The Jerusalem question
Sir: May I thank you for the long and interesting review of my book Whose Jerusalem? which you published on 2° March, by Christopher Walker, and be allowed to comment on one or two points which he raised? He took particular exception to the fact that my present job as director of 'Brita,"5 and Israel' was not mentioned on the fly-leaf for, as he puts it, 'obvious reasons . In fact, there is nothing 'obvious' about it;1 sent all career details to the publishers' Frederick Muller. They cut them down t° bare 100 words, which may have been 0' little. They also omitted my photograph, for which I commend them. But they may have, felt that a 'declaration of interest' Was 11°' needed in a book whose foreword 05 written by the Jewish Mayor of Jerusalorl. Mr Walker must think readers of the Spectator are singularly ingenious. ,., Mr Walker states that my book is 11'' unmistakeable PR plug for Israel's stewardship' of Jerusalem. Well, I have criti,cised the Israelis for the 'Jerusalem 1-awci for the massive expropriation of Arab luf between Neve Yaacov and French Hill, for the way in which a take-over of the Eas',. Jerusalem Electric Corporation attempted, for Prime Minister Begirici fatuous announcement of the propose move of his office into an Arab quarter of the city, and for much besides. Any b°° f which does this is indeed a strange 'PR plug'; I suggest it would earn a " officer instant dismissal. I find it significant that Mr Walker shout:i proclaim his belief in James Cameronsn dictim that there will never be more °lad 'morbid coexistence' between Jew 30, Arab in Jerusalem, at least in our time ' For Mr Walker, when I last saw n,nm.i. seemed to have at least 40 years ahead him and I regard such dismal pessimism as unhelpful. I wish he could write of the hopeful things which happen in Israel — the efforts to bring Arabs and Jews together, the astonishing progress in education, imedicine, social affairs— at least occasionally, or perhaps just once. ,,,Sadly, at the end of his review, Mr Walker returns to an old and misleading myth, that Jerusalem is holy to `Jews, Moslems and Christians alike'. It is not: To Jews g. it is central to their very being, in a m'5, secular and more personalised spiritual sense. For Christians and Mos lems, interest in Jerusalem is not original, but derived, and to the latter it has never been a secular capital or a place of pilgrim age. This This was what my book was all about. Terence Prittie
126 Baker Street, London W1
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