SIR,—May I add a note to clarify my meaning since
Miss Elias, with whose views I have great sympathy, seems to be blurring the issue. I share her concern for the loss of mystique in Zionism and the pre- occupation with purely political development. It may well result in a loss of idealism, of direction, of unity, so that Israel becomes another ghetto State rent by squabbling factions. This may be the cost Mr. Ben-Gurion and his successors will have to pay for jettisoning spiritual luggage in the interest of political expediency. Already there is a dangerous leakage from the kibbutzim back to the towns, and the purely political interpretation of Zionism, against which Ahad Ha'am warned us, is causing Israel to be turned to only as a funk-hole for the persecuted and the financier on the run. (In fact, a favourite joke in Israel has been to greet new immigrants with the
question : 'Are .you here from choice or from
Germany?') I agree with Miss Elias (and so would Mr. Ben-Gurion) that a nation must find its own soul independently by those people who live in the country, and not by Dr. Goldmann and his boards of directors, who seek to run the life of a people as though it were a business to be administered by absentee directors in board rooms in London and New York. I deplore not merely hostility to the Arabs but also the condescension in the kindness which so many Jews show, the self-conscious slumming with which officials dip their fingers into the rice stew at tribal dinners, the attitude of superiority to a backward people.
But Miss Elias herself points out that many Israelis and Jews everywhere oppose this snobbery and hostility. And she must admit that Nasser and his colleagues have been intransigent and evasive in their approach to negotiations. Despite his criticisms, Nathan Altman remains a Zionist, and no problem can be settled before the political problem. Like many other Jews, I look forward to an Arab-Israeli federa- tion in the Middle East, a Semitic union such as there was in the Middle Ages, in which Israel would be able to utilise her economic and social advantages to become the workshop of the Middle East for the benefit of the Arab countries as for herself. But to achieve this Nasser will have to climb down and Israel to be preserved from the Russian bear which has taken the place of the Assyrian wolf. Of course we want Arab-Jewish unity but it is not as easy to talk of it in practical terms now as it was in the early days of the Balfour Declaration. Certainly Ahad Ha'am pleaded for toleration. But he also asserted that he would not live in Palestine under an Arab majority. Of course Einstein pleaded for toleration but he explicitly supported Zionism and he wrote in The World As I See It: 'The first step in that direction [i.e. toward mutual toleration and respect] is that we Jews should once more become, conscious of our existence as a nationality and regain the self-
respect that is necessary to a healthy existence ... It is not enough for us to play a part as individuals in the cultural development of the human race, we must also tackle tasks which only nations as a whole can perform. Only so can the Jews regain social health ... Today history has assigned to us the task of taking an active part in the economic and cultural recon- struction of our native land'.—Yours faithfully, 3 Roland Gardens, SW7
HENRY ADLER
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