't want to talk about settlements policy, or conditions that offer possibilities for peace...
...But it did look toward a solution to the West Bank problem via an entity to be bound to Jordan or to become independent at some time-A position publicly advocated by Israel's opposition Labor Party leader, Shimon Peres, just last month...
...I suppose this kind of wordy writing is what novelists do...
...Those Jews of America who do have an agenda attuned to the realities of our times, domestic and foreign, are far more numerous than Ozick would lead one to believe...
...We'll know, still, that Kennedy, or some one of three or four others, would be preferable, but that the choice between Carter (even Billy notwithstanding) and Reagan remains clear...
...And thus we Jews, remembering our history, know that our present adversaries seek not peace nor self-determination nor "legitimate rights" nor territorial compromise but the liquidation of Israel...
...To plant a Jewish community in Hebron is to invite armed confrontation and increase Zahal's security burdens, not diminish them...
...And this aggravates our worries about President Carter's perceptions of evil and his steadfastness in resisting it...
...In her emotional state, she concludes that we do not share her hatreds and fears...
...In a rational universe, who would expect Israel to restore territory acquired in wars provoked by its enemies...
...Other men of blood-eamon de Valera, Jomo Kenyatta, Robert Mugabe, Begin himself-once in power turned themselves into conventional politicans...
...Still, when an author puts quotation marks around a subject's words, they should be precisely those used and in adequate context...
...I also opposed the beginnings of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, regretted the shooting down of the Libyan airliner in February 1973, and advanced arguments against expanding Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria as late as one week before the 1973 War...
...The American experience is unique in Jewish history...
...Rita E. Hauser Former U.S...
...I agree with everything Ozick says about the PLO...
...It may not have peace with its neighbors even if the West Bank and Gaza come under Arab rule again, which means that it may never have peace with its neighbors, but at least the latter course offers some hope...
...And this is true even if we limit ourselves to matters of Jewish interest...
...So passionate was the young Dickens' desire for the station in life to which he felt entitled, that he hated the real Fagin precisely for the virtue he, Dickens, could not bear to accept or recognize in the nightmare world of the blacking factory...
...We err only when we suppose we are the only ones with fears...
...Howard Squadron, who emerges here as a hard-liner, is this year Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations as well as head of the American Jewish Congress...
...Is Yasir Arafat himself "Khomeini in Fidel's clothing...
...additional sections will appear in the coming weeks...
...I agree with Howard Squadron when he says, "The PLO is a band of assassins...
...If it could be established that I actually spoke the pompous words, "Don't look for exploitation of the insignificant," I'd quit right now...
...But she expects American Presidents to share her views, or more specifically, Prime Minister Menachem Begin's, and to impose on themselves a self-denying ordinance never to speak to the PLO or explore the possibilities for peace independently of the positions of Israel's government...
...It is disquieting to suspect that the Kremlin and the Ayatollah Khomeini may have a strong hold on the keys to the White House...
...Her grasp of facts pertaining to the Palestinians, who she seems to believe did not exist in 1939, is pretty poor: In this she is no different from many other polemicists like her...
...American Jews will probably divide their votes among the three candidates more evenly than in the past, but my guess is that the choices will be based less on the Israel issue than is generally assumed...
...I think I was wrong-And would consequently say this is an important factor...
...interests everywhere, let alone to those of the single democratic state in all of the vast Middle East...
...They forget as conveniently as the Common Market countries that Jordan had ample opportunity between 1948-67 to sponsor an independent Palestinian state...
...But these fears cannot be contained in denominational blinders...
...But however that fight may have been resolved by the time this comment (written in late July) appears, it is appropriate now, as it will be then, to eliminate Ozick's question mark and conjure with the answer: "If not Carter (or another Democrat), Reagan...
...In a relatively brief number of pages, all too short, Cynthia Ozick has masterfully outlined Jewish fears and concerns, analyzed our changing political psyche and addressed herself to the Arab-Israeli conflict from a perspective refreshingly rinsed of cliches...
...As an expression of a mood, her article does not pretend to sustain an argument...
...Robert Lekachman Distinguished Professor of Economics, Lehman College, City University With much of Cynthia Ozick's eloquent exploration of the politics and sociology of Jews in America, Israelis in Israel, and Carter in Washington, I agree????especially with her outraged comments upon the double standard routinely applied to Israeli policies...
...the fact that George McGovern would act more slowly than Richard Nixon did not seem vital to Israel's ability to survive an attack...
...I share the views of Israelis and Americans who fear that continued colonial occupation of the West Bank will damage Israel as a democratic community and, as Arab unrest increases, erode civil liberties which are a glory of the society and an indictment of surrounding enemy states...
...Their utopianism, far from being a sign of their great, uncritical and unselfish love of universal humanity, is in fact a sickness bred by hatred, and not only "self-hatred...
...Why Ozick condemns this position as "preposterous naivete, and calls it "Jewish idealism carried to the extreme of self-destructiveness" I do not know...
...a core of real concern, if not always paramount, for the poor and the neglected...
