Arabs and Jews
Sir: "I would suggest that the Continual exchange of recriminations serves no useful purpose ", Writes Sir John Glubb (July 15) after failing to take his own advice. As I understand it, what happened at Kfar Etzion in 1948 was that the local Arab villagers started a massacre of the inhabitants which was stopped by the intervention of the Arab Legion. One of the most disgusting of Mr Israel Amos's remarks (July 15) is that about South African Jews "being notorious, even in Israel, for treating both Arabs and Oriental Jews in the same way that coloured people are treated in their country of origin." Leaving aside the fact that in South Africa it is the Jewish intellectuals who are amongst the leading opponents of apartheid, in the several years that I spent in Israel, I knew many South African Jews and virtually all of them were characterised by a virulent hatred of apartheid.
A fact that is forgotten concerning the Middle East conflict is that all conflicts create refugees. Since the Second World War there have been some 40,000,000 such people. They have not returned to their original homes, but have settled in their new countries. In the case of the Middle East, Israel took in many hundreds of thousands of Jewish .refugees from the Arab states, in other words there has been an exchange of population. The unique feature in this region has been the action of the Arabs in shutting up their own kith and kin in camps to use as political pawns. This has happened nowhere else in the world.
It is useless as Sir John Glubb has pointed out to go into recriminations. The vital thing is to look for a constructive solution. Israel has offered full compensation and help with rehabilitation for the Arab refugees as part of a peace treaty. Israel recognises the right of national self-determination of the Arabs; it is now up to the Arabs to reciprocate.
David M. Jacobs 22a Thurloe Street, London SW7
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