One Minute to Midnight Dr. Irving Moskowitz AN EXTREMIST IN MODERATE'S CLOTHING A number of Jewish newspapers recently published a letter to the editor signed by "Dr. Daniel Thursz, former member of the President's Conference." With a title like that, perhaps it is no surprise that so many editors felt the author was such a significant individual that his letter warranted publication. The letter was an attack on Israel's Likud government, accusing it of harming the chances for peace in the Middle East by allowing Jews to reside in Judea and Samaria, and the term "President's Conference" no doubt misled some readers into thinking that the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations advocates what he wrote. Readers would have no way of knowing that

Thursz is, in fact, a longtime board member of Americans for Peace Now. In other words, the issue is not Likud's policies, as Thursz suggests--because his Peace Now organization was at odds with the policies of the Labor government, as well. Peace Now called for the creation of a PLO state and Israeli surrender of parts of Jerusalem; the Labor government said it opposed a PLO state and would never compromise on Jerusalem. When Rabin deported 400 Hamas terror leaders in 1992, Peace Now publicly attacked him for doing so. The extremist positions of Thursz's Peace Now movement are at odds with the vast majority of Israelis, Likud backers and Laborites alike. They are also at odds with the majority of the members of B'nai B'rith, of which Thursz was once executive vice-president. When Thursz ran for the presidency of B'nai B'rith in 1994, his Peace Now connections were publicized and he was resoundingly defeated by the voters. Israelis and American Jews alike have made it clear, time and again, that they reject the defeatist positions of Daniel Thursz and Peace Now.

PEACE AND SECURITY (Continued from p.8) instructive his words are. Let us hope that leaders of the democracies will understand the lesson. Bernard Smith is a member of the Advisory Council of Americans For a Safe Israel and the Board of Directors of the Jerusalem Institute for Western Defence. An abbreviated version of this essay appeared in the Jerusalem Post.

NOTES 1. The figure for the 3,421 years ending in 1968 are those of Will and Ariel Durant, cited in Donald Kagan, On the Origins of War (New York: Doubleday, 1995), p.4. Those for 1969 to 1996 are the writer's. Calculations for the 50-year period ending in 1996 do not include civil wars except those in Lebanon and Bosnia, where large external components were involved. 2. Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p.313. 3. See Ibid., pp. 575-77, 582 and Winston Churchill, The Second World War (London: Cassell & Co., 1950), I, 483, 508-9. 4. Ibid., p.546. 5. Kagan, On the Origins of War p.376.

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Outpost               - 12 -               October 1996