ISRAELI ‘SPY’

Concluding his analysis of “Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s Intelligence Community” (July 29), Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi snipes, “This book should be taken with an industrial-strength grain of salt.”

My hunch, after reading his every word, is that the same charge can and should be leveled at Prof. Beit-Hallahmi. From beginning to end, he very obviously is anti-Israel, completely lacking in any sort of objectivity. Is this because he’s really as pro-Palestinian as he sounds, or because he has authored a book of his own on the same subject (“The Israeli Connection: Who Arms Israel, and Why?”) and can’t bear to say a good word for a competitor?

Are we really supposed to be shocked in a bloodthirsty/cutthroat world that “For 21 years, several thousand informers ranged across Palestinian society, from factory workers to intellectuals”? Has the professor ever picked up a history book, or a copy of the Old/New Testaments? Does he know of any nation since time began that hasn’t employed such tactics? Is Israel--ringed by hostile nations--supposed to survive without them? (To paraphrase the Passover question, “Wherefore is this nation different than all other nations?”)

Is Israel to be castigated for “giving Idi Amin and Mobutu Sese Seko their paratroopers’ wings in the 1960s”? What were the faces and behavior these two men were displaying to the world at the time of those ceremonies? Wasn’t this before they turned into power-mad dictators, blood-bathing their own people? Let’s remember that David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, to name only two, were mere human beings, not clairvoyants.

“And Israel also had connections with Manuel Noriega, Ferdinand Marcos, Samuel Doe, Alfredo Stroessner, Ian Smith, John Vorster, Anastasio Somoza, Augusto Pinochet and the Duvalier family.” To alter the Passover question still further, “Why is this nation supposed to be different than all other nations?” Seems to me that Ronald Reagan protected/championed Marcos to the very last instant, that he and all his predecessors back to Kennedy and Johnson--to one degree or another--backed every one of those other regimes on the list. That indictment, incidentally, also applies to every other government in the Western world; no one was/is immune.

Lastly, Beit-Hallahmi tells us, “In mentioning the Sabra and Shatila massacres of Palestinians in 1982, authors Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman state that the Christian Falangist militia leaders ‘sent their gunmen on a vengeance mission into the Palestinian refugee camps.’ What they don’t say is that the Falangist units actually were ordered into the camps by the Israel Defense Forces, when it was clear that no Palestinian combatants were left there.”

Over the past eight years, I’ve read so many conflicting reports as to who was and was not responsible for the horrible tragedies of Sabra/Shatila that I’d long since resigned myself to the prospect of dying without ever knowing the real truth. What incontrovertible proof can Beit-Hallahmi offer to back up his position? If he can enlighten me on this point--beyond the well-known shadow of a doubt--I’ll be extremely grateful.

DAVID R. MOSS

LOS ANGELES