James Baldwin on Palesine

In a letter from 'Israel' written on October 8, 1961, James Baldwin told his agent, Bob Mills: “I personally cannot help being saddened by the creation, at this late date, of yet another nation – it seems to me that we need fewer nations, not more: the blood that has been spilled for various flags makes me ill [. . .] O perhaps I would not feel this way if I were not painfully – most painfully – ambivalent concerning the status of the Arabs here. I cannot blame them for feeling dispossessed; and in a literal way, they have been. Furthermore, the Jews, who are surrounded by forty million hostile Muslims, are forced to control the very movements of Arabs within the state of Israel. One cannot blame the Jews for this necessity; one cannot blame the Arabs for resenting it. I would – indeed, in my own situation in America, I do, and it has cost me – costs me – a great and continuing effort not to hate the people who are responsible for the societal effort to limit and diminish me.