T H E Q U E S T IO N O F P A L E S T IN E 41 humane values, and reassured them about Israeli dem ocracy. In turn, this view o f the A rab Palestinian inside the occupied territories carne to stand for what the A rab Palestinian was, what he wanted, how he felt. It would be exactly like sending a white "black affairs” officer to tell a visiting W estern intellectu­ al what the South A frican black m ajority really was, really wanted, really felt. O n ly, o f course, such a misrepresentation would be rejected as incredible. B ellow ’s To Jerusalem and Back gets its force precisely from this accepted, legitimated sort o f representation. Not that there was no evidence about what was really happening inside Israel. M any Israelis visiting the United States have remarked on how the main difference between an Israeli and an Am erican pro-Zionist is that the latter is a great deal less candid and open about Israel and its A ra b “ problem ” than the form er.31 For the cause o f Israel and o f Zionism in the United States (this is now less true o f Europe) is virtually sacrosanct; the founding o f Israel in 1948 is discussed with the same hushed breath and on the same high plane as the Marshall Plan. W hole segments o f the intellectual and academ ­ ic communities— to say nothing of the entire media industry— observe rituals about Israel and what it is all about that bear no comparison with any other cause. A t the drop o f a hat in 1974 and 1975, m ajor figures in the arts, in public life, and in politics from U N E S C O signed statements protesting Israel’s “ expul­ sion,” as it was called, and the United Nations’ condemnation o f Zionism as a form o f racism. O nly occasionally did anyone— Noam Chom sky being the lone voice, so far as I have been able to determine— say anything about what has been and still was being done to the Palestinian A rab by Zionism and Israel, as the various practices discriminating against the “ non-Jew” in Israel were indistinguishable from other forms of racial oppression elsewhere. Instead, one could watch Daniel Patrick Moynihan attacking villainy and defending freedom in the moral and intellectual vacuum reserved for Israel and Zionism .31 The sociology o f what normally defines- a “ cau se,” or perhaps what an issue must be in order to be a cause, breaks