To the Editor:

Ruth R. Wisse’s “ ‘Peace Now’ & American Jews” [August] is a breath of fresh air. . . . Mrs. Wisse should be commended for the remarkable restraint with which she marshals the outrageous facts. But while this makes her article effective, I am dismayed, dumbfounded, and deeply worried about the absence of rage among the Jewish public in general. Though the “Peace Now” advocates in this country include many well-meaning supporters of Israel as well as others who may be labeled with that expressive Spanish equivalent for fellow travelers, tontos utiles (useful fools), there are also some self-hating and Israel-hating Jews among them who in any other context would be called Quislings. Yet there has been no outcry. Not when “Peace Now” charter member Shulamit Koenig said, speaking at Oberlin College, that “to ask the PLO to repudiate [its] covenant is no less absurd than to ask Begin to dismiss the Bible.” . . . To take another example: in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, a woman told me, with tears in her eyes, that she had gone to a discussion on the Middle East at a nearby university where Jewish and Arab speakers were to participate. “The Jews,” she said, “were more vitriolically anti-Israel than the Arabs.”

Since I travel the length and breadth of this country and meet Jewish audiences, I know how thin a slice of Jewish public opinion the “dissenters” represent. But people are cowed by the array of academics, Nobel laureates, rabbis, and “leaders” who are astutely manipulated into signing what they naively believe to be “calls to conscience” which are, invariably, publicized as political polemics against the government of Israel. . . .

What are the risks run by these “dissenting” American Jews? Leonard Fein could carry his campaign to unseat Prime Minister Begin into the lion’s den and say in Tel Aviv that Begin had “lied” to his people and that he was a “disaster.” What happened to Fein? Was he lynched, mobbed, arrested, expelled? Nothing happened, of course. On the contrary, far from becoming a martyr, he managed to receive a great deal of publicity as the guru of the “dissenters.” . . .

There is an added irony. This “dissent” is aimed at a government abroad. Yet at home it fits neatly into the administration’s policy aims. On repeated occasions, but as early as 1977, President Carter, when asked what would happen if the Israeli position were different from his, answered: “I would try to marshal . . . the constituencies that might exist in our own country” (Time, August 8, 1977). It is obvious what constituencies the President had in mind. The pressure of a packaged “American Jewish public opinion,” which the American Friends of “Peace Now” bring to bear not only on the government of Israel but also on American public opinion, fits exactly into this presidential prescription. What then is this so-called “dissent” if not subservience to current American policy aims that are fashioned more out of concern for Arab oil than for Israel’s survival?

As a matter of fact, “Peace Now” would settle for even less than Washington. While the American formula for a comprehensive peace, still pays lip-service to a secure Israel behind defensible borders, a recent pamphlet distributed by “Peace Now” in the United States notes that the term “‘defensible borders’ is meaningless,” since “peace can secure borders better than any borders can secure peace.” With the exception of the Communists, no Israeli party has come out in favor of surrendering East Jerusalem, yet the pamphlet is mum on this subject. But it reiterates that “religious and historical considerations should play no role” in the peace negotiations. In other words, Jerusalem is expendable, too. . . .

If the present agitation in favor of “Peace Now” in this country has any other meaning but sending signals to the White House and the State Department, . . . it can only be to abbreviate the life-span of the present Israeli government and to accelerate the return of Labor to power—although, ironically, a Labor government would not satisfy the demands of “Peace Now” either. This is, of course, an open interference of American citizens in Israeli domestic affairs that goes beyond the controversy about the Diaspora’s right to criticize Israeli policies. . . .

Benno Weiser Varon
Brookline, Massachusetts

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To the Editor:

Ruth R. Wisse has placed us all in her debt, not only for the luminous intelligence and surgical precision with which she has cut through the nauseating cant of the American Friends of “Peace Now,” but also for proving that even among Jewish academics it is possible to find an example of the courage to dissent from what Lionel Trilling used to call “the conformity of dissent.” This conformity exists because to be regarded in academic circles today as a supporter of Israel—without any ifs, ands, or buts—is tantamount to entering the faculty lounge diffusing an unpleasant odor. And what are the terrors of the PLO when weighed against the terrors of academic ostracism?

