Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 1987, page 11

180 Degrees

"180 Degrees" appears every Friday in Florida Today, parent publication of USA Today. Whenever space permits, the Washington Report will present a debate between George Thompson, a retired US Foreign Service Officer, and Dan Warrensford, an engineer, on some aspect of Middle East Affairs.

Like so many of your ill-informed compatriots, Dan, you don't understand festering tragedy of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Surprisingly, that is not true of a growing number of erudite American Jews:

Arthur Hertzberg, past president of the American Jewish Congress from 1972-1978, is one such thoughtful observer.

In the May 28th edition of the New York Review of Books, he writes: "It would, I now believe, have been better had the Six-Day War ended in a draw and not in a series of stunning victories."

He cites a July 1967 warning from David Ben-Gurion, canny founder of Israel's Labor Party.

"Ben-Gurion insisted that all of the territories (except Jerusalem) that had been captured had to be given back very quickly, for holding on to them would distort, and might ultimately destroy, the Jewish state."

The result, Hertzberg contends, is that, "It gave the Jews, for the first time, a sense of power."

And what that power has wrought.

Hertzberg says, "Israel has now become an American dependency, because it cannot maintain both its standard of living and the state of war without at least $3 billion of American aid annually. Israel's society has been altered, and distorted, by its being an occupying power..." and "A more frenetic exercise of power cannot solve these mounting problems. Israel has no intelligent choice but to pursue peace."

His trenchant words conclude: "the tragedy of the last 20 years is that the new Jewish power has not been more open to the counsels of moderation."

We should grieve for Israel, Dan. It won the war, but it's having a helluva' time finding the peace.

A little bit of power—like a little bit of knowledge—is indeed a dangerous thing.

—George Thompson

Repetition is the mark of a small mind, George. Yet you revel, erroneously, in repeatedly vilifying those who accept the rectitude of Israel's geopolitics. Stop being so utterly silly. I suppose it's natural that you should rely on the, er, wisdom and credibility of, ahem, sages associated with Israel's Labor party; birds of a statist feather flock together.

Look, we might be able to agree that the initial insinuation of the state of Israel in the middle of 20 million-or-so hostile Arabs was a trifle mind-boggling. In fact, that establishment was tantamount to General George Armstrong Custer's 1876 attempt to surround 4000 Indians with 600 cavalrymen.

Of course, with a modicum of US support Israel has avoided the Mid-East equivalent of Custer's Last Stand. Bully for them.

But back to the patronizing, pecksniffian solicitude expressed by you and your left-wing Israeli allies.

So what if the Jews have a "sense of power?" It's too bad they didn't have a sense of power when the European precursors of Arafat, Nidal, Assad ad nauseam were running amok; obscenities like Auschwitz and Stalin's pogroms might not have happened. And why in the name of sanity should Israel give up captured territory? If the Arabs want to recover land they lost in poorly-conceived wars, they should buy it—if Israel wishes to sell.

Regarding Hertzberg's call for Israeli "moderation" in the face of several Arab states who are still in states of declared war against the Jews, I hasten to remind our gentle readers of Jewish moderation in the late 1930's; would you counsel a replay?

The ultimate solution to the Middle East dilemma is to make Israel America's 51st state. Then, at least, you and your fellow Arafat-axis apologists couldn't legitimately gripe about US assistance for Israeli defense. And the Israeli congressional delegation would not appease our enemies—as many currently do. That'd be nice.

—Dan Warrensford