Letters

Editor:

DISSENT has recently carried three contributions dealing with Israel. Two, by Irving Howe and Michael Walzer, give critical support to the Israeli government; a third, by the Jerusalem professor J. L. Talmon, is a moving appeal to reason and reconciliation, implicitly critical not only of the Israeli government but of the attitudes which most Israelis display vis-h-vis their Arab neighbors and the prospects of peaceful coexistence with them. However, if Professor Talmon’s article was meant to balance the one-sided views of Irving Howe and Michael Walzer, it does so only in the very narrow sense in which Walzer reports (with an audible sigh of relief) that “the distances are small between so-called doves and hawks…. there are virtually no disagreements about the requirements of a final settlement, nor about the need for military strength….”

As though to confirm this statement, Professor Talmon, speaking as a so-called dove, spells o...