In and out of season
Sir : I have been reading your journal for about three months and had begun to wonder when I might at last read something by one of your contributors on the difficult situation in the Middle East. After three months my patience was duly rewarded—two tiny little references to that vast problem by a George Gale (27 December); one, to Arab terror at the hands of the Jews; and two, to the theft of Jerusalem by the Jews from its possessors; and that's what I get in three months' study of the SPECTATOR.
Does not Mr G. Gale read the fairly sim- ple English translation of the prolific state- ments put out'by Arab leaders, ad nauseam, as to what they have in mind to do to the Jews whenever they get the chance? Does he not read of the treatment of the Jews in Arab lands? Has he not read how, over the years, as Jews developed that barren and neglected piece of land at the eastern end of
the Mediterranean Sea, and turned it into a fertile productive and in parts quite beautiful area, they have had to protect themselves against Arab attack and Arab bullets? Does he not read reports of how Arab terrorists. gangsters and would-be murderers are treated by the Jews in Israel—every bit as well as they would be for example here in England? Would that the admiring peace- keeping Jew in Arab lands was equally treated. Has your Mr Gale not got this terror business mixed up, maybe?
`Jerusalem stolen by the Jews from its Arab possessors'! Sir—Jerusalem has even, right down through the centuries, been a Jewish city, no matter which the ruling power at the time. Admittedly, for about twenty years recently, it was occupied by the Jordanians as a result of military adventure, and just look what those Arabs did to all the ancient Jewish places there! In those twenty years no Jew was allowed to enter the part the Jordanians occupied—contrast this to the free access allowed to Arabs now, even if some of these Arabs be terrorists.
For his bias and accompanying stupidity I could forgive your Mr Gale—he probably can't help these attitudes. But his ignorance I find it more difficult to forgive—he really should know something of a subject before he writes about it.
Archibald Toher 134 Woodwarde Road, Dulwich, London sE22 Sir: There is nothing more infuriating than glib journalistic sentences—so easy to manufacture—which have little substance behind them, but much malice. During the past few weeks I have twice been so enraged by George Gale.
I refer to his easy parallel (6 December) between the gassing of Jews during the Se- cond World War and the present Israeli ad- ministration in the occupied territories, and to his snide 'that Jerusalem now recon- quered—stolen from its Arab possessors—by the Jews ...' (27 December).
As to the first assertion, it is beyond con- tempt. Or perchance Mr Gale has up his sleeve tall tales of the gassing of Arabs or a Babi Yar. It seems to me that so far it is the Arabs who have attempted to use methods of terror on Israeli streets, beaches, cinemas, supermarkets—even a university cafeteria. Mr Gale, it would appear, considers that methods of defending oneself against murderous attacks, using a police force under the supervision of a freely elected parliament, an independent judiciary and laws largely based on those of his own coun- try, are equivalent to Nazi show trials, con- centration camps, medical experiments and the 'final solution'. May I be so crude as to suggest that he would find a more accurate, though perhaps less fashionable, parallel for some of the Nazi methods in today's Egypt and Iraq?
With regard to Mr Gale's second aspersion, one must give credit where it is due. His mental gymnastics in deviously arriving, in an article dealing with the aboli- tion of capital punishment in England, at a remark, be it ever so longwinded, about Jerusalem, must have cost him a certain amount of effort. Be that as it may, to a native Israeli, wounded in the defence of Jerusalem during the last war, it is self-evi- dent that Mr Gale was not in that town at 11.20 on the morning of 5 June, 1967, when the Jordanian barrage began. Furthermore, he appears to be totally ignorant of the fact that the late Premier Levi Eshkol appealed
on that very morning to King Hussein to hold his fire—a well documented appeal since it was made through the good offices of the UN. Nor is he aware that Israeli gunners held back their reply to the Jordanian fire until certain this was no mere gesture towards what is termed as 'Arab solidarity', but a true and veritable attack. 'Stolen' under the circumstances is hardly a likely word. And more. For what would Jerucalein be had not the Jews given it to the world. only to lose it to the Romans. who lost it to the Arabs, who lost it to the Crusaders, who lost it to the Arabs. who lost it to the Ttfrks, who lost it to the British, who lost it to the Jews and Arabs. who . .. and it was 'united as a city that was made unto one'.
Perhaps Mr Gale ought to come and visit Jerusalem and see, on Mount Zion. the re- mains of a synagogue. overbuilt with the ruins of a church and surmounted by a mos- que.
Ronald Cholodny 28 Hazore'a Street. K far Shemaryahu. Israel
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