Posted By Leon Hadar Thursday, March 25, 2010 - 1:15 PM Share
[With the backdrop of the settlements and East
Jerusalem dispute, this is the first in a series of three pieces looking
at historical precedents and how they might inform the current debate.]
Nearly twenty years ago, President George W.H. Bush and his Secretary of State James Baker made it clear that they were not going to pursue the pro-Israeli policies of the Reagan administration and were expressing strong criticism of the "Greater Israel" policies of the Likud government in Jerusalem as they attempted to revive the Middle East peace process.
Today, another American president and Secretary of State are using a misstep by an Israeli government led by another Likud Prime Minister to pressure Israel to put a freeze the settlements in what Washington and the entire international community regard as occupied territories (including East Jerusalem). Once again, U.S. officials explain that the American failure to bring about a change in Israeli policy is damaging American credibility in the Arab world and making it more difficult to revive the peace process.
It seems the writers of the script for the 2010 production are thinking about making a re-make of the 1991 movie. In that case, they should consider that in that plot, the White House occupant refused to back down from a confrontation with the tough, nationalist leader in Jerusalem. He decided to take the diplomatic fight into the open, confident that the American public would support him. And he won. But history does not repeat itself. The political context at home and abroad are dramatically different today, and the Obama administration needs to learn the right lessons from Bush and Baker's experience if it hopes to prevail.
Bush and Baker's engagement with the Israeli-Palestinian issue, like Obama's, began early. In May 1989, Baker famously told an American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference that Israel should abandon its "expansionist policies," while President Bush reminded reporters that East Jerusalem was an occupied territory. The arguments then were the same as today. American supporters of the Israeli government argued that American pressure on Israel would not work and would prove to be counterproductive by creating an anti-American backlash among Israelis and if anything, it could strengthen the nationalist Likud government and Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir. The notion that Washington could and should use its power to force changes in Israeli policies -- even if such a move would be construed as "interfering" in Israeli politics -- was dismissed by pundits in Washington as unworkable. But it did work -- in part because back then, it seemed any Israeli leader who failed to preserve the close relationship with the United States would suffer in Israeli polls.
It was the Israeli government that provided the American administration with an opportunity to take action when in May, 1991 it asked the United States for a five-year, $10 billion loan guarantee package to help absorb immigrants from the USSR, Eastern Europe and Ethiopia. President Bush and Secretary Baker, who were trying to convene an Arab-Israeli peace conference in Madrid, Spain, decided to use the Israeli loan guarantees request as a diplomatic opening by sending a clear message regarding the most contentious policy issue in the Israeli-American relationship: the insistence by the Likud government to continue building and expanding Jewish settlements in the occupied Arab territories. They believed that this particular issue was damaging American credibility as a mediator.
Hence, on September 6, 1991, appearing with Baker in the Oval Office, Bush asked congress for a 120-day delay on the loan guarantees, a move that he described to be "in the best interest of the peace process," adding that he thought that "the American people will support [him] on this." Six days later, speaking from his podium in the press room, President Bush even threatened to use his veto power unless congress would delay debate on Israel's request for loan guarantees. The televised press conference ended up creating the conditions for an electoral earthquake.
Shamir and his defense minister, Moshe Arens, expressed strong opposition to linking the loans (what they described as a "humanitarian" issue) to the settlement debate. Shamir and Arens gave a green light to its Israeli lobby to launch a campaign to win congressional support for the loan guarantees request, confident that pressure from Congress and the public would force the Bush-Baker duo to back down. But they didn't. Enjoying high job approval ratings following the U.S. military victory in the Gulf War, Bush succeeded in holding off the coordinated political assault. The administration was able to win congressional support for a delay on the decision on the loan guarantees.
Bush's diplomatic victory on the loan guarantees helped the Americans win points in the Arab world, and led to another American diplomatic triumph: the convening of the Arab-Israeli peace conference in Madrid in October, 1991. The Americans continued to reject various Israeli and congressional proposals for compromise on the loan guarantees. In fact, during a congressional testimony in February, 1992, Baker insisted that Israel freeze the building of new Jewish settlements in the occupied territories as a condition for receiving the loans. And contrary to the warnings by lawmakers and columnists that the American pressure on Israel would help unite Israelis and American-Jews around the Shamir government, the debate over the loan guarantees instead helped produce political fissures between Jews in Israel and the United States with many of them arguing that Shamir was damaging the relationship with Israel's leading ally.
