ARAB UNITY AND ISRAEL
SIR,—Even Lord Radcliffe, in his benign comments in the Vassall report, does not maintain that tautology, blatant fantasy or intellectual dishonesty are a justifiable part of journalism's contribution to society. Desmond Stewart's article 'Sober Arab Union' offends on all these points.
(i) What, for instance, does Stewart mean when he talks about reducing 'the present expanded Israel?' What Arab has ever claimed that Israel is `expanded' (and if so. what has it expanded from); and what Arab ever claims that his aim is not to destroy Israel but merely to reduce her boundaries?
(ii) Does Stewart really expect us to believe (why does he hide his sources behind the discredited 'certain informants?') that the 'new wave in Israel'— whatever that is—tiring of the 'ethnocentric ghetto' which is Israel, is now beginning to look to Cairo and Baghdad?
(iii) I was also deeply interested to learn that President Nasser is a humane man. If this descrip- tion. fits a man whose radio stations blare out hatred and strife day after day, a man who allows no legitimate political opposition nor a dissident press, a man whose fedayeen raiders infiltrated into Israel to murder little children at school, then my dictionaries must be out-of-,date, pre-Newspeak in other words.
(iv) Finally, is it really all that `absurd' an hypo- thesis that Israel's armed forces should be as strong as those of the combined Arab States in the light of the fact that every Arab State proclaims its intention of destroying Israel and that the only conceivable target of the combined Arab forces would be Israel? MICHAEL SELZER Balliol College, Oxford
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