On the Right

Jerusalem, March 10—I asked Mrs. Golda Meir why she does not call more pointedly to the attention of world Jewry the threat posed by the relative military weakening of the United States and by the post-Vietnam nonchalance with which we are being urged to regard our mutual defense treaties. She replied that although it was unquestionably her own conviction that these trends were threatening, nevertheless it would be unfitting for her to presume to speak to all the Jews of the world concerning political matters. But, I said, you are chief of the government of Israel, and Israel is more than merely a state, is it not? “It is and it isn’t,” Mrs. Meir explained; vexedly, because she wrestles, every day, with the two Israels.

There is Israel the formal state. She is the head of its government, and as such she must observe the conventional protocols, and one of them is that you do not permit yourself to instruct people in other countries, whatever their ties to your own, on how to analyze the international political situation.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

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

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Jerusalem, March 10—I asked Mrs. Golda Meir why she does not call more pointedly to the attention of world Jewry the threat posed by the relative military weakening of the United States and by the post-Vietnam nonchalance with which we are being urged to regard our mutual defense treaties. She replied that although it was unquestionably her own conviction that these trends were threatening, nevertheless it would be unfitting for her to presume to speak to all the Jews of the world concerning political matters. But, I said, you are chief of the government of Israel, and Israel is more than merely a state, is it not? “It is and it isn’t,” Mrs. Meir explained; vexedly, because she wrestles, every day, with the two Israels.

There is Israel the formal state. She is the head of its government, and as such she must observe the conventional protocols, and one of them is that you do not permit yourself to instruct people in other countries, whatever their ties to your own, on how to analyze the international political situation.