“Stability in the Middle East can result only from the de facto neutralization of the area by means of a joint guarantee of the peace by the two Big power blocs,” Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the Jewish Agency, declared here tonight in an address delivered at the New School for Social Research.
He declared that “a policy of this type would advance the more constructive tendencies within Arab nationalism, and open the way to the formation of a bloc of Middle East peoples and to Israel’s acceptance by the Arabs as an integral and equal partner in such a bloc.” Dr. Goldmann’s address was entitled “The Middle East, the West, and the Peace of the World.”
“The Near East,” Dr. Goldmann said, “is one of the most important areas in the world today. It is certainly the single most crucial area. Unless stabilized, it represents perhaps the gravest danger to world peace. Its instability results from the violent character of Arab nationalism, and from the clash between Arab nationalism and Jewish nationalism as embodied in the State of Israel.
“Like all nationalist movements in their early stages, Arab nationalism is negatively oriented and has not yet assumed its stride as a constructive force, which it must become if it is to perform creatively and usefully for the welfare of the Arab people and in harmony with all the peoples of the Near East, including the vigorous and democratic Israeli people.
“However,” Dr. Goldmann continued, “the most incendiary element in the Middle East today, far more serious than the nature of Arab nationalism and the tensions between Israel and the Arab states, is the cold war which is focused most violently on the Near East. It encourages the most extreme elements of Arab nationalism to play off the East against the West, and the West against the East. Soviet hostility emboldens them to entertain delusions of their capacity to destroy Israel.
The longer this cold war situation prevails, the weaker the West becomes because of the exploitation of its colonial record by the nationalist extremists and by the Soviet bloc whose methods of combat are ruthless and unconscionable, the Jewish leader pointed out.
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