The Hard Life

War in the Middle East is "almost inevitable by the summer of this year," Israel's brilliant Ambassador to the U.S., Abba Eban, told a New York fund-raising meeting of U.S. Jews last week. This official Israeli line had an "unless" to it--unless the Western world employs "firm, deliberate and speedy action." The kind of action Israel meant was U.S. arms aid, plus a military alliance. It is "folly," cried New York's old Senator Herbert Lehman, for the U.S. not to stand up for Israel against the Arabs.

Feeling not at all sure that it could count on the West, Israel battened down its hatches for trouble. It wanted peace but feared to sound weak, and stuck to its martial air in the week when the U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned it for the fourth "flagrant violation" of the Palestine armistice in three years.

Though the tiny country is already spending most of its income for defense, the Israel Labor Party's "emergency committee" proposed a new defense levy of $75 million--$50 for every man, woman and child in Israel (and the average national income is only $450 a year). Other recommendations: a ban on luxury imports, and conscription of persons between 35 and 45 to work in frontier settlements likely to face the first thrust of Arab attack.

Long lines of volunteers sprang up outside Tel Aviv and Jerusalem headquarters, and by week's end the first 500 volunteers left Jerusalem for Negev villages. When trade union federation bosses voted to demand a 5% wage rise, Premier David Ben-Gurion delivered a slashing attack on them for blindness to the need for sacrifices. "The question is," he said, "shall we equip army, navy and air force to enable them to repel the enemy or shall we raise our standard of living?" The answer came from the trade union's own newspaper Davar: "The nation must gird itself for a regime of austerity, self-denial and sacrifice."

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