Mrs. Wisse correctly finds something comic in the insistence of all the Jewish critics of Israel on how courageous they are in dissenting from the Jewish community. In fact, of course, nothing is easier than to dissent from the hounded, beleaguered, and powerless Jewish people, just as nothing requires more fortitude than to dissent from the anti-Israel cabal now made up of the UN, the State Department, the USSR, the Socialist International, the terrorist international, and all the nations that thirst for oil rather more than they do for righteousness.

Although Mrs. Wisse stresses the extent to which Diaspora Jews of the leftist persuasion have been meddling in Israel’s internal affairs, she does not comment on the extent to which “Peace Now” Israelis, following in the footsteps of more extreme groups like New Outlook, have taken it upon themselves brazenly to tell American Jews how to run their affairs. Rael Jean and Erich Isaac, in their indispensable pamphlet entitled “The Americanization of ‘Peace Now,’” have demonstrated in chilling detail how “‘Peace Now’ has come to tell American Jews . . . that they stand between Israel and peace.” The Isaacs show how “Peace Now” has become intricately involved with the most ferocious American enemies of Israel, including a host of PLO front groups, and how readily, if unwittingly, its representatives have let themselves be manipulated by radicals for whom the great desideratum is the reduction of Israel to sandy wastes. The Isaacs also provide a full account of how . . . “Peace Now” emissaries have carried the saga of their bleeding hearts from New York to Seattle, constantly bewailing the political support given to Israel by American Jews through pressure on our elected representatives. Although they are unlikely to achieve their aim of (in the words of Mattityahu Peled) “destroying the American Jewish establishment,” their fulminations against Israel’s policies have been meat and drink to such anti-Israel diehards as Senators Stevenson and Hatfield, who now fling them in the face of American Jews opposing their efforts to cut off economic and military aid to Israel.

If Narcissus can lift his eyes from the pool long enough to answer a question, I would like to ask the organizers of anti-Begin petitions and letters like Leonard Fein and the arrangers of evenings in shul with the PLO like Milton Viorst: do you really believe that you have been taken up with alacrity by the media because of the trenchant force of your arguments and the elegance of your prose, or because your antics converge so beautifully with the designs of Amalek, Edom, and Ishmael?

Edward Alexander
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington

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To the Editor:

Ruth R. Wisse explains, I think correctly, that the position of “Peace Now” is even less favorable toward Israel than the present U.S. administration. Also, Mrs. Wisse notes that “Peace Now,” striving to formulate American Jewish opinion in the guise of merely reflecting opinion already formed, works to impose its views upon the democratically elected government of Israel via the instrument of the U.S. government. Both of these purposes “Peace Now” embraces in the interests of “democracy” in Israel and in the Jewish community here. Finally, Mrs. Wisse points to the efforts of “Peace Now” in this country to appear apolitical, Zionist, and a mere extension of an indigenous movement in Israel. These efforts she describes, with somewhat excessive generosity, as “either inadvertently or deliberately misleading.” . . . But while Mrs. Wisse’s assessment is not false, it is at once overly slim as to the facts and too timid regarding their import.

“Peace Now” is a transparent attempt to resurrect the discredited Breira, a group staffed, supported, and funded by the enemies, Jewish and other, of Israel. Originally “Peace Now” was an Israeli movement. Although the goal of its activist core of leftist and PLO sympathizers is an Arab state in Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem, this goal could not be avowed in Israel if the movement were to have mass appeal. “Peace Now” sought to implement its purpose, or rather to have the American government implement its purpose, by destroying the support of American Jews for Israel and by insisting that it was American Jews who prevented peace. . . .

