THE NEW ISRAEL (Continued from p.5) Jews stopped living on borrowed experience, whether that of the European Jews who died in the Holocaust, or the Israeli Jews who have lived with a constant burden of struggle against implacable enemies since 1948. They will correctly point out that both Holocaust Jewishness and Zionist Jewishness have been tried in America, and been found wanting--if the epidemic proportion of intermarriage between Jews and unconverted gentiles and the suicidally low birth rate of American Jews may be taken as valid indications of a people's loss of the will to live. Nevertheless, it would be folly to suppose that our future can be separated from that of Israel. If the moral deterioration of Israel inevitably taints us, its political demise would have yet greater, more catastrophic consequences, whatever independence we might declare or the Beilins and Yehoshuas dictate. The foundation of the State of Israel, despite all the blood that has gone under the bridge since then, remains one of the greatest affirmations a martyred people has ever made, the affirmation that it will not die, but live. What I have called the "new Israel" may be the result of inevitable historical circumstances, but let us not despair prematurely. What has been made by history can also be unmade by it, and the historical currents set in motion by the foundation of the State may yet prove more permanent and powerful than the transient ones which created the present Israeli government. Shimon Peres has said that he is "totally tired of history," but the late Isaac Bashevis Singer used to insist that amnesia is the only illness from which the Jewish people does not suffer. Let us hope that Singer turns out to be right. Edward Alexander is professor of English at the University of Washington, Seattle. His latest book is The Jewish Wars: Reflections by One of the Belligerents (see ad this page).

New from Southern Illinois University Press THE JEWISH WARS: Reflections by One of the Belligerents "In essay after essay, Mr. Alexander identifies and takes to task a number of prominent figures in politics, journalism, education, and literature whose speaking and writing manifest attitudes of hostility to and sometimes even open hatred of Judaism and the Jews. These phenomena do more than just pique Mr. Alexander's curiosity: they engage his intelligence and passion like little else and have brought him to produce a series of polemic essays that at their best are almost without rival in contemporary American Jewish writing. Indeed, he has fashioned polemical writing into a pungent and effective art form, and in this mode he has few peers among today's American writers." --Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Indiana University Cloth, ISBN 0-8093-2011-8, $29.95 Phone orders: 800-346-2680 Fax orders: 800-346-2681 Mail orders: Southern Illinois University Press P.O.Box 3697 - Carbondale, IL 62902-3697

PLO COVENANT (Continued from p.1) participation in the charade elicited no response from most Republicans. Senator Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY) and Representative Jim Saxton (R-NJ) recently circulated totheir colleagues a letter to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, questioning the Charter hoax; only two Republican Senators, and 16 Republican Representatives, signed on. (Senator Jesse Helms, who did not sign, sent a similar letter separately.) It is troubling indeed that the vast majority of Congressional Republicans would choose to abdicate their role as America's conscience on foreign policy--perhaps the Clinton administration's most vulnerable area in this presidential election year. Herbert Zweibon is chairman of Americans for A Safe Israel.

Choice Quotes from Shimon Says Shimon Peres as: Jew Ich bin ein Bayer. (I am a Bavarian.) [Press conference in Munich, May 4, 1994] Moralist I believe it is fitting that the [Nobel] prize went to Yasser Arafat. [Nobel Speech, Near East Report, Dec.19, 1994] Economist Our forefathers were tourist-oriented! They built pyramids, holy places. [Speech to Council of the Socialist International, Lisbon, Oct. 6, 1993]

May 1996               - 11 -               Outpost