A Spectator's Notebook

Considering the courage and tenacity with which the state of Israel has survived the first twenty-five years of its modern life — it celebrates its birthday this week — it is amazing that the diaspora lasted as long as it did. The Jews were driven away from Jerusalem around about 70 AD, and although much later a handful crept back, Jewry preserved itself for the subsequent 1850 or so years in alien, largely European soils. For a race, a religion and a culture to have lasted so long without a territory of its own suggests a determination to survive, an enormous will to !No, certainly, but it also suggests an acquiescence in foreign rule. It is odd that a people, whose will to survive with its ancient traditions more or less intact enabled it to put up with centuries of persecution and humiliation, should suddenly, this century, become assertive and confident and, having avoided utter extermination at the hands of Hitler's Germany, finally re-establish itself in Palestine. Very odd indeed, whether or not one takes the view that it was all God's doing.

The martial vigour of the state of Israel is its most surprising attribute. Its pleasantest, for me at any rate, is the way you can talk to Israelis without making allowances and without feeling that you should be making them. The state of Israel is in this, as in many other regards, very much a civilised western European state, which happens to be oddly sited.

Kosher for tourists

It may be this, helped doubtless by its splendid climate, natural beauty and historical reverberations, which makes it such a pleasure to visit. Not surprisingly, Israel's tourists are overwhelmingly Jewish; but in my experience, very many Israelis prefer non-Jewish visitors. American Jews, in particular, are unpopular or were the last time I was there. They carried on as though they owned the place; and they also would insist that the locals, as well as themselves and other visitors, observe strict kosher rules which, back in the States, they would not dream of keeping to. This is not a case of when in Rome do as the Romans, but of when in Rome see to it that everybody does as you think the Romans should be doing. There is consequently a good deal of anti-American-semitism in Israel. Goy Englishmen are much preferred. In Israel one does not think of the Israelis as Jews but as Israelis. They are very like the Palestinians, and I hope that in the next twenty-five years of Israel, an accommodation with the Palestinians will be reached.

It needs to be remembered that the anniversary of the foundation of Israel is also the anniversary of the dispossession of the Palestinians. In the long run Israel must come to terms with the Arabs: in the long run, time is not on Israel's side. This is realised well enough by most sensible Israelis (and very many Israelis are sensible), and I think that within a decade or so — certainly in less than a generation — a more imaginative, less doctrinaire policy will be forced upon Israel's hawks by its doves.

Fuel and power

I went sailing last weekend and missed seeing the Cup Final on television. It was very heartening to hear the result, which cheered up a particularly cold, wet and nasty piece of North Sea estuarine weather. I almost always like it when the underdog wins. Sunderland's victory was particularly pleasing because it brought the Cup to the north-east, where it belongs; because Leeds, who from all accounts are an ugly team and cocky with it, obviously deserved to lose; and because lots of people won the kind of bet I like — a bet, that is, with very long odds.

A radio on a boat is very useful, not so much for football results as for weather forecasts. We were glad to be in touch with events — and to be able to summon help if necessary. But in one way a radio on a yacht spoils the pure pleasure of getting away from it all, of sailing somewhere where the world's messes can be forgotten and the weight of its pressing demands for a few hours be cast aside. When we were well off the coast and we switched the engine off and the boat was left with nothing but the wind, then despite the filthy weather, the exhilaration was great. I was struck by the colossal energy of the wind. We talk of possible shortages of fuel; but really the natural world is extraordinarily energetic, blowing hot and cold everywhere, lifting up great tides and putting them down again. There is no shortage of power that I can see. There is only a shortage of fuels like coal and oil. It occurred to me, when we switched off the diesel, that it might be no bad thing if the world did run out of coal and oil and undersea gas.

But we needed the engine to get back up the river; and I drove myself home by car and I had an oil-fired bath by electric light before I went to bed and watched the coal-fired telly.

Glass-housed Kennedy

There have been few more nauseating examples of political hypocrisy in recent years than the example of Senator Kennedy dishing out advice on the moral conduct of politics to May 12 s a , 973

President Nixon. Technically r Kennedy M better performer than Nixon. His face is far less shifty. He doesn't try any of those ingratiating smirks with which the President has lately sought to make himself cosily at home with the great American public. But Kennedy's Chappaquidick behaviour and cover-up, although of less political moment than the White House cover-up, was surely morally much more reprehensible. I do not think that if Kennedy succeeds Nixon in the White House in four years' time, the White House will necessarily become a much cleaner place, although the quality of its rhetoric will undoubtedly improve.

Settlement in Rhodesia?

I hope that Peter Niesewand is accurate when he writes that, " Prime Minister Ian Smith's government hopes to persuade Britain to implement the 1971 settlement terms in August or September this year." Those who successfully campaigned against the settlement proposals have done the Rhodesian Africans no good at all, although they may have eased their own consciences a little. The Pearce Commission was an example of a body of men picked to do one job ending Cip doing another, for the best of all possible reasons and with the worst of all possible results. What the Pearce Commission was picked to do was to come up with a way of saying that • the 1971 proposals were acceptable. Instead, they took their brief literally, leaned over backwards to be just, and came up with the answer that the proposals were unacceptable.

Anyway, Nieswand now suggests that "if sufficient numbers of tribesmen can be persuaded to say 'yes 'to the settlement, and if to their voices can be added the affirmative votes of some 'responsible urban Africans' then the Rhodesian Government 'believes Britain will be obliged to implement the settlement, ignoring the protests of the ANC." And about time, too.

Niesewand, understandably enough under the circumstances, thinks that his detention and trial "were apparently designed partly to persuade journalists working out of Rhodesia to turn a blind eye to the ' yes ' campaign." I don't know about that. I don't think the Smith government works out complicated ploys like that. Reporters often think they are immune from the laws of the country in which they operate; but they are not, and should not be.

Gerald Hawkesworth

Molly Mortimer reminds me that Gerald Hawkesworth, another white man, has been held prisoner by African terrorists since January. His companions were murdered and he himself kidnapped while engaged on land survey work. Television and the press have displayed much solicitude for Peter Niesewand's young wife, Nonie, but, as I am reminded, "Gerald Hawkesworth's widowed mother, who also lives in Salisbury, has much more to worry about". This is undoubtedly true. Possibly Peter Niesewand might consider appealing to the ZANU-ZAPU men to treat Hawkesworth as Smith has treated him. Alternatively, the BBC and the Guardian and the others, who have successfully and rightly stood up for Peter Niesewand might now consider similar campaigns for those who are victims of black oppression and injustice. There is a scandalous trial going on in Zanzibar right now. There is no shortage whatsoever of black injustice and oppression. The fact of the matter is that white liberals expect blacks to behave badly and do not get annoyed when they do. But white Africans are expected by white liberals in England to behave like white liberals in England, and when they don't the white liberals get very cross. The white liberals take a highly racist line, that is.