In truth “Peace Now” is the present redoubt of the anti-Jewish Left, much of which is predictably Jewish. For example, “Peace Now” was implicated in the now infamous New Outlook conference of 1979. All Israeli parties, except the frankly Communist ones, urged their supporters to avoid the New Outlook conference. . . .

The debasement that is “Peace Now” is not only that it is a betrayal of the Jewish people in the traditions of Jewish leftism, but that this betrayal, though its dominant impulse is visibly the reverse of bravery, is sold to those whom it betrays as daring and brave dissent. Worst of all, the Jewish establishment, implicated in the betrayal, has neither the courage to expose “Peace Now” nor the decency to keep quiet.

Robert J. Loewenberg
Phoenix, Arizona

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To the Editor:

Hurrah for Ruth R. Wisse’s attack on the effort to create an American version of Israel’s “Peace Now” movement. While the Israeli movement has a number of adherents, its American counterpart really constitutes a public-relations effort by a mere handful of elitists who, for various reasons, wish to undermine the Israeli government.

This effort has an insidious side, for in affirming truisms (“Israeli security requires normalization of relations between Israel and its neighbors”) and speaking in a tone of sweet reasonableness, the American Friends of “Peace Now” reinforce the view that Israel is recalcitrant, unyielding, and the main obstacle to peace in the Middle East—indeed, in the world.

Jewish attacks on Israeli settlement policy inevitably lend credence to the erroneous view that the Jews, like the Arabs, have their extremists. The notion that a group like Gush Emunim, whose extremism involves settling barren lands, is more threatening to peace than are murderous terrorists, gains currency with each New York Times airing of a “Peace Now” declaration. . . .

Charles Evans
East Hampton, New York

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To the Editor:

I was pleased to read Ruth R. Wisse’s article and find the first exposure in a Jewish magazine of the harm that the American Friends of “Peace Now” is doing to Israel. But I was also disappointed that the article left out so much—left out indeed all the information provided in the definitive study, “The Americanization of Peace Now,” by Rael Jean and Erich Isaac (published by Americans for a Safe Israel). . . .

Mrs. Wisse seems to separate “Peace Now” into two categories: in Israel (fine, Israelis are entitled to feel and act as they wish) and here (where she criticizes the group’s supporters). But this is to overlook what the Isaacs show so clearly is the effort by “Peace Now” in Israel to encourage support in the United States, the belief of the movement that American Jews are the key to achieving its aims. Equally serious, ignoring the Isaacs’ study, Mrs. Wisse fails to make any mention of the way in which “Peace Now,” its Israeli representatives who come here, and its American supporters have cooperated with those with a long and clear history of hostility to Israel, from the contingent at the Institute for Policy Studies to the American Friends Service Committee. Mrs. Wisse tells only half the story; that is a pity, for the full story needs to be told.

Hadassah K. Marcus
New York City

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To the Editor:

Ruth R. Wisse, in support of her contention that the American Jewish community is not monolithic in its views, states: “The American Jewish communities—for no two are alike—are ridden with factionalism and dissension on every conceivable point.” Unfortunately, to buttress this position, she says in the very next sentence that “The issue of American support for Soviet Jews is debated with bloody intensity and great moral anguish.” To the reader not involved in the movement to gain the right of emigration for Soviet Jews from the Soviet Union, the impression is given that many American Jews do not support such a movement. But American Jews are virtually unanimous in their support of such a movement. Few issues on the American Jewish agenda have received such a broad base of support. Mrs. Wisse undoubtedly is referring to the question of aid for those Jews who settle in the United States rather than in Israel. This is an entirely different matter and should have been so delineated by Mrs. Wisse.

Mervin Riseman
Chairman, Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry
New York City

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To the Editor:

Ruth R. Wisse’s article deals, roughly speaking, with two subjects. The first is a concern with the wisdom of the actions taken by the American Friends of “Peace Now.” That subject has already been debated at great length by many in the American Jewish community . . . and there is no point in trying to discuss it further.

