The keynote of Jewish history is not unity. The keynote of Jewish history is fragmentation, dispersion, and diversity. And to achieve a consensus out of this disruptive tradition is not the easiest of tasks.

Our starting point in recent days has been the certainty that there will be a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. I've had talks recently with the heads of the Israeli and Egyptian delegations and emerged convinced that a peace treaty will emerge despite some complex issues that remain to be solved. And thus we stand in the revolutionary era that begins, not in November, 1978, but in November, 1977, with Anwar el-Sadat's voyage to Jerusalem. What he achieved was to make a breach in the wall both of Arab rejection and of Israeli suspicion.

Now let us be frank with each other. Underneath the outer surface of Israeli life there has ilways been something choked and strangled, something cut off from expression, a terrible sense of insolubility, deadlock without end. The sense of being totally excluded from any affirmative contact with the neighboring world has been much more deeply at work on the morale and consciousness of the Israeli people than we might have wished to admit. And now all of a sudden the windows are open and the air comes rushing in.

Thus spoke America's U.N. ambassador, Andrew Young, during a press conference at the U.S. State Department after submitting his letter of resignation to President Carter on August 15, 1979. Young's resignation followed his "secret" meeting with the Palestine Liberation Organization's U.N. observer, Zahdi Labib Terzi, which violated U.S. policy of no contact with PLO representatives, a policy initiated in 1975 by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Talking about "political Zionism" is somewhat like talking about the social gospel. Is there any other kind? Even those who subject the biblical message to a thoroughgoing process of spiritualization and/or individualization usually retain substantial elements of its corporate and social dimensions. Without them it would be difficult to maintain any semblance of the Church itself as a community that, in one form or another, takes shape in the world, in society.

The recent uprisings in Iran took the world in general and the United States in particular completely by surprise. Indeed, the shah himself and his government were caught off guard. He had stated repeatedly in his frequent interviews with foreign reporters that there was a close bond between him and the people of Iran, that he was like a father to them, and that he loved them and they loved him.

If he actually believed this, then he must have been shocked to witness a grass roots revolt, the like of which had not been seen in the history of Iran.

Human beings find their dignity and honor in their identities. In the modern world, for various reasons, the most powerful form of identity has become national or ethnic identity. It is this that makes nationalism a more powerful force in shaping feelings and determining the structures of our world than even the great ideologies and religions. This fact is often obscured because we conduct political debate in terms of philosophies, whether they concentrate on economic arrangements or on constitutional structures: The confrontations are posed in terms of capitalism and socialism, democracy and totalitarianism, liberalism and Marxism. These are not, of course, unimportant issues, but they operate mostly within the matrix of the nationstate. The common assumption is that each state should have its nation and each nation its state.

On the way to Damascus, Saul became Paul. An orthodox Jewish rabbi became the foremost apostle of Jesus Christ. Saul was blinded by a sudden light from heaven and struck to the ground. Jesus appeared to him in person and talked to him. Something like this happened to Ezer Weizman on the way to Cairo. No sudden light came down from heaven, and the person who appeared to him was no apparition from another world. He was a human being—Anwar el-Sadat.

Actually, it happened in Jerusalem, when the Egyptian president was on his fateful visit to the Holy City. Having met all the important leaders of Israel, he asked to see Ezer Weizman. When Sadat was on his way to Israel, Weizman was in the hospital. Two days earlier he had had a road accident.

For America in the fall of 1979 the strategic center of the world is the Persian Gulf, and I shall discuss the effect of Middle Eastern developments on the security of that area. Certainly, nothing that has occurred within the past few months is reassuring. Iran is ruled by a regime—one can hardly call it a government—that practices an indigenous form of fascism with a medieval Islamic overlay. Its basic outlook is xenophobic; it opposes Western concepts of progress and, therefore, the West itself—and particularly the United States.

In this presumably secular age it may astound many people that religion is still one of the primary components of voting behavior. But how else can one explain facts such as these: German Catholic communities in North Dakota gave Kennedy over 90 per cent of their votes but gave Stevenson less than 25 per cent. A German Catholic precinct in Wisconsin gave Kennedy a comfortable 63 per cent but has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since. A German Lutheran precinct in Wisconsin went for Stevenson but gave Kennedy less than a fourth of its votes. Three Baptist precincts in Roosevelt County, New Mexico, gave Stevenson comfortable majorities but Kennedy less than a third.

There is a clear consensus in the foreign policy community that the United States should exert pressure on the South African regime to change its domestic racial policies. This is striking because it coexists with a feeling that, in the wake of Vietnam, the United States possesses neither the domestic political will nor the practical ability to determine events in other countries. Why then should South Africa be viewed as an exception? What is at stake for the United States in South Africa that would warrant an effort to affect the course of events there?

