The Arabs and Bonn
The States of the Arab League claim that they are still technically at war with Israel, and that therefore any material help given to Israel is an unfriendly act to themselves. This may be true, but the vehemence of their opposition to the reparations which Western Germany proposes to pay to Israel is unlikely to win them any sympathy. The Federal Govern- ment has made it clear that the 3,000m. marks which it has agreed to pay represents an act of restitution which cannot be evaded. All parties in the Bundestag are agreed in this. Most of the reparations (2,500m. marks) are being paid collectively to Israel, because Israel is in a real sense the heir of the millions of Jews the Nazis killed. Reparation is to take the form of goods which Israel needs, but these goods will not be of any direct military importance. About all this there is no dispute, and in fact the Arab States themselves remained silent during the protracted negotiations between the Federal Republic and Israel, only voicing their protest when agreement was reached. Now they are threatening to back up their protests by an economic boycott of German goods, which will probably harm them as much as the Germans. However natural Arab fears of future Israeli expansion may be, they are choosing a singularly tactless way of expressing them. By sending a delegation to Bonn to urge that the agreement should not be ratified they have only irritated German opinion. If a Western country sent a delegation to an Arab State to try to prevent the Government there from following a course of action to which it was pledged the cries of "Western imperialist interference" would be loud and long.
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