Head of Professors for Peace in Middle East Pessimistic on Peace Prospects

An American historian just back from an official fact finding mission to the Middle East told an audience of B’nai B’rith Youth Organization leaders here that long run prospects for peace between Israel and the Arab states are very dim. Dr. Allen Pollack, assistant professor of Western history at Pittsburgh University, based his prognostication on the implacable hatred for Israel being taught in Arab schools at all levels of education. “From the elementary classroom to the college,” he said, “a major subject of study is Palestinian history, with unremitting emphasis on the historic responsibility of every Arab to be willing to die, if necessary, in the inevitable war against Israel.”

Dr. Pollack and three colleagues recently returned from a visit to Egypt and Jordan to which they were officially invited as representatives of the newly formed American Professors for Peace in the Middle East. Dr. Pollack is national secretary of the group. He said that the “vicious hatred” of Israel expressed by Arab scholars, many of them graduates of leading American and European universities, was even more intense than that of Arab political leaders. “Particularly disheartening,”he said. “was Irrationality on the subject of Israel – including paranoic belief in the myth that Jews control American society – (which) afflicts virtually the entire intelligencia, the one group we had expected to be more reasonable.” Dr. Pollack said the Arabs fully expect many more wars with Israel, the last one of which they expect to win whatever the human costs.”If the Jews were able to wait thousands of years to reclaim Israel, they say they, too, can wait indefinitely until they are able to retake Palestine,” Dr. Pollack said.