To the Editor: I appreciated the issue on Israel. I have been alarmed for years over the tie-up between the United States and Israel. I am sure that Israel's sales of arms to South Africa, Iran, Chile, et al. are done through the blessings (direct aid) of the United States. Israel is the conduit to supply these "recalcitrants" and violators of human rights while the U.S. hypocritically is outraged and cuts of direct aid to these nations. There is more than one way to get arms shipments to extreme right ruling factions, and Israel definitely fills that niche. That is why there are no conditions attached to military aid to Israel. As difficult as it may be, particularly in the first stages, it is time to start a groundswell of opinion against this blanket support, and to subject Israel to sanctions for its violations of human rights and rights to self-determination through the continued occupation of the territories and its assault on the Palestinians.
Yours for peace, Anne Medic Makarska, Yugoslavia

To the Editor: Thank you for the special April 1988 issue of Multinational Monitor devoted to America's special relationship to Israel. As far as I know this is the first comprehensive treatment of Israel's role in American political life to appear in the American press. The Monitor is to be congratulated on the uncompromising balance in fact and judgment with which it has presented the various aspects of the "special relationship." The articles, without exception, represent the highest kind of professional journalism, and though one may not agree with all the conclusions some of them arrive at, one cannot but respect the integrity they clearly exhibit. The Israeli-Palestinian issue is a central problem of American policy and, as the Monitor rightly points out, should become a topic of open public debate. When it does--as it no doubt will in the near future--the Monitor will have the honor of being the first national publication to have initiated that debate by laying its essential groundwork.
Sincerely yours, Hisham Sharabi Professor of History Georgetown University Washington, DC