The last part of Mrs. Wisse’s article, however, deals with the unspoken compact that American Jews will not publicly criticize Israeli policy. . . . The question now facing the American Jewish community is whether or not events compel a reexamination of this compact. . . .

Many American Jews feel that some policies of the Israeli government are so potentially dangerous to the future of Israel that they must speak out. . . .

Many Israelis actively urge American Jews to take certain political positions. Are we to take only those positions which Israelis advocate, or do we have the right to make up our own minds?

Frequently, Israeli speakers, either members of the government or well-known persons, appear at public or semi-public meetings in the United States. In the past year many have come and spoken in defense of the policies of the Begin government. The typical Jewish audience listens respectfully; people ask relatively innocuous questions or perhaps there are no questions. The speaker then goes home to Israel and reports that members of the American Jewish community support the policies which he discussed. What actually happens is that some in the audience agree with the speaker and those who do not agree remain silent; the speaker is thus misled into believing that silence is the equivalent of consent and approval. . . . No consideration is given by the Israeli to the effect of the compact which dictates “no public criticism.”

I submit that the time is right for a review and reexamination of the relationship of the state of Israel and the Jewish communities in the Diaspora. The American Friends of “Peace Now” may be doing the state of Israel a favor by speaking out publicly.

Robert Kelber
Minneapolis, Minnesota

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To the Editor:

As an American Jew concerned about Israel, I am sympathetic with the anguish that motivated Ruth R. Wisse to attack the 90 well-known American Jews who signed the advertisement opposing further settlements on the West Bank. She is correct in asserting that public criticism of Israeli policy by American Jews exposes Israel to danger at a time when the international community, subservient to Arab economic pressures, has isolated the Jewish state and supported the Arabs. The identification of prominent American Jews with a public anti-Israel position is an ominous and disconcerting development. Mrs. Wisse is right in questioning the judgment of those who signed the ad. But she is very wrong in not acknowledging the danger to Israel that the settlement policy poses.

Israel’s survival depends on the continuing support of the United States. The Israelis can afford to lose the backing of the world only as long as they continue to receive U.S. support, which has been based on a historic consensus that Israel’s cause is just and that its policy is motivated by considerations of survival. Begin’s West Bank settlement policies are not motivated by considerations of Israeli survival. They are based on the doctrinaire, insensitive convictions that Jews have a just claim to the ancient land of Judea and Samaria. These claims have already precariously eroded the vital support of the press and the intellectuals—important elements of American public opinion. More threatening, a perceptible change in the image of Israel held by the average American may be taking place at the grass-roots level here.

This brings us to the anguish of the Americans who signed the ad. As American Jews, they are deeply concerned that the continuation of Begin’s West Bank policy may soon do irreparable damage to American support for Israel. By speaking out, they hoped to get Begin’s attention and to discourage him from pursuing his dangerous policies. But in doing so, they also allowed themselves to be identified with the growing opposition to Israeli policies here. . . .

Although I am sympathetic with her concern, the issue is more complex than Mrs. Wisse’s treatment. . . .

Mark R. Bernstein
Charlotte, North Carolina

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To the Editor:

In her attack on American critics of Israel, Ruth R. Wisse shows little understanding of Israeli political realities. This fact is particularly evident in her comments on the West Bank settlements.

Mrs. Wisse faults the American supporters of “Peace Now” for exaggerating the importance of the settlements. She offers the familiar argument that Begin’s willingness to return the Sinai indicates that settlements on the West Bank need not be an obstacle to peace. The problem with this line of reasoning is that Begin and the Revisionists have never attached great importance to the Sinai, which is not part of the historic land of Israel. Judea and Samaria, on the other hand, have always been seen as part of Israel’s biblical heritage and as an integral part of the Jewish state. Though the agreements at Camp David left the question of the West Bank’s ultimate status ambiguous, Begin has since made it clear how his government interprets the accords. He has proclaimed innumerable times, publicly and privately, at home and abroad, that Israel will never relinquish sovereignty over the West Bank. This view has been echoed by all of his closest advisers and by the major officials in his government. Occasional statements that “everything is negotiable” cannot obscure the unmistakable thrust of Begin’s policy. When seen against this background, the establishment of the West Bank settlements is indeed an obstacle to peace, and there is no reason why American Jews should not plainly say so.

