The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite.

• Author: Maynes, Charles William

Because most Americans are the descendants of immigrants who chose to move to the United States, this country has always been somewhat suspicious of citizens who make the opposite decision to live abroad. Our diplomats are especially suspect. Robert Kaplan is therefore working with combustible material in his book, the story of the handful of Americans who over the past 200 years have chosen to learn Arabic and live in Araby.

Their fascinating history provided Kaplan with the material for an August 1992 cover article in the Atlantic, which has now been expanded into a book. The best pages in this study concern the story of early Christian missionaries who suffered incredible hardships to bring hospitals and colleges to the Middle East but few converts to Christ. Their subsequent contribution was that a number of their children, raised in the Arab world, entered the diplomatic service.

Some of this same missionary spirit survived even in the careers of those who were not descended from missionaries. Thus Kaplan describes the heroic efforts of the American Embassy in Khartoum in the mid-1980s to rescue thousands of Ethiopian Jews. According to Kaplan, the untold story of Operation Moses was the decisive role of American diplomats, who took great personal risks to carry this off. Ordered to maintain silence afterwards, they never claimed credit, while, as Kaplan notes, Israeli and Jewish-American sources rushed into print to highlight Israel's contribution, which was much less significant.

These and other human interest stories are the best part of Kaplan's book. But there is a more troubling subplot to Kaplan's study concerning U.S. policy toward the Middle East. According to Kaplan, the Arabists in the State Department collectively have inflicted great damage on the American people and government. Over the years they have maintained an unreasoning hostility to Israel, although he is careful to state that most are not anti-Semitic; they have virtually created Arab Sunni nationalism through their work in Arab higher education; they have excused outrageous Arab excesses in their zeal for better diplomatic relations between the United States and the Arab world; and, in the case of Iraq, they may actually have led their country into an unnecessary war.

Are these charges convincing?

Kaplan is certainly right that the Arabists have been more critical of Israel than most other American officials. And a failing of this group of diplomatic specialists...