Dear Editor
Dear Editor 'Carter and the Jews' All writers should be inspired to write "without any pretense of personal detachment," as you put it, if that is the clue to Cynthia Ozick's magic!...
...Bethesda, Md...
...The Bolsheviks were not a significant factor...
...Asserting the primacy of Israeli aspirations over American interests is detrimental to both nations...
...Ozick may be correct in her conclusion, she is wrong in her history...
...Carl Landauer The tone and temper of Cynthia Ozick's essay illustrate clearly why Israel is living in a friendless and dangerous world...
...Silver Spring, Md...
...Americans who subordinate American national interest to ethnic affiliation should consider the catastrophic prospects of their parochialism...
...others managed to flee...
...The real danger for Israel, therefore, is not the recognition of the PLO by other nations, negotiations between the U.S...
...Congratulations on your Special Issue consisting of her superb article, "Carter and the Jews: An American Political Dilemma" (NL, June 30...
...By mid-November of 1917, the Bolsheviks had forced Kerensky out...
...No matter how extensive its support from the rest of the Arab world, the PLO cannot wage a successful war against Israel without the Egyptians...
...There is hardly a norm of international relations that Israel has not violated while transforming the historic Jewish siege mentality into a Jewish Jihad, and in the process it has exhibited a rare genius for aggravating the whole human family...
...Berkeley, Calif...
...it is the overthrow of President Anwar Sadat by a successor who would break the peace...
...Nothing would improve Sadat's position more than Israeli concessions which assured the West Bank Arabs of real self government...
...To illustrate, she claims that "while the Bolshevik Revolution against the Jew-hating Tsars seemed a good thing, and Communism promised acceptance for all peoples, it is just as bad for Jews in Russia today as it was under the Tsars...
...What can Israel do to prevent such a calamity...
...Harry V. Lerner...
...Yet even assuming for argument's sake that the PLO really means what it says, and that there is no way to change its annihilation program by negotiations, these threats must remain empty as long as the peace between Israel and Egypt holds...
...If our policy alienates Saudi Arabia sufficiently, Soviet influence may become paramount in the Mideast...
...It cannot be justified by a sort of affirmative action intended to redress past injustices...
...Israel's security is ultimately dependent on American support...
...Israel has sought security by military conquests for over 30 years, yet it remains more insecure than ever...
...The greatest danger to Sadat results from the traitor label other Arabs can attach to him for having made a separate peace with Israel without sufficiently safeguarding the interests of the Palestinians...
...This is why Prime Minister Menachem Be-gin's policy, and the attitude of American Jews who support that policy, are absolutely misconceived...
...It is Israel all the way, and whoever disagrees is anti-Semitic...
...It was not the Bolsheviks but Alexander Kerensky and his coalition, including the Jews, that overthrew the Tsars...
...Imperialism is imperialism, however consecrated by religious absolutism...
...Only the recognition that Palestinians also are entitled to a homeland can bring security to Israel...
...Miss Ozick's passionate espousal of Israel's cause is unencumbered by self-doubt, tentative-ness or the "charity" which "distinguishes the Jews of America...
...Martin H. Miller Cynthia Ozick takes the PLO's threats to wipe out Israel at face value...
...Many Jews were executed after the Bolsheviks took power...
...One who fled, Martov (Julius Zederbaum), had supported a move at a 1903 conference to organize the Jews into a Bund, a Yiddish-speaking organization...
...Her illustration is historically false...
...They subsequently secured only 25 per cent of the seats in the Constituent Assembly, the first and only freely elected Parliament, which they then forcibly dissolved in January 1918...
...There is no military solution for Israel because the more Arab areas it acquires, the larger its hostile population...
...and the PLO, or even the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank...
...Lenin and Trotsky insisted, however, that Jews were not a nationality, that they should speak Russian, and that they should be organized not as Jews but as Russians-and the views of the two men prevailed at the conference...
...Mineola, N. Y. Alan L. Benosky Cynthia Ozick concludes that it is a fallacy for Jews to work for "a virtuous goal, a good-in-itself," in the expectation that the result will be "good for the Jews...
...Lenin was in Switzerland when the Tsar was toppled, resigned to indefinite exile, and Trotsky was abroad writing that the Bolsheviks were doomed to 1,000 years in the political wilderness...
Vol. 63 • September 1980 • No. 17
