Israeli Coalition and Arafat
For once, before offering such generous but the unasked for advice, put yourselves in Israel’s place (editorial, “Israel: Starting Over,” Dec. 21). The tiny country is surrounded by vicious enemies, who not only hate the Jewish state (as well as other non-Arab entities in the area: the Kurds, the Copts, the Armenians, etc.) but also each other.
Who has Israel to talk to? The cowardly Jordanian monarch? Egypt, a country rocked by pro-Khomeini unrest, whose population has never accepted peace with Israel, and whose armed forces are being mindlessly and continuously strengthened by Western states? Iraq, Syria, Lybia--all of whom control the Palestine Liberation Organization?
Why is it that The Times does not urge totalitarian Arab states and terrorist organizations to put down their weapons, and stop all provocations? And what of “an international peace meeting?”
Who will decide the future of Israel, who will guarantee its existence?
The Soviet Union, an archaic colonial empire, whose unity is cemented by tanks and the blood of martyred White Russians, Ukrainians, Afghans, and the Balts? The United States, whose loyalty to its allies can be eloquently witnessed to by the late Shah of Iran, the betrayed anti-Castro Cubans of the Bay of Pigs, the Contras, the South Vietnamese? Or maybe pro-Arab France and Greece will guarantee Israel’s right to exist?
Israel has no choice but to forge a strong coalition, maintain a unity government, strengthen itself, and realize that in this world nobody can guarantee anything. The best Israel will get, if it depends on such generous advice, as The Times has given it, is a motion picture about its destruction. We will all cry and wonder why the second Holocaust was allowed.
If the Israeli government decides to build Jewish settlements in the historic Jewish land, then it must do so--without waiting for advice from a slanted and biased American media, whose news reporters eagerly write “Israeli-occupied West Bank,” but never write “Soviet-occupied Estonia,” or “provocative Arab plans for the destruction of Israel.”
PAUL STONEHILL
Los Angeles