...foreign aid allocation next year), "the PLO flies [me] to its Beirut headquarters...
...Because the age of miracles is scarcely begun, we ought to be carrying on that fight, as Teddy is, until and unless the last vestige of hope is indubitably gone...
...Without doubt, the Palestinians are less than completely entitled to their burning emotions of injustice...
...We no longer believe in the efficacy of prayer, and we see Western governments stooping in appeasement before beasts...
...I cannot reckon the relevance of this component of Ozick's thought in regard to Carter...
...Garbled quotes aside, however, Ozick's piece is a fascinating collection of reports and impressions about Carter and the Jews-indeed, about America and the Jews...
...Jews who are publicly silent tacitly endorse Begin's policy...
...So Ozick has not framed an "American political dilemma" suitable for measured discussion and reasoned analysis...
...Even in her very shrewd analysis of the Andrew Young affair, Ozick is prevented by a sort of vestigial liberalism from going to the heart of black hatred of Jews, the very people who have helped them in their struggle...
...No one pays my way to Beirut, and no one tells me what to do...
...Sometimes she appears to make things up as she goes along (again, as novelists are supposed to do...
...His influence has consistently been exerted to squelch public discussion by American Jews of settlement issues...
...He could scarcely be more misguided...
...I love mankind but know they are not...
...We have our work cut out for us...
...No President will do that...
...While Nixon was never liked by American Jews, who sensed a social and cultural hostility toward them on his part, he was a safe bet when it came to Israel...
...its messianic delusions compete with public policy, resulting in millions being spent for controversial settlements and next to nothing for apartments for the poorest of the poor...
...Carter believes, with George Ball, that the PLO will change its colors because he?again, like Ball-wants it to...
...True, she leaves most of the items hanging rather inconclusively, and her own feelings are ambivalent, but she is simply reflecting the dilemmas and the mixed feelings of the Jewish community generally...
...Of course, the universe is anything but rational...
...That's who...
...Human rights, from the USSR to Argentina to the Philippines...
...And although I have been sharply critical of past flirtations with the PLO, and am outraged by our failure to veto every PLO-inspired resolution at the UN, I do applaud the present Administration policy of no contacts with the PLO until and unless it repudiates terrorism and recognizes Israel...
...Because Jews recognize the danger to America and to Israel (and thus to themselves) posed by the politics of weakness, accommodation and moralism advocated first by George Mc-Govern and practiced in spades by President Carter, they are deeply troubled about casting a Democratic vote this fall...
...With the eye of a satirist she unveils the self-deceptive masquerade of the display-Jews whose beggar-like gratitude for a phone call or a lunch invitation or a first-name salutation from Jimmy Carter moves them to give tacit support to the very President who has done most to divide the Jewish community in order to undermine support for Israel...
...Although Jews are appreciative of Carter's role in the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, they know he came to it reluctantly and with the moral certitude that a Palestinian state is not only required but inevitable...
...Whether Reagan, Anderson or Carter best serves the public interest is something to be decided on far more rational grounds, and through far more thoughtful, less affective processes of reflection than Ozick appears, thus far, to have sustained...
...We know better...
...This, I believe, is the aspiration Jews share with their fellow Americans...
...But I am confident that American Jews will take the time to ponder these questions...
...Now in this "gossamer web" she does not catch one Stuart Eizen-stat, the principal Presidential adviser on domestic affairs...
...Rather than trying to correct her, I shall confine myself to one falsehood that impugns me directly...
...And Ozick blends bleakly...
...A PLO state on Israel's border is not a future soon or frivolously to be contemplated...
...Just as the assault on Jerusalem will unite Jews, it remains possible that resolute leadership could unite America behind the President who takes office next January...
...It also weakens Israel's security and is ridiculously expensive...
...We Jews are always going to be nervous, and rightly so...
...With her unique capacity for truth-telling and for dissenting from the conformities of "dissent," she reminds us that Jewish history is being made by Cynthia Ozick and not by the oleaginous Robert Strauss too busy to speak with her...
...The rest of us, bound by a rule of unanimity or nothing, sought common ground in a period that preceded Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's startling trip to Jerusalem...
...What have Ozick's expansionist and provocative policies accomplished...
...I cannot concur...
...atmosphere...
...Ozick is wrong in her coverage of the famous 1975 Brookings report, Toward Peace in the Middle East...
...From this point of view, Israel's West Bank settlements policy is an obstacle to peace (admittedly, one of the lesser ones...
...We have survived such tea-glass tempests before...
...Or is it that any alternative appears plausible...
...Liberals in remarkable numbers (including, of course, many Jews) flock to an option like the ineffable John Anderson, deemed worthy because he is someone else, because he has learned toward the end of his life to sound a little sensible, because he is so genial, and because he is ready to say that most of the positions he took (as a Congressman yet) through most of his adult years (on matters ranging from Vietnam to Medicaid to Jesus Christ and the First Amendment) were mistakes...
...I believe most American Jews will conclude-in my view, correctly-that the differences among the three candidates on Israel are not sufficient to determine their choice...
