The Open Question

The Israel Haters

The Litani—“mark well the name,” Daniel daCruz warns (“Letter from Beirut,” NR, April 8) — “may be the Sarajevo of World War III.” Now, in truth, it may be, but just as likely may the Rio Grande. For, in fact, there are about as many Americans who want to annex Mexico as there are Israelis who want to conquer Lebanon. Having planted his warning—as if it were something to fear for real—the correspondent from Beirut tells of a plot that dates back to 1919 when “the Zionists first claimed the Litani—in fact all south Lebanon, as well as the present Kingdom of Jordan,” etc. Among the plotters one finds a few names. Men like Eban, Allon and Herzl are mentioned. “When the Israeli push into Lebanon comes, as Abba Eban, Yigael Allon and Zionism’s founder Theodore Herzl among others insisted it must, then the moment of truth”—but here we must interrupt this Byzantine narrative in order to bring some order out of this propagandistic morass. In the first place, there was no Lebanon in 1919 (Lebanon was separated from the constituent whole of Palestine in 1920 and it was not until 1943 that the country achieved national independence, just about five years before Israel did); in the second place neither Allon nor Eban had yet been born; while the “founder of Zionism” would just as soon have settled for a river in Uganda as for the Litani.

MG

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Max Geltman

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The Israel Haters

The Litani—“mark well the name,” Daniel daCruz warns (“Letter from Beirut,” NR, April 8) — “may be the Sarajevo of World War III.” Now, in truth, it may be, but just as likely may the Rio Grande. For, in fact, there are about as many Americans who want to annex Mexico as there are Israelis who want to conquer Lebanon. Having planted his warning—as if it were something to fear for real—the correspondent from Beirut tells of a plot that dates back to 1919 when “the Zionists first claimed the Litani—in fact all south Lebanon, as well as the present Kingdom of Jordan,” etc. Among the plotters one finds a few names. Men like Eban, Allon and Herzl are mentioned. “When the Israeli push into Lebanon comes, as Abba Eban, Yigael Allon and Zionism’s founder Theodore Herzl among others insisted it must, then the moment of truth”—but here we must interrupt this Byzantine narrative in order to bring some order out of this propagandistic morass. In the first place, there was no Lebanon in 1919 (Lebanon was separated from the constituent whole of Palestine in 1920 and it was not until 1943 that the country achieved national independence, just about five years before Israel did); in the second place neither Allon nor Eban had yet been born; while the “founder of Zionism” would just as soon have settled for a river in Uganda as for the Litani.