To the editor:

Hal Lehrman’s “American Policy and Arab-Israeli Peace” (June) qualifies on several counts as propaganda rather than factual reporting or impartial evaluation.

Item: the story—real or fictitious—with which Mr. Lehrman opens the piece is slanted. In speaking of Israeli deaths resulting from border incidents, Mr. Lehrman, using the literary device of direct quotation, employs words like “killing” and “murder.” Later, when he writes of Kibya, he scrupulously avoids such emotion-charged terms.

The article is entitled “American Policy and Arab-Israeli Peace.” An impartial article, fulfilling the promise of the title, would have indicated that the United States believes the Arabs have a case. Mr. Lehrman nowhere appears conscious of this important fact. When he writes of the Arabs, it is only in terms of the American strategic interests involved in winning their friendship. In making no reference to the substance of the Arab case, Mr. Lehrman makes of his article a contest between his evaluation of American diplomatic strategy and that of the Department of State.

Item: Mr. Lehrman makes no reference to the basic statement of American policy contained in the address of John Foster Dulles on June 1, 1953. He makes two very abbreviated references to Mr. Byroade’s recent speeches and implies that the Assistant Secretary of State has no real intelligence upon which to base his evaluations of changing conditions in the Arab states. The fact that these attacks on statements which have been supported as “administration views” are veiled, does not alter the fact that they are attacks and that they do not state adequately the substance of the policy against which the attacks are aimed.

Item: Finally, as though sensing that he has not made a very logical case, Mr. Lehrman offers—as Israeli opinion, of course—the old blackmail game. If the United States does not do as the Israelis wish—look out! The Israeli extremists may break out with something worse than the difficulties Americans are now having in winning Arab friendship.

Mr. Lehrman would certainly have been better advised, in ostensibly writing about American policy as well as Israel’s, to have quoted from Mr. Byroade’s Dayton address. The Assistant Secretary, speaking of American efforts to stabilize the Middle East, said: “It may be difficult—and it may take long—but I am certain you will agree with me that we should so conduct ourselves in the area as to clearly demonstrate that our government has nothing except a truly objective policy. If we are to be accused of being ‘pro’ anything, let us make it amply clear . . . that our policy is first and foremost ‘pro-American.’ ”

The Lehrman piece imposes an obligation upon COMMENTARY, it seems to me. Having printed an article so palpably Israel-oriented and so critical of American policy, COMMENTARY should now certainly publish one—of at least equal length—explaining the reasoning and the philosophy upon which current official U. S. policies on the Israeli-Arab situation are based.

Henry S. Moyer
Scarsdale, New York

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Mr. Lehrman writes:

Mr. Moyer’s concern for COMMENTARY’S reputation as an objective journal suggests that he is an old friend, or at least an old reader, of the magazine. Surely he must have known (because it was clearly indicated) that the article which distressed him was the second of a series of two. The first article, published only two months earlier, discussed other aspects of the Israeli-American conflict, stated U. S. policy in detail, and found much to deplore in Israeli performance, including Kibya. Mr. Moyer ignores all this. He also forgets a volume of previous articles by me in these pages, analyzing the pros and cons of each stage in the developing Israeli-American relationship—and frequently outraging, not Mr. Moyer, but zealots of the opposite persuasion. No complaints all these years from Mr. Moyer about my lack of objectivity. But now, suddenly, I am discovered dispensing “propaganda,” committing “blackmail,” inventing or “slanting” evidence, and failing to be sufficiently “pro-American” to please Mr. Moyer. It apparently does not occur to him that a critical attitude toward U. S. policy in the Middle East at this moment in history may arise from the objective facts of the current situation. Mr. Moyer might have consulted the record before briskly implying that the reporter has been hired or beguiled. . . .

Mr. Moyer has a quaint reverence for “statements of policy”—as if they explain, justify, or even reflect acts of policy. He really ought to know that in this as in other ages of diplomacy the declarations of governments do not—and perhaps even should not—tell all. An off-the-record chat at any American or foreign embassy will enlighten him on this point. As for the presumptuousness of any individual’s “pitting his opinion against that of the Department of State,” this is hardly a crime; it is being done daily, and honorably, by great numbers of Americans—probably including Mr. Moyer—who individually believe one or more of their country’s policies in some corner or other of the large world map capable of improvement. Is Mr. Moyer saying that Israel, for some occult reason, is the one place on earth where the Department’s views are sacrosanct, beyond error and beyond reproach? I think it rather the function of honest reporting to look at each situation whole, always in search of the true American interest.

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