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ARAB REACH: The Secret War Against Israel by Hoag Levins

ARAB REACH: The Secret War Against Israel

By

Pub Date: Feb. 11th, 1983
Publisher: Doubleday

At first and second glance, this is a tacky, alarmist work predicated on the Arab threat to Israel via possession of the F-15 (since 1978) and the Awacs early-warning craft (since 1981), and the Arab lobby's victory over the Israeli lobby in the latter instance. (""That summer, the country witnessed some of the most dramatic political and diplomatic events of our times. Never had the courtship of such Muslim nations as Saudi Arabia assumed such high priority in the White House. . . Never had the White House moved so resolutely against Israel in actions and words. . . Never had so many members of Congress broken so openly with the Israeli lobby. . . Never had criticisms of Israel and its lobby been so open. . . ."") And, ""in less than a year,"" the Saudi ambassador would savor another victory ""as he helped unseat a US Secretary of State""--Haig, of course--""who declined to soften his pro-Israeli view."" Much of the balance of the book ticks off, less rhetorically but no more responsibly, the growth and spread of Arab wealth-and-influence (""The Rise of the Sword,"" ""The New Sea Lords,"" ""Petro-Yen and Palestinians,"" ""Coming Home to Houston"") in all fields and all regions. Interspersed, however, are at-least-equally derogatory references to the Israelis--and, with misanthropic abandon and wild inaccuracy, just about everyone else. (The controversial 1975 UN resolution is said to have decreed ""that Zionism--the nineteenth-century European philosophy which held that only Jews had a right to certain lands in Asia--was the same as apartheid--the nineteenth-century European philosophy that only whites had a right to certain lands in Africa."") The upshot of this schizoid exercise is the threat of an Israeli atomic assault (as was broached, in desperation, during the Yom Kippur War). ""In the Negev, the tools of a nuclear Masada await only the final turn of a screwdriver and the orders of the leaders of an increasingly unstable land of Eurocentric civilization which for nearly four decades has strained relentlessly toward the borders of Eretz Israel."" (""A single blast. . . could also destroy the world's oil supplies."") Dreadful stuff.