George W. Ball

INTRODUCTION: This year was in all respects a very heavy time," wrote the authors of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1097, and we can appropriately use the same phrase to describe 1980. To be sure our country was not engaged in war; the Danes did not raid our coast; America was still rich by world standards; and the harvest was adequate. But a doleful chorus of lamentation was heard not only in our land but throughout the non-communist nations. It had a persistent recurring theme. At a time when the Soviet Union was systematically extending its military reach, the United States was falling into apathy and incompetence. No longer did we Americans seem willing and able to assure the security of our friends and allies. No longer did we display the mastery of events that had given confidence in our economic, political and military leadership.

Most Americans approach the problems of the Middle East with a pro-Israeli bias - and rightly so. The desire of a dispersed people for a homeland cannot help but enlist the sympathy even of those with no Jewish roots, nor can any sensitive man or woman fail to be moved by the countless tales of valor and self-sacrifice in the years both preceding and following the creation of Israel. The brave Beauharnais with its desperate human cargo challenging the British destroyers, the poignant sage of the Exodus-47 - these and many similar incidents must recall for all Americans proud chapters from our own earlier history. Set against the grim background of the Holocaust, the story of Israel is a continuing chronicle of grit and enterprise, in which the Entebbe foray is only the most recent footnote. Yet the wonder of it all is that, while engaged in a seemingly endless struggle, the Israelis have managed to turn a desert into a garden.