...Jewish interests now dictate, sadly, that America's capacity to produce, store and send tanks, planes, artillery, electronic equipment, should remain high...
...I believe this vulnerability will continue and become more serious in the years ahead, no matter who is elected in November...
...Our ancestors would have called it a prayer...
...A clever President would understand these distinctions, which Carter does not, and help shape a solution to the Palestinian problem that is not bottomed on the PLO...
...A word or two about Ozick's analysis of the PLO issue in American politics...
...Woe to us if, as Ozick seems persistently to suggest, we must choose between idealism and "realism...
...So long as this attitude remains, the Jewish community will find itself vulnerable to the appeal of any candidate who-like John Anderson-repeats liberal cliches with the regularity of a steam-engine...
...On almost all of the basic issues in the Israel-Arab dispute, all three take essentially the same positions, and these positions, stated generally, must be considered pro-Israel...
...In a season of skepticism, even that word has acquired a double meaning...
...The seeming disarray of the American Jewish leadership at the moment should not be overestimated...
...She does not mean to...
...How strong will America be militarily in the event of another Arab attack...
...member, Palestine National Council As a rather long description of her state of mind, Cynthia Ozick's monograph is quite informative...
...The coming assault on Jerusalem will unite us...
...And yet, if it were overlooked by well-manned Israeli security outposts-settlements established on genuine security foundations-would it in the long run be a graver menace than the occupied West Bank in incessant and growing turmoil...
...comes in burning italics at the end of the essay, too late even to begin an answer, rather than at the beginning, where it might propose a meaningful agenda...
...If the armories are empty, or the equipment doesn't work, good will in supplying Israel won't matter...
...I have accepted Cynthia Ozick's frame of reference for the purposes of this comment and talked of Jewish interests...
...In her chapter on the subject, she does not say...
...Israel's inflation rate is over 120 per cent...
...The same technique of arranging matters in a pattern of one's own foreordained design must account for the inclusion, in an article about "Carter and the Jews," of an account of Con-nally...
...Many of us have anguished as we found this President unable to counter the Russians, first in Cuba and then in Afghanistan, and accepting national humiliation in Iran...
...I much prefer to describe the new eagerness to assert our self-interest as Jewish survived-intellectual, political, spiritual...
...But who, after all, has forgotten...
...We listened with embarrassment when he explained that the invasion of Afghanistan had caused him to alter "drastically" his perception of Soviet intentions...
...if that is her criterion, she might as well throw a coin, or stay with Carter...
...And why not...
...The late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of our modern sages, admonished us that for Jews "To believe is to remember...
...Edward W. Said Professor of English, Columbia University...
...Finally, as to "if not Carter, who...
...As ever, the PLO is the sticking point...
...The disconnectedness here is due more to the failure of the GOP to alter its style, its tone and its cultural identity-which still smacks heavily of the wasp exclusionary posture-than to its position on the key issues confronting the electorate...
...Even as we glory in the many symbols and actualities of achievement in government and in business and in the arts, hardly a day passes without other signs of Jewish vulnerability...
...For that matter, why on earth should Jews not live as freely in Hebron as in Brooklyn...
...Carter, as the incumbent, has both the advantages of incumbency (Camp David, economic aid, etc...
...A renowned civil rights leader told me last fall that the PLO's blood-curdling threats were "just rhetoric...
...It follows, an account of "Carter and the Jews" ought have no place for a quite separate subject...
...To suggest, however, that I am a paid supporter, or that I receive orders to fly here and there, or that my travel expenses are paid, is a shabby lie...
...Consequently, as Ozick says, she is left with "suspicion...
...He valued strength and fortitude, whereas Carter preaches accommodation as the substance of his approach and prayer as his practical mode...
...Marvin E. Frankel Former Federal District Judge, now a practicing lawyer The unrelieved negativism of Cynthia Ozick's essay echoes sentiments widely prevalent in America today...
...The Ethics of the Fathers instructs us to pray for the government, for without government men would devour each other likes beasts...
...The conjunction of abrasions, including long silence on the Andrew Young affair and the March 1 Security Council vote cum subsequent abstentions, explains these apprehensions in part...
...Will Reagan slide into doctrinaire rhetoric that will erode his plausibility...
...Indeed, the proverbial Jew in the street defined that agenda long before the intellectual community caught up with it...
...We have been able to experiment with notions never before possible in other cultures or societies...
...We all support the PLO...
...It may be hard for a President unsympathetic to quotas to curb the bureaucracy-neither Nixon nor Ford did well...
...The report did not urge negotiations with the PLO, as Ozick states: I and several others would not have signed such a document...
...She has used her sensitive novelist's skills to measure the political pulse of American Jews, and I believe her findings are more accurate than those of the pollsters and pundits...
...For all Ozick's talk of the new-style jap ("Jewish Agenda Pragmatist") and her other dubious and shifting categories, she has little that is interesting and useful to tell us...
...Ozick has only contempt for American Friends of Peace Now, because we are not militant on behalf of the things she cares about...
Vol. 63 • August 1980 • No. 15
