To the Editor:

I was shocked to read the following passage in Amos Elon’s “Letter from the Sinai Front” [August 1967]: “Members of the right-wing Herut party called for annexation of the West Bank with no civil rights for the million Arabs who live there—a Middle Eastern Rhodesia.”

I am surprised that a serious publication such as yours should print without checking a statement attributing by way of insinuation—via anonymous “members”—to a political party in Israel an attitude which is not only inhuman but entirely opposed to that party’s declared policy, i.e., the granting of equal rights to all the citizens of Israel without any discrimination.

This fundamental idea of equal rights has been taken over by the Herut party from its pre-State-of Israel forerunners, the Revisionist movement, Beitar, and the Irgun Tsevai Leumi, all followers of Zeev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, in one of whose poems he envisions the relations between Jews and Arabs in our country as follows: “There Arab, Christian, and Jew/ Will be prosperous and happy,/For my banner, the banner of integrity and equity/Will purify both banks of my Jordan.”

Raanana Meridor
Department of Classics
The Hebrew University
Jerusalem, Israel

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Mr. Elon writes:

Miss Meridor quotes Jabotinsky’s poetry as determining the present political policies of Herut; I would wish only that she had gone into greater detail as to her “purification” program for even this Western side of the Jordan. Since the war, in statements made both within the Cabinet and publicly, Herut spokesmen (like Party Leader Menahem Begin) have consistently taken a stand against the return of any “liberated” areas on the West Bank, even in exchange for a peace settlement. Leaders of the party—and no member has come out publicly to the contrary—hold that the entire West Bank is an integral part of Israel’s historical heritage. When asked what is to be the fate of the area’s near-million Arab residents, the answer has been that there is no need to grant any civil rights for the next ten or twenty years, and after that, time will tell.

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