The crisis with the U.S. helped erode the support for the Likud government in Israel and brought about its crucial electoral defeat in the Knesset in 1992 -- which brought to power a Labor government led by Yitzchak Rabin. The new Israeli Prime Minister took immediate steps to repair the relationship with Washington and then went ahead to negotiate peace with the Palestinians (the Oslo Process) and with Jordan that helped strengthen Israel's diplomatic position in the Middle East and other parts of the world.
But there are many obstacles to a remake of High Noon, 1991. The current geo-strategic realities and domestic political conditions are quite different from those that existed in 1991 and may be less conducive for producing the same kind of an American-Israeli face-off that could translate to a change in Israeli policies. The United States doesn't enjoy the same global status that it benefited from in 1991 in the aftermath of the twin victories in the Cold War and the first military confrontation with Iraq when America was at the peak of its unipolar moment. It is still fighting two inconclusive and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has yet to recover from a devastating economic recession, and facing challenges from rising global and regional players. President Obama's weakened political position at home -- notwithstanding his political victory in the health-care debate -- is a reflection of the economic and military challenges facing the U.S. and restricts its ability to win a fight with the Israeli government.
Yet the fact that there are growing challenges to American power in the Middle East may leave Obama no other choice but to embrace the strategy pursued by the first President Bush. In a way, the costs of maintaining the current status-quo in the Middle East in 2010 could prove to be more costly for the U.S. -- and for Israel -- than any attempt to shatter it, even more than they did in 1991. A failure by Obama to prevail in his challenge to Netanyahu over the settlements would not only diminish the chances for reviving the Israeli-Palestinian process. It would also lead to greater erosion of U.S. credibility and power in the Middle East and play directly into the hands of Iran and its regional satellites as well as potential global challengers (Russia; China). In short, such a diplomatic debacle could weaken the power of Israel's global patron and make it even more difficult for Washington to protect the interests of the Jewish State.
Coupled with the growing agreement among the American people and their leaders that U.S. military power is overextended worldwide and that the current condition of the American economy necessitates major cuts in the military budget, the collapse of the American efforts to bring the Arab-Israeli peace process to a successful conclusion, may prove to be the final blow to American influence in the Middle East and could mark the beginning of a gradual U.S. disengagement from the Middle East, leaving Israel to face the regional threats to its existence on its own.
The U.S. is still in a position to influence the continuing debate among Israeli Jews about the long-term strategic goals of the Jewish state. On one side are those on the political right who hope to derail any chances for establishing an independent and viable and want to secure Israel control of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), including East Jerusalem) by establishing new Jewish settlements there and expanding the existing one. From the perspective of the members of Israel's ultra-nationalist camp, Israel is doomed for a never-ending and bloody struggle for survival with the Muslim World. Hence, they hope to ensure that the United States join the Israeli in this clash of civilizations.
On the other side there are those mostly liberal and secular Israelis that support the creation of Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capital that would side by side in peace with Israel as an outcome of negotiations leading to Israeli withdrawal from most of the occupied West Bank. They expect the United States to help provide them with the necessary margin of security to deal with threats from Iran and other regional threats. But they also want Washington to use its diplomatic power to help the Jewish State reach peace with its neighbors like it did during the peace negotiations with Egypt. And they recognize that continuing control of the West Bank would force the Israel to either provide the Palestinians with citizenship and turn Israel into a bi-national state or to deny them legal and political rights and be transformed into a Middle Eastern version of South Africa's Apartheid system. Their vision is that of a modern and westernized Israel that could become a commercial and scientific center in the globalized economy.
There is no reason why President Obama and other officials should not use the American connection with Jerusalem to try to strengthen those forces in Israel whose vision of the country's future converges with American interests and values. That would mean taking sides in the ongoing debate in Israel by making it clear that the settlement policy threaten Israel's ties with the United States, its lifeline to the international community. Cutting the U.S. economic aid to Israel by the amount it spends on building and expanding Jewish settlements could be on was to send that kind of clear message to the Israeli public and elites.
