Snt,—An Israeli who has read the Spectator silently for the
past ten years, I have often found your stand on the Middle East wrongheaded and un- realistic. And yet, I am not averse to Israel being coolly evaluated by people who are emotionally un- committed. Nor should any Israeli be.
Desmond Stewart's final statements (April 26) are a case in point. There is in Israel a substantial minority of people who recognise that liberal Jews in the West may ultimately be estranged by our 'ethnocentricity.' I have met many in America and England. And yet, while this estrangement is an abrogation of Israel's purpose, and while these opinions have their historical precedents (viz., the pro-Roman Jews), for as long as we have to choose between illiberalism and survival, we shall choose the former. Zionism will be aggressive for as long as Israel is beleaguered—Zionism, that is, in the sense of the political organisation rather than the national ideal.
I doubt whether we shall look to Cairo and Baghdad, because I doubt whether any completely national movement is ever humane. Perhaps Arabs and Israelis alike will look to that experiment in voluntary empire, the EEC, if and when it achieves its political ideals. On such dreams and wild specu- lations we must base our beliefs in the worthwhile- ness of staying alive, as we are now, in the Near East.
MICHAEL ADLER
Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh 13. Pa., USA
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