To the Editor:

"Israel and the Jews: Diaspora Blues," is critical of the  mainstream American Jewish organizations for continuing to support Israel on a number of grounds, including the premise that Israel doesn't need their support because the "the threat of genocide or of Israel's destruction has receded" and its existence is now taken for granted by most of the world.

How I wish that your premise were true. While Israel has developed enormously on the economic and technological fronts, and while some of the Arab states now acknowledge Israel's reality, in fact the threats to Israel are as grave as have existed for decades.

Iran, which aspires to be the world's next nuclear state, has explicitly and repeatedly threatened the existence of the State of Israel and denied the existence of the Holocaust. Almost all of Israel's Arab neighbors still refuse to recognize Israel's legitimacy and Hamas, Hezbollah and other extremist groups make sure that rocket attacks and suicide bombings are daily threats to Israeli civilians.

How all of this translates into the reduced vulnerability for Israel that you suggest is hard to comprehend.