At the end of the day, some very hard and painful choices would have to be made by the Israeli people. But Washington is a position to matter. There is no reason why President Obama and other officials should not use the American connection with Jerusalem to try to strengthen those forces in Israel whose vision of the country's future converges with American interests and values. That would mean taking sides in the ongoing debate in Israel by making it clear that the settlement policy threaten Israel's ties with the United States, its lifeline to the international community. An Israeli leader who fails to maintain the American connection or worse, one who harms those ties - would eventually be punished by the Israeli voters like Shamir had been in 1992. A tough stand by Obama would force Netanyahu to consider that unless he changes Israeli policies he too could be facing the same political fate. It would be his own choice; but Obama could help him make it.
Leon Hadar is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of "Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East," (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
The author seems to desire that the Israeli government be cowered into submission by foreign goverment and accept an Obama diktat, and seems to believe that the Bush Sr. precedent is the way to go. Aside from the fact that any nation would likely react with a backlash against public foriegn bullying tactics, the authors ignores the many key differences that are not the same including:
1. Israel in 1991 did not go through a terror infitada killing nearly 1,500 and maiming many more as it did in 2000-2002. It also did not go through Hamas shelling of Sderot for nearly 8 years. So, Israelis are very very skeptical about Arab desires to make real peace with Israel.
2. The alternative politician in 1991 was the charismatic general Rabin, who embodied as best as anyone the heart of the Zionist ethos. Israelis were willing to give Rabin the benefit of the doubt. The fact, that the Oslo process only produced negative security returns only added to the disillusionment that even Rabin could not easily address (before his assissination).
3. The arab and Palestianians have done absolutely nothing to re-assure the Israeli public (as Sadat did in 1977) that they genuinally desire to make a permanent peace with Israel, (rather than a temporary truce on favorable conditions).
4. Obama has removed even a veneer of even-handedness by failing to demand (especially publically) a concession from the Arabs/Palestianians, especially on the symbolic elements of legmitizing Jewish existence and ties to the land of Israel in general and the Temple Mount in particular.
5. The demands at the time by Bush were very different and can considered slight when compared with Obama's. Obama appears to be demanding not just a settlement freeze but some kind of imposed aggreement, without allowing the Isrealis the option to reject (as the Palestianians have done for over 100 years).
Given these drastic differences, the author seems oblivous to the Israeli reality which will not respond to Obama pressure in the way that he believes. Moreover, even if Netanyahu goes, his postions are likely to be adopted by whoever proceeds him.
My point was that the Bush-Baker strategy did work and the Likud lost the election. And I did explain why the U.S. should try to influence Israeli public opinion -- these are not "bullying tactics." U.S. support is a national security asset and responsible Israeli leaders have to make choice: Settlements or American support.
It is fine for the US to apply pressure to Israel to end its settlement policy. But the biggest difference between this administration and GHWB is that, in the limit, Israel had no reason to doubt that the US would stand by its support for Israel and against threats posed by its neighbors.
Even a man from Mars would be hard pressed to look at this administration's policy toward Iran's nuclear ambitions and find a clue as to what our bottom line might be. There was a time when Obama made it clear that a nuclear Iran could not be allowed to happen -- period. Since his inauguration Obama has repeatedly moved (lowered) the bar and extended his so-called deadline.
The administration's actions may be perfectly defensible. Who knows? But the implied deal with Israel -- "we'll always back you if you will only change your policy on settlements" -- can't really inspire any confidence at all. If the US is as firm in its commitment to Israel as it has been in its commitment to bring an end to Iran's nuclear ambitions, Israel has good reason to accept the reality that trusting the US is a fool's errand.
Just like they say on financial offerings "past performance is no assurance of future performance."
Your comment illustrates clearly why Israel has no reason to blindly consider that the US will continue to support and protect it. And maybe there is no reason the US should continue that support. I am sure that there are many like you who would simply shrug your shoulders and say "tough luck" if Iran and Israel turned each other into glowing cinders.
Israel believes that it is facing an existential threat from Iran. The US huffs and puffs about Iran's nuclear initiative and does nothing but extend its phony deadlines and reduce its expectations. I think reasonable people should ask if there is any line that the current administration will draw anywhere in the world besides the apparent line it has now drawn for Israel. It is certainly appropriate for the U.S. to raise the issue of settlements in the world of "quid pro quo" diplomacy. But as far as I can see, the US is simply demanding the "quid" without anything remotely resembling a "pro quo" -- and demands nothing of the other side. It is surely reasonable for Israelis to consider what, if any, existential threat from their enemies would result in the U.S. "protection".