Mrs. Wisse is apparently playing a game that we Jews bitterly decry when the Arabs indulge in it. We all know that the PLO is committed to the destruction of Israel, a position which it endlessly reiterates. On those occasions when there are vague rumblings about the emergence of “moderation” in the PLO, Jewish leaders rightly condemn the gullibility of those who are inclined to listen. The Jewish community points out that we cannot patronize the Arabs; we must judge them on the basis of their record and their actions, and we must assume that they mean what they publicly state. Yet it seems that we are not prepared to apply these same standards to the government of Israel. Mr. Begin is nothing if not consistent, and his views on the West Bank have not changed in forty years. Can we honestly pretend that he does not mean what he says? The American Friends of “Peace Now” have refused to engage in this charade.

Mrs. Wisse warns us against those Jews who suggest that the Jews themselves are to blame for every misfortune that befalls them. Yet equally dangerous are those Jews who allow the hostility of our enemies to distract us from our own very real mistakes.

Eric H. Yoffie
University City, Missouri

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To the Editor:

Ruth R. Wisse continues the smear campaign against “Peace Now” with student rhetoric and with a cast of easily disposed-of straw men.

“Peace Now” was formed in March 1978 as a pressure group to combat negative influences on the peace process brought about by Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem. It never intended to influence the PLO, the Palestinians, Jordan, or the Rejectionists because it is powerless to influence them directly. “Peace Now,” of which I am a member, is aware of the intransigence of the other side but at the moment is counting only on Sadat and Egypt. Thus while we deplore such things as the Damascus declarations and the Venice declaration, we see the latter partly as a response to the Begin government and expedient in the new climate of public opinion that Begin has managed to create.

I personally see two interrelated problems at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict. First, the refusal of the Arabs (except for Egypt) to recognize the right of Israel to exist and, second, the foreign military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The second problem came about as a result of the first, and it will not be solved until the first is solved, but a solution to the second problem is necessary for the solution of the first. In other words, unless Israel offers the Arabs an acceptable compromise, either territorial or functional, for the West Bank and Gaza, there cannot be lasting peace even with those Arabs ready to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Continual new Jewish settlement, personal autonomy divorced from autonomy of the territory and water rights, are unacceptable to any Palestinians, to Sadat, to the United States, to the EEC, and to the world.

Sadat and Begin have been playing the same game of intransigence, of negotiation through declaration, and of denouncing the other side’s shortcomings without dealing with one’s own. Unfortunately for Israel, Sadat is much better at this game than is Begin and he has a much better hand to play it with. Unless Israel wants to see all American support dry up and see the United States continue to abstain from or even vote for UN resolutions condemning Israel, Begin must change his policies or Israel must change its government.

As one who has been an active supporter of Israel for a number of years, . . . I have never urged that the American government use political or economic pressure to force the Begin (or any other Israeli) government to adopt different policies. To my knowledge no one in “Peace Now” or the American Friends of “Peace Now” has ever adopted this position. . . . The Madison, Wisconsin, chapter of the American Friends of “Peace Now,” which according to Janet Aviad in Jerusalem is the most active branch in the United States, has restricted its activities solely to Jewish groups and has not attempted to influence the press or Gentile opinion, let alone policy-makers. The Madison chapter is, I am sure, typical of all American Friends of “Peace Now” nationwide.

