Israeli politicians show an enormous interest in peace, but practically no interest at all in a just peace. The word just is conspicuously absent form their vocabulary. Why is that?

A just peace means concessions, compromises, something that is totally incompatible with what Shamir has in mind. It also means to admit, at least implicitly, that an injustice has been committed toward the Palestinians, something that the Israelis are not prepare to do.

Max Nordau, a prominent Zionist leader, upon hearing for the first time that there was an Arab population in Palestine, had this to say: "I did not know that, but then we are committing an injustice." Yes indeed. A terrible injustice that the Father of Zionism, Herzl, committed by propagating the Mother of all lies when he reduced the Jewish question to essentially a transportation problem of "moving people without a home into a land without a people." Palestine, however, was not a land without people even in Herzl's time.

Finally, a just peace necessarily means to involve the United Nations, something Shamir rejects for obvious reasons. First, the still unimplemented U.N. Security Council resolution 242 of 1967 laid down a basic principle: "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." How can Israel accept such a principle when it has faithfully been doing the exact opposite throughout its history? Second, what Israel fears most is international justice, and no wonder, since it got a taste of it over the Taba incident when an international panel ruled against it in 1989. I hope one day Israel will realize that the best guarantee for peace, if it wants it, of course, is justice and not territory.

June 11, 1991

Israel wants peace, but not a just peace, according to Medhat Credi [39]. It would seem that justice is in the eye of the beholder.

You might say that Israel, having beaten back five or six wars launched by Arabs bent upon her extermination, would now be well-served by a just peace. Such a just peace might include the return of the Sinai to Israel, the cession of Syria up to a point 30 miles from Damascus to Israel, and the yielding of all of Trans-Jordan to Israel. After all, throughout history, victors in wars have been rewarded with territory, and nations that have won defensive wars have never been asked to yield their gains.

However, Israel, under pressures that have never been exerted upon any other country, is willing to accept far less. Medhat Credi and the Palestinians he champions should get real. Do they want to deal with the possible and put an end to the Middle East Hundred Years War or do they want to go on carping and sniping --and killing?

Arnold S. Greenspan, Briarcliff Manor

June 21, 1991

What Arnold Greenspan has said in his letter of June 21 [40], supposedly about the Palestinians, is pretty much what Israel's supporters keep repeating like a broken record when they run out of arguments.

First, they ignore the Palestinians and shift their attention to the Arab states, like Shamir who is eager to talk to the Saudis but can't find a Palestinian to talk to in the occupied territories; second, they promote the law of the jungle that prevailed when there was no international law, no International Court of Justice or no United Nations. "After all," said Mr. Greenspan, "throughout history, victors have been rewarded with territory"; third, they falsify history. Mr. Greenspan wants us to believe that Israel won "defensive wars" as if it was the Palestinians who came from Eastern Europe and attacked the Ben-Gurions, the Begins, the Shamirs, etc., and not the other way around.

July 8, 1991

In a recent letter [39], Medhat Credi berated the government of Israel for being opposed to both a just peace and making concessions for peace. To validate his accusation, he recounted an anti-Zionist lie that Max Nordau, poet and novelist, and0 Theodore Herzl, pivotal leader of Zionism --both men cherished in the Zionist movement-- were so benighted as to be unaware that Palestinian Arabs were living in Palestine.

The following paragraph appears in a booklet on Palestinian history, 1880-1946, (American Academic Association for Peace in the Middle East, 1973):

"There is the old canard that it came as a surprise to the Zionists of Herzl's time when they learned that there were any people already inhabiting their Promised Land, which they had conceived as entirely empty of human beings. And there is the equally absurd legend that the Zionists, at the turn of the century, planned to drive out the existing inhabitants of the land. It is at least clear that these stories cannot both be true. And we have in Herzl's novel, Old-New Land, his projected vision of mutually profitable relations between the two peoples, Jews and Palestinians, after settlement on the land by the Jews."

Israel-bashing material must have been scarce if Mr. Credi had to resort to an accusation known to be a lie for at least 20 years. Now there is available to him a mint-fresh concoction on current affairs.

This new lie originates in Tunis, courtesy of the PLO. In a broadcast from PLO headquarters, the commentator states that Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, in a U.S. interview, told a reporter of the Israel Army Radio, "The war that our men fought in the region against Saddam Hussein was fought for Israel. Our men fought to destroy Israel's main enemy in the region."

The U.S.-based reporter for the Israel Army Radio has said that neither she nor any representative of her station has ever spoken to Gen. Schwarzkopf. A spokesman for the U.S. commander has said that such an interview never took place.

Edith Parker, Irvington

July 1, 1991

Edith Parker's quotation [43] from a booklet on Palestinian history by the American Academic Association for Peace in the Middle East is irrelevant. What is important are the views of the Zionists themselves. And if she thinks that these quotations are scarce she is mistaken.

Ms. Parker's quotation raises two issues. First, that the Zionists of Herzl's time knew that there were people in Palestine. Of course, they knew, but "for obvious psychological reasons did not want to see the truth" as Yeshayahu Leibowitz put it. And after "ignorance" turned into full knowledge they resorted to another subterfuge: denying the existence of the Palestinians as a people. "What are the Palestinians? When I came here there were only 250,000 non-Jews, mainly Arabs and Bedouins" (Levi Eshkol); "How can we return the occupied territories? there is nobody to return them to" (Golda Meir); "There was never a 'Palestinian Arab' nation. ...No such entity as Palestine existed. ...Its lands were suitable object for plunder and destruction (Samuel Katz).

The second issue is that the Zionists did not plan to drive out the "inhabitants of the land," as Ms. Parker put it, carefully avoiding to say Palestinians of Palestine. They sure did. "In our country there is room only for Jews. We will say to the Arabs: 'Move over'; if they are not in agreement, if they resist, we will push them by force" (Ben-Gurion); "There is no room for both peoples in this country. ...The only solution is Eretz Israel, or western Eretz Israel, without the Arabs" (Joseph Weitz); "Yigal Allon asked Ben-Gurion what was to be done with the civilian population. Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture of 'drive them out'" (Yitzhak Rabin); "We looked for means which would not obligate us to use force in order to get the tens of thousands of sulky Arabs who remained in Galilee to flee" (Yigal Allon); "The Jews forced the Arabs to leave cities and villages which they did not want to leave of their own free will. Some of them were driven out by force of arms; others, were made to leave by deceit, lying and false promises" (Nathan Chofshi).

Is Ms. Parker aware of these quotations? I don't know, I do know, however, that many Zionists are, but "for obvious reasons" they do not want to see the truth.

July 15, 1991