JO T1IE QUESTION OF PALESTINE appropriated cultural ideas about them unquestioningly. Y e t along with six other notables, Niebuhr signed a long letter to The New York Times on N ovem ber 2 1 , 1947, in support o f the idea o f partitioning Palestine. Here is the core o f their argument: Politically, we would like to see the lands of the Middle East practice democracy as we do here. Socially and economically, we would want these lands to develop in a manner which would improve local conditions of life and open up both the resources and the markets of the region. In other words, however we look at it, American interests, seen from a long-range view, dictate speedy modernization of the Middle East in all the spheres of human endeavor. Whoever approaches the Middle East with even a minimum of objectivity has to admit that thus far there is only one vanguard of progress and modernization in the Middle East [note here the appropriation of quasi-Marxist language to promote a fundamentally colonialist scheme], and that is Jewish Palestine. A second factor for progress is Christian Lebanon which, at the moment, is artificially subdued by the Pan-Arabists and Pan-lslamists of the Arab League against the will and sentiments of Lebanon's Christian majority. But for these two islands of Western civilization, Jewish Palestine and Christian Lebanon, the Arab-Moslem Middle East pre­ sents a hopeless picture from an American viewpoint. N iebuhr’s intellectual authority has been very great in Am eri­ can cultural life. W hat he says here, therefore, has the force o f that authority. Y et to the A rab Palestinian, insofar as he is the object o f that force, Niebuhr’s remarks are nothing short of violent. “ W e would like to see” and “ we would w ant” for these lands— populated by millions o f Muslim Arabs when Neibuhr spoke for them— suggest that what these lands want and wish are o f little interest. Our wishes ought 10 override their wishes. Our wishes stale by irreducible fiat that “ there is only one vanguard o f progress,” constituted by two tiny minorities, one im ported, the other native. It never seemed to occur to the signatories o f the letter that the wishes o f the vast m ajority of