Debate About the Settlements

Israeli Novelist Amos Oz has written of his people that their demand is absolute: "Either they have the best country in the world, the purest, the fulfillment of the highest moral standards, or else there is total disillusionment. Paradoxically, the outside world tends to view Israel with much the same perspective." Nowhere in the outside world are Israel and its actions subjected to greater scrutiny than in the U.S., home to 6 million Jews.

Last month, 59 prominent American Jews sent Premier Menachem Begin an open letter that criticized Israel's policy of setting up new Jewish settlements in densely populated Arab areas of the occupied West Bank. "A policy which requires the expropriation of Arab land unrelated to Israel's security needs," the letter read, "and which presumes to occupy permanently a region populated by 750,-000 Palestinian Arabs, we find morally unacceptable, and perilous for the democratic character of the Jewish state." Among those who signed were Nobel Prizewinning Novelist Saul Bellow, Composer-Conductor Leonard Bernstein, and Jerome B. Wiesner, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Principal author of the document was Martin Peretz, editor of the New Republic.

Israelis were taken aback by the criticism. Traditionally, American Jews tend to refrain from public criticism of elected officials responsible for the fate of the Jewish state. The letter did not question Israel's basic right to establish such settlements, but as one government official put it, "when you have clever people who argue that the settlements are legal but illadvised, the impression is still left that something is wrong with building settlements."

In an interview with TIME last week, Premier Begin's Adviser on Information, Harry Hurwitz, chided those who signed the letter, saying, "While we take account of the opinion of our friends in the Jewish community, the guiding principles that have to influence the government of Israel are the interests of the people of Israel, their security and safety." The influential Jerusalem Post, however, argued: "Israel should, of course, not determine its policies at the behest of American Jewish leaders. But the considered opinions of American Jewry should be one of the elements in the formulation of policies that must take into account the possible reactions of American government and public opinion."

It is an issue that cuts many ways. The U.S. adamantly opposes the settlements. Says one senior Administration official: "Not only is the confiscation of Arab land illegal, it causes serious damage to the peace process." Some State Department officials were pleased with the letter, but there was no public comment from the Administration; it feared that hard-line elements in the Begin government would counterattack with charges of American manipulation of "Jewish family matters." The Israeli Premier must already contend with the fact that both Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Defense Minister Ezer Weizman disagreed with the Cabinet's approval of the settlement that inspired the letter:

Elon Moreh, which overlooks the Arab town of Nablus.

The 59 signatories do not speak for a majority of American Jews. Theodore Mann, who is chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, declared last week: "That such settlements are legal is not only my view but the consensus in the American Jewish community." Despite this admonition, many of those who signed the letter remained convinced that their criticism was a proper way to dissuade Begin's government from a policy that they felt was not only tactically wrong but morally insupportable.

Says Leonard Fein, a cosigner of the letter and editor in chief of Moment, an independent Jewish monthly: "I expect that all the signers recognize that Elon Moreh is only the tip of a very ugly iceberg. Israel is squandering recklessly its most critical and natural resource--the good will that many people around the world, and in this country in particular, feel for this gutsy country."

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