lieving that the Israeli Army should not be sent into battle without the direct support of at least one great power. On the morrow of the war, he first raised his voice for a typical Ben-Gurion-like demand: to raze to the ground the beautiful walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. He objected to them because they do not represent the old Israeli era, but are a reminder of the medieval Turkish phase of the history of Palestine. Fortunately, this demand did not arouse any undue enthusiasm but was viewed as a trick to attract attention to himself after a victory with which were associated the names of Eshkol, Dayan and Rabin.

After this intermezzo, Ben-Gurion had to grapple with the fundamental problem raised by the victory. He was torn between his natural desire for further expansion, inherent in the Zionist colonizing idea, and his equally strong belief that Israel must remain homogeneously Jewish. Some of his closest friends, including the poet Nathan Alterman, are conducting a rigorous campaign for the annexation of all the conquered territories in order to "liberate" what constitutes "the whole of Eretz-Israel." Ben-Gurion has not openly joined them, but neither has he repudiated the idea. Instead, Ben-Gurion is concentrating, since the Six-Day War, on two themes: increasing the Jewish birthrate and expanding Jewish immigration. Harping on these twin themes day after day, accusing his hated successor, Eshkol, of criminal negligence, he has advocated the setting-up of a new Jewish organization to stimulate the natural increase. This cannot be done by the state, he insists, because the state cannot discriminate between Jew and Arab. Only a purely Jewish body can encourage Jewish birth, without doing the same for the Arabs. On the other hand, he wants the government to deal with immigration. The Zionist organization which deals with it now is, he says, inefficient, hypocritical and useless.

Both campaigns are rather illusory. In the present stage

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