The Palestinian charter by which the PLO sets its course does not demand much morally. The Israeli declaration of independence does, and we are only trying to see that Israel lives up to its ideals, especially when to do so is the pragmatic and far-sighted course.

Thomas Mitchell
Madison, Wisconsin

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To the Editor:

The trouble with Ruth R. Wisse’s article is that she relates the wrong tale of Chelm. Mrs. Wisse draws the moral that the American supporters of the Israeli group “Peace Now” are like the rabbi in Peretz’s cautionary tale: shamefully frightened in a world of powerful goyim and fearful of Jews’ expressing their own legitimate demands for existence.

But there is nothing in the statement released by the American Friends of “Peace Now” or in the private histories of those who signed the statement which supports such an interpretation of their attitude. To quote Peretz’s caustic tale in this context is to calumniate the Jewish self-respect of the signers and not confront the sober political and moral statement they are advancing.

Incidentally, Peretz’s simply but shrewdly paced tale, with its corrosive undertones, is as much an attack on naive religiosity and inadequate pious adjustment to a corrupt world as an attack on Jewish socialists and other idealists of the day who rationalized pogroms against Jews.

The tale that Mrs. Wisse should have related is the one about the Chelmites who wander from town to town collecting funds for a new bathhouse since the old one had burned down. Fearful of being robbed by brigands of the funds they have managed to collect as they return home, even fearful of having their wagons stolen from them if they were to invest the money in merchandise, the clever Chelmites decide to invest the money in feathers which when sent aloft will follow them in the sky back to Chelm, secure from theft. Arriving home, the Chelmites never see the feathers again, even after the rest of the town sends forth its own feathers in order to direct the other feathers to Chelm as they wander around the skies, probably lost. Chelm that year had neither featherbeds nor bathhouse.

Moral: even when suspicion and precaution are justified, and one should protect one’s legitimate investments, one shouldn’t become captive to an absurd logic dictating a chain of unwise and self-destructive acts.

Richard J. Fein
Coordinator, Jewish Studies Program
SUNY, New Paltz
New Paltz, New York

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Ruth R. Wisse writes:

The letters of Robert Kelber and Mark R. Bernstein represent a fair sample of the American Jewish thinking that prompted my article. These are “moderate” Jews, willing to grant that “public criticism of Israeli policy by American Jews exposes Israel to danger at a time when the international community, subservient to Arab . . . pressures, has isolated the Jewish state. . . .” But being so moderate, they also appreciate the “anguish” of those who see in Begin’s West Bank policy a danger to peace. If one cannot do anything about the greater international danger, one can at least acknowledge the danger that the settlement policy poses.

The equation of the international danger posed by the Arabs with the putative danger of Begin’s policy in Judea and Samaria is so pernicious in itself that any political action based upon such an equation must be as pernicious as the assumption on which it rests. The denial of peace originates in the refusal of the Arab states—now excepting Egypt—to accept the presence of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state: it precedes and supersedes all other “dangers.” Anyone familiar with the history of the Middle East, as Eric H. Yoffie clearly is not, knows that the Begin government came to power in Israel only after thirty years of a frustrated Israeli quest for peace, beginning with the Jewish acceptance and the Arab repudiation of partition in 1947. The Revisionist formula was not then the stumbling block to peace, as it was not in the almost thirty years of uninterrupted Labor rule which followed. The Arabs have consistently refused Israel a place in the community of nations, and have used all the economic and political and propaganda power at their command to win the war they have so far lost militarily. The blame they place on Begin’s West Bank policy as the obstacle to peace is only a current strategy in, not a cause of, this ongoing war.

The nations of the world, including an ever-growing part of the West, have their own craven reasons for shrinking from this clear statement of historical fact. They pretend to even-handedness when they equate the Arab war against the Jewish state with the current Israeli response to that unyielding Arab policy of annihilation. The acceptance by American Jews of this cynical and thoroughly false equation—when they should be opposing it with every ounce of political acumen and pressure at their command—is, as I suggested in my article, a sign of Jewish demoralization. It is a return to the Diaspora politics of apologetics and self-flagellation and fear that characterized much of modern Jewish expression between 1897 and 1947.

