On the Right

New York, March 26—I go a step further and say that the political exploitation of the UN Security Council vote on Israel which has already humiliated the Administration, betraying its incompetence at a technical level, is beginning to humiliate the Jewish community in the United States. The spastic reaction of every politician seeking to be more royalist than the king suggests that Jewish voters are blind to the diplomatic requirements of a peaceful and secure future for the State of Israel. The whole of the week, it seems, was devoted to every candidate’s denouncing Carter and Vance. It began with the suggestion that behind what Vance calls “the failure of communication” there lurked an “anti-Israel” bias. Mayor Koch, who is a good sort, picked up the subject where he left off when, in 1977, while running for mayor, he embarrassed a lot of people by greeting the visiting President at the airport with a document that looked like a subpoena—criticizing the Carter Administration (correctly, as it happens) for inviting co-Soviet sponsorship of the abortive Geneva peace talks.

This time around Koch said flatly before television that the State Department was “anti-Israel.” Kock is a very intelligent and honorable man, and there is weeping and gnashing of teeth among his admirers when he yields to the allurements of demagogy. To say that the State Department is “against” Israel because it also recognizes that there are Arabs in the Near East is on the order of saying that Koch is “against” blacks because he believes that blacks also should obey the law; or that Carter is “against” cities because he believes that if the budget needs to be trimmed that means that there will necessarily be less money for the cities.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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New York, March 26—I go a step further and say that the political exploitation of the UN Security Council vote on Israel which has already humiliated the Administration, betraying its incompetence at a technical level, is beginning to humiliate the Jewish community in the United States. The spastic reaction of every politician seeking to be more royalist than the king suggests that Jewish voters are blind to the diplomatic requirements of a peaceful and secure future for the State of Israel. The whole of the week, it seems, was devoted to every candidate’s denouncing Carter and Vance. It began with the suggestion that behind what Vance calls “the failure of communication” there lurked an “anti-Israel” bias. Mayor Koch, who is a good sort, picked up the subject where he left off when, in 1977, while running for mayor, he embarrassed a lot of people by greeting the visiting President at the airport with a document that looked like a subpoena—criticizing the Carter Administration (correctly, as it happens) for inviting co-Soviet sponsorship of the abortive Geneva peace talks.

This time around Koch said flatly before television that the State Department was “anti-Israel.” Kock is a very intelligent and honorable man, and there is weeping and gnashing of teeth among his admirers when he yields to the allurements of demagogy. To say that the State Department is “against” Israel because it also recognizes that there are Arabs in the Near East is on the order of saying that Koch is “against” blacks because he believes that blacks also should obey the law; or that Carter is “against” cities because he believes that if the budget needs to be trimmed that means that there will necessarily be less money for the cities.