42 T H E y L E S T t O N O F P A L E S T IN E down com pletely in the case o f Israel today, at least insofar as Israel is a subject o f discussion o f public debate. No liberal would be found silent championing the cause o f human rights in the Soviet Union, or C hile, or Africa. Yet when it comes to similar matters in Israel, there is an almost total silence. The subject o f military governm ent, its attendant abuses and human rights violations in Israel stubbornly resists any effort at making it a “ cause.” This is particularly striking in cases when sourccs cited by the very few critics o f Israel are Israeli sources. For years now the Israeli League o f Human Rights has been diffusing information on such matters as the demolition of A rab houses, the expropriation o f A rab lands, the treatment of A rab w orkers, torture and illegal detention of Arabs— all cases documented principally by translations o f articles in Israeli journals and newspapers. N one o f these items ever sees the light o f day in the United States, and not for want o f their being sent to editors, television columnists, prominent and (usually) outspoken liberals, etc. There are literally tens of Israeli news services, liberal newsletters, and liberal quarterlies regularly covering treatment o f A rab Palestinians both inside prc-1967 Israel and in the Occupied Territories— to say nothing o f U nited Nations reports, accounts written by former UN border and armistice supervisors, reports of international agencies like Am nesty International, the Red Cross, dozens of A rab and A rab-Am erican studies— none o f which is ever released for wide distribution and dissemination in the United States. The most recent, and in many ways the most outland­ ish, such deliberate act of omission concerns the London Sunday Times "Insight'’ Report on torture in Israel (June 19, 1977). Using an exhaustive series of investigative techniques, the Times revealed that torture o f Arabs is a regular, methodi­ cal, and officially sanctioned device in Israel: that hundreds of Arabs are being detained and tortured; that the evidence is wholly convincing that the state condones the practice as a way of intimidating, controlling, and terrorizing the “ native" population in the Occupied Territories. With only one known exception (the Boston G lo b e) not a single major Am erican new'spaper (or journal, w eekly news magazine, or television