In the realm of politics, I am not concerned with “anguish,” either mine or anyone else’s. American Jews should be expected to assess the probable and predictable results of their words and actions before they speak and act. They should also have the dignity to hold themselves responsible for the probable and predictable consequences. If American Jews wish to weaken the position of Israel even further, it is, of course, fully within their democratic privilege to do so. But it is repugnant when they claim their attack on the freely elected government of the Jewish state is really “intended” to serve Israel’s best interest.

Those readers—and to judge by a number of the letters printed above, there were quite a few of them—who feel that I was too moderate in my assessment of the forces at work in “Peace Now” will find corroboration of their criticism in the letter of Thomas Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell’s letter, incidentally, is the only response to COMMENTARY from within the ranks of “Peace Now.” But since it is not as carefully manicured as the published document of the group, it may be a purer example of the thinking of the membership.

The most telltale sign of Mr. Mitchell’s real political affiliation comes in his initial protest against the “smear campaign” launched against “Peace Now.” (Many other readers of my article have complained that, far from smearing, I left, alas, not even a smudge.) Nothing is more characteristic of neoleftists on this continent than their cry of “smear” when they are being fairly opposed for the political positions they voice. This tactic of self-righteous innocence sullies both their opponents and the political process itself.

I wonder how characteristic Mr. Mitchell’s statements are of the 90 public sponsors of the American Friends of “Peace Now.” Do they also see the Venice declaration as a response to the public opinion that “Begin has managed to create”? Do they also equate the refusal of the Arabs to recognize Israel’s right to exist with Israel’s “military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip”? Do they also, by Mr. Mitchell’s magical logic, conclude that if problem number one created problem number two, the solution of problem number two is necessary for the solution of problem number one?

I would like to draw particular attention to Mr. Mitchell’s conclusion because it would be hard to find a more perfect example of Jewish aggression against Israel masked in the rhetoric of brotherly concern:

The Palestinian charter by which the PLO sets its course does not demand much morally. The Israeli declaration of independence does, and we are only trying to see that Israel lives up to its ideals. . . .

When Mr. Mitchell says that the Palestinian charter “does not demand much morally,” he is saying that there is no appeal to human conscience against the calculated policy of murder that characterizes the PLO. The logical consequence of such a perception would be a call for extraordinary vigilance. One cannot always trust well-wishers, but if your enemy is by his own admission dedicated to your extinction, you should at least put up your fiercest guard against him. But Mr. Mitchell’s casual expression (“does not demand much morally”) is the objective correlative of his level of concern for the consequences of the PLO’s moral laxity. Being first and foremost a moralist, he is less interested in Israel’s right to live than in Israel’s right to live in the world to come.

If Israel’s declaration of independence is, as Mr. Mitchell contends, a higher expression of morality than the PLO charter, then by any sane standard Israel is that much more deserving of confidence and the PLO that much less worthy of trust. A society with at least an aspiration to morality can be expected to try to live up to its ideals better than one that has no ideals in the first place. Mr. Mitchell, however, would rather deal with gentlemen than with murderers, and unlike the Israelis, as an American Jew he has that choice. Since a society with articulated ideals will always fall short of them in some measure, American Jews like Mr. Mitchell will always have their work cut out for them, keeping Israel honest. Until now, funds solicited for Israel have been concerned with the welfare of its body. The spiritualists of the American Friends of “Peace Now” are turning their attention to Israel’s soul.

Richard J. Fein has missed the point of Peretz, and even of his own little anecdote. The Chelmites were foolish to invest their money in feathers. It is to escape the fate of the Chelmites that the Israelis have put some of their trust in the same commodities that all other nation states respect. But there are Diaspora Jews who apparently feel more comfortable with feathers.