Never since ancient times,” wrote Frank Dilnot for the New York Times, “has a Continent received an individual with the expectation and interest that Europe will receive President Wilson….” The assessment was accurate. When Woodrow Wilson arrived in France on December 13, 1918, a month before the opening of the peace conference at Versailles, he came as the savior of Europe and was welcomed as such.

The trip to Europe was a gamble, one he himself had said would be the “greatest success or the supreme tragedy” of history. He realized that the statesmen of Europe did not want him at the peace conference, and for that reason alone he felt he must go. For him the conference would be a struggle between the forces of good, of the New Diplomacy, and the forces of the Old Diplomacy, which had brought about the Great War and were still being pursued by the statesmen of Europe. “Europe is still governed by the same reactionary forces which controlled this country until a few years ago. But I am satisfied that if necessary I can reach the peoples of Europe over the heads ortheir Rulers.” During the war itself Wilson's methods and goals had been resented by Allied leaders, but he had gone ahead in spite of them and had succeeded in obtaining an armistice based on the Fourteen Points. In securing the peace, he would use the same methods.

New York Times, December 31, 1978: Craig Claiborne, marveling over his recent gourmet experiences in the People's Republic of China, writes that he asked "an acquaintance long associated with so-called left-wing causes" "how to account for the excellence of Chinese cuisine in the present socialist atmosphere?" She replied: "In a proud socialist country such as China and Vietnam, food is as crucial and emotional a part of the culture as is their ancient art or their imperial palaces. To invite people to share their cuisine...and to serve it to them correctly, is to teach foreigners much about the Chinese soul."

A little over thirty-three years ago, when I was just under seventeen, I was a highranking, dedicated member of the Hitler Youth and one of Germany's youngest pilots. Although the Hitler Youth was far larger than the Nazi party itself in membership, I don't hold myself responsible for the rise of Hitler, the outbreak of the Second World War, or the persecution of Jews and other so-called "sub-humans." I dearly wish, though, that it had never happened. It must never be whitewashed or forgotten.

It is impossible for any fair-minded German to deny the genocide of the Jews or to explain how it could have happened without sounding like a pious hypocrite or simple-minded apologist.

Salt II looms as the subject of our next great national debate. The SALT sellers and the Salt shakers have already outlined their campaign plans. And it is plain even now that a major element of the debate will be the verification process. As the intensity of the debate grows, so too does the likelihood of confusion for a public assailed by cries of alarm on one side and smooth assurances on the other, both proffering platoons of experts, dazzling data, and prognostications of doom if their views are not accepted.

Ron McLean is a hangover from another era, an aging hippie who still does his hair in a graying pony-tail nearly a decade after he first carried placards and shouted slogans denouncing Japan's support for U.S. policy in Vietnam. For the past eight years of his existence in Japan, though, McLean waged a different kind of crusade—this one against an official ruling that finally forced him to leave the country and return to Hawaii to pursue his academic interest in classical Japanese music.

“The government of most countries is intended to protect the rights of the individual,” he said with the didactic air of one who has just discovered a basic truth. “In Japan it's to protect the government.” He was talking in the half light of one of those glittering little coffee shops that purvey a small cup for the equivalent of nearly two dollars and a piece of cake for twice as much.

SALT, the strategic arms limitation talks between the United States and the Soviet Union, has been formally in progress since 1969, spanning the administrations of three American presidents. The often understated emphasis has been on maintaining strategic stability through quantitative limits and qualitative shaping of forces, present and future, and through formally agreed-upon ceilings rather than on the reduction of existing systems or inventories.

Twice in these past twelve months portentous change has shaken the Middle East. First, the demise of the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran and its replacement by a fundamentalist, theocratic regime; and second, on an entirely separate plane, the successful negotiation of a contractual peace between Egypt and Israel. These have truly been sensational changes in terms of their strategic significance. Though unrelated and dissimilar in their respective thrusts, each is revolutionary. Each in its own way has profoundly altered the balance of forces in that turbulent area. And not surprisingly, each has required American, European, Soviet, and other leaders to reassess some of the basic premises upon which their policies toward the Middle East have for years been predicated. Within the area, as well as outside it, each has evoked sharply mixed reactions—hope, concern, apprehension, and dissension, depending upon the point of view of the beholders.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is convening a World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (WCARRD) at FAO headquarters in Rome from July 12 to 20, 1979. This will provide a unique opportunity— perhaps the last, best chance—to come to grips with a problem that has long been crying out for an aggressive, well-planned attack.

The trends are disastrous. The hour is already late. With each passing day some 200,000 more people are added to the world population, mostly to the poor nations to swell the ranks of their destitute.