Israel Chooses the Lesser of Two Evils

To The Editors of The Crimson:

When John Larew characterizes Americans who support Israel "because it is a Jewish state" as "Zealots," I am reminded of Golda Meir's sharp reply to a critic who asked her if Israel suffered from a "Masada complex" of last-stand heroism. (Masada was the last stand of Palestinian Jews against the Romans in A.D. 73.) "Yes, we do have a Masada complex," she replied. "We have a Masada complex, we have a Chmielnicki [where 100,000 Jews were murdered by Cossacks] complex, we have a Dachau complex."

These were some of the most powerful motivations behind the creation of the state of Israel, and we are not "Zealots" if we admit it. The fact is that Israel's existence is important for more than ideological reasons. Its fall would involve more than a change in sovereignty, as in a Falklands/Malvinas farce.

In 1941, Hajj Amin, the Mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the early Palestinian national movement, received an affirmative reply to his request from Hitler for future support in solving the Jewish question "in Palestine and other Arab countries [sic]...in the same way as the Jewish question in the Axis lands is being solved."

In more recent decades, the Jordanian Jerusalem Times printed an open letter to Adolf Eichmann, asking him to find solace in the fact that his trial would "one day culminate in the liquidation of the remaining six million to avenge your blood."

Two years ago, Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai wrote that he was greeted with surprise by Palestinian representatives in Europe when he said that it was difficult for him to engage in meaningful dialogue while demonstrators in Jerusalem chanted "Hitler was right!" in Arabic.

My point in mentioning these things is not to claim that supporters of Palestinian nationalism are anti-Semitic, nor is it, as Larew suggests, to show how much "more morally palatable Israel is than the neighboring Arab states." I agree with him that this fact is irrelevant.

What is relevant is that Israeli policy makers are often faced with a choice between evils. They have felt that the evils of a military occupation (and it is necessarily evil, despite everything Israel has done to soften it) are preferable to the evils of what a high-ranking member of the PLO introduced within tht past decade as a "policy of stages" toward the destruction of Israel.

Has the PLO changed? Possibly. But their saying so is not enough to convince me. Not while the killing goes on. Not while demonstrators at Harvard last week who described themselves as PLO supporters could chant "Israel no, Palestine Yes!" until one student prevailed upon them to find a less inflammatory (perhaps less honest) slogan.

Professor of Law Alan Dershowitz is not a "Zealot," but a realist when he says that curtailment of civil rights on the West Bank was unavoidable. That is what military occupation means. It was thrust on Israel in 1967, confirmed in 1973 by another all-out Arab war that nearly destroyed Israel and has been confirmed ever since.

Criticism is necessary to a healthy democracy, but many of us who also defend Israel have agonized over and considered the issues at stake at least as deeply as Larew. His psycholanalysis of our opinions is false and offensive.

Israel's democracy is precious to me. That democracy is still vital and strong, though it faces challenges in recent years perhaps greater than other democracies have recently had to face.

Criticism, where genuinely motivated, should be welcomed. But I will not lambast Israel because I don't think it is deserved. Nor does the necessity of its existence as a Jewish state embarass me. The defense of a nation that one admits is imperfect but basically moral should be intelligible to most Americans. Donald Seeman '89-'90