The Tragic Victims

Rabbi Elmer Berger has written a book for which both Arabs and Jews should be grateful (Who Knows Better Must Say the Bookmailer, $2.00). The Arabs, justifiably resentful that their side of the argument is rarely heard in America, could not ask for a more objective presentation of their case against Israel and its American Zionist backers. Jews, on the other hand, should welcome Dr. Berger’s refutation of the anti-Semitic myth that people of their faith are ipso facto bad Americans, who owe allegiance to a foreign state and so constitute a menace analogous to that which we all recognize in the Communists. And, since today’s headlines make it increasingly obvious that we shall reap the whirlwind unless the dangerous and difficult problem of Israel and her Arab neighbors is “taken out of politics,” the author of this courageous and enlightening book has also performed a valuable service to the United States.

Dr. Berger, Executive Vice-President of the American Council for Judaism, thinks and writes as an American who believes that “if Jews acted like other people” their religion would be no impediment to their becoming fully-integrated citizens. He boldly takes issue with the Zionists, who he says teach that Jews “can be secure only in Israel,” and claim to be “wiser and more practical than we with our faith in Western liberalism and individual rights.” With cogent logic he shows the great gulf that divides Judaism, a religious faith, from Israel-Zionism, which he describes as a national, political and secular movement “which seeks to involve Jews living in the West in a philosophy foreign to the countries of their citizenship.” He indicts the “Messianic pretensions” of the Zion-ists toward all Jews, and exposes the basic contradiction between their secularism and their appeal to Jews everywhere in the world “to sustain Israel as a part of their religion.”

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Freda Utley

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Rabbi Elmer Berger has written a book for which both Arabs and Jews should be grateful (Who Knows Better Must Say the Bookmailer, $2.00). The Arabs, justifiably resentful that their side of the argument is rarely heard in America, could not ask for a more objective presentation of their case against Israel and its American Zionist backers. Jews, on the other hand, should welcome Dr. Berger’s refutation of the anti-Semitic myth that people of their faith are ipso facto bad Americans, who owe allegiance to a foreign state and so constitute a menace analogous to that which we all recognize in the Communists. And, since today’s headlines make it increasingly obvious that we shall reap the whirlwind unless the dangerous and difficult problem of Israel and her Arab neighbors is “taken out of politics,” the author of this courageous and enlightening book has also performed a valuable service to the United States.

Dr. Berger, Executive Vice-President of the American Council for Judaism, thinks and writes as an American who believes that “if Jews acted like other people” their religion would be no impediment to their becoming fully-integrated citizens. He boldly takes issue with the Zionists, who he says teach that Jews “can be secure only in Israel,” and claim to be “wiser and more practical than we with our faith in Western liberalism and individual rights.” With cogent logic he shows the great gulf that divides Judaism, a religious faith, from Israel-Zionism, which he describes as a national, political and secular movement “which seeks to involve Jews living in the West in a philosophy foreign to the countries of their citizenship.” He indicts the “Messianic pretensions” of the Zion-ists toward all Jews, and exposes the basic contradiction between their secularism and their appeal to Jews everywhere in the world “to sustain Israel as a part of their religion.”