NOVEL COVERAGE

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I am deeply grateful and appreciative of your report on my talk at Harvard on Tuesday November 13, 1973 on the Middle East situation. The coverage you have given to an Arab spokesman is a novel experience in American Journalism where the Arab point of view has seldom been presented. However, may I seize this opportunity to correct certain inaccuracies in your report which must have resulted from the lack of a prepared text. Contrary to what you have reported I have stated that one of the important results of the 6 October. War is the shattering of the myth of Israel's military invincibility.

It is not according to me but rather to more knowledgeable sources like the President of the United States and Secretary of State Kissinger, that the massive American military airlift to Israel was essentially responsible for sustaining Israeli war effort in mid-fighting. In fact all previous assertions that Arabs a) cannot make war b) would not dare make war since Israel has obtained all the military hardware she needed prior to the October fighting c) that Israel's pre-October cease fire lines were so invincible that no one would dare attempt to cross them, have been totally discredited.

The view that I expressed then and which I still maintain is that without the massive U.S. material support Israel would not be so intransigent as to attempt to maintain a colonial domination of Arab territory in the days where colonial acquisition has become something of the past. That is why I believe that the United States, not because of self-interest (which is a valid argument), but because of the dearly cherished anti-colonial ideal of the American people, has the right and the duty to tell Israel that we will protect your existence but not your colonial conquest. Talib EI-Shibib   Ambassador   Permanent Observer   League of Arab States