WILLIAM PHILLIPS
537
One American said that American foreign policy was obscene. I
wanted to ask him whether American aid to Israel was obscene; I waved
my hand frantically but I was not recognized. Of course, American academics
have as much right to their orthodoxies as anyone else. But in the matter of
Israeli relations with the Arab world, the Americans are irresponsible, for
they influence Israeli academic opinions, which in turn influence the
government. So far as I was able to tell, the Israelis, who have been forced
into soul-searching over their moral and military dilemmas, have been jolted
by constant criticism from America and Europe by the left and the right.
Some political conclusions:
One gets the impression that the Israelis
are suffering from an excess of
advice--aitses,
as one prominent Israeli put it.
There is something strange that requires further political explanation, in the
fuct that there are so many qualifications to the support of Israel. When, for
example, America supported France and England in World War II, it did not
feel it had to approve of Churchill's or de Gaulle's policies, or of the Labor
party, or of the Socialists. Nor did we hesitate to support Stalin against Hitler.
Why, then, do we have to approve of everything Shamir does, or why are
we deterred in our support by the politics of the religious parties? And why,
when the Israelis are obviously at war with the Palestinians,who are the
outpost of the Arab world, do we make the occasional brutish behavior of the
Israeli army a reason for the cooling of our support? Surely, support should
not depend on the Israelis living up to some ideal moral standard that no
other nation adheres to.
Many people today set fewer conditions for aiding Gorbachev than
they do for the support of Israel. Patently there is a double standard for
large and small nations behind the American export of political altruism and
moral idealism to Israel.
Edith Kurzweil
FROM WALL TO WALL
"Real solutions are not made by political psychologists," stated Yehuda
Arnir of Bar Ilan University at the meetings of the International Society of
Political Psychologists held in Tel Aviv from June 22d to 26th, 1989. And,
insofar as psychological "solutions" build up unrealistic expectations, he con–
tinued, "they may lead not only to subsequent disappointments but to the
neglect of other possible paths toward resolving the conflict." Amir was one
of dozens of Israelis who bared their frustrations and hopes, despair and
