THE GULF WAR: The Battle Front : Words on the War
“Just as Ronald Reagan defined a new center of American politics, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir defined a new center of Israeli politics. Among all of Israel’s leaders, perhaps only Shamir could have HELD THE LINE AGAINST INSTANT RETALIATION on Iraq. The state of Israel was founded in part to avoid ever again passively allowing the sacrifice of Jewish lives as the price of existence in a non-Jewish world. This makes Shamir’s restraint more than just the act of a moderate; rather, it is the gesture of a statesman. It holds the promise of a new point of departure for peace between Arab and Jew at war’s end.â€
-- ALFRED BALITZER, adviser to the Simon Wiesenthal Center and assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.
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