So far, the clearest message in all of the murk that Obama has sent to any of it our allies is that we care more about winning the hearts of our enemies than we do about keeping the hearts of our friends. Maybe Obama can work to win back Bibi's heart and mind by sending him an iPod or an autographed photo of himself.
The U.S. shouldn't do anything it doesn't want to do. This administration should simply stop the charade that it is a "friend of Israel" and that we have any stake whatsoever in Israel's fate (short of the Jewish votes that Obama is loathe to lose). Obama sees his best friend every morning when he shaves.
Thirty years of past support does not infer an infinite commitment to the Israel. Maybe it's time for a divorce. It would certainly give Israel haters some great prime time entertainment -- watching the Arabs impose their final solution on a country which they will never, never, never accept as a neighbor.
Perhaps Obama is right to humiliate and make demands on Israel. But if he is, he is dead wrong to not make any credible demands of the Palestinians and of Iran. Why should the Palestinians do anything at all? Obama is doing a great job of trying to wring unilateral concessions from Israel without any help at all from the Palestinians.
Beyond the appropriateness of the U.S. cutting Israel off, it makes little sense for Israel to continue to rely on U.S. promises inasmuch as Obama has shown no signs at all that he can keep a promise or respect a friend-- either domestically or internationally. Israel would have to be totally insane to trust him. For all of his blathering, he has not done anything which would signal that he is not ready to sell them out all the way.
But we all know that Obama would never cut Israel off because he needs the votes and contributions of American Jews. What Obama is most likely to get out of all of this is two rogue nations in the Middle East, neither one with any reason to believe or trust him. And both with increasingly strong motivations to go nuclear -- for real. And a single term hitch in the White House.
I must be living in alternative universe when the idea that the 1991 Madrid summit was "An American diplomatic triumph".
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The idea has long since passed that Madrid led to any substantial change in the mindset or actions of the Arab leaders or their populace.
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And nearly 20 years after Oslo, we see now as a bankrupt ideal, that was squashed repeatedly by Palestinian leadership who's only response to Israel offers was, NYET.
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That said, the push the arm twisting done by the Obama administration on Israel is so that he can get the two parties to hold indirect talks, hardly a percursor for peace. Meanwhile their Arab backers continue to emphasize the maximilist demands for Israeli concessions, while reiterating the idea that any peace accords with Israel will be at best, hostile indifference, rather than outright war.
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But we're told we should "trust Obama" and "trust the Arabs", without a shred of credible reason or evidence as to why.
am very pleasantly surprised at the reasoned and well argued article from Mr. Hadar of the Cato Institute -- a think tank that I always disagree with.
In my opinion, the comments here that expect that America to slavishly adhere to support of Israel's policies towards the West Bank, regardless of the consequences to either the Palestinian people or our international standing are in nothing short of cuckoo-land.
In the current situation, we are faced with an Israeli government that is even more right wing and extreme than the Likud government of 1991, and the fact that we are currently involved in two wars in the Middle East makes our position even more dependent on maintaining good relations with our Arab allies and the street. And our efforts there are compromised even more by the destructive policies that Israel pursues within the West Bank and Gaza. Most importantly, having the US government say no to the Israeli government is a pure and simple issue of human rights and justice.
All along, Israel has been depending on American military foreign aid, accepting this support as almost a birthright. And historically, Israel's human rights violations have been intensifying and have become ever more egregious in the eyes of the world. The Goldstone report does not lie.
American foreign policy towards Israel is fast approaching a juncture. Either we will do the right thing and eventually withhold military support for Israeli crimes against humanity, or we will roll over like puppies to the far right extremists in Israel and their AIPAC lapdogs. George H.W. Bush did the right thing in 1991. It seems to me that the Obama administration must take the same path, particularly because of Israel's double slap in the face regarding its continued West Bank expansion projects.
Just as Obama stepped up to the plate and demonstrated leadership with the health care bill, it seems obvious that he recognizes that eventually putting financial pressure on the Israeli government is the only appropriate course of action that can be taken if the United States government is to show that it has responsible leadership in this area.
You are absolutely right about one thing and I am sure most Israelis will agree with you if you really push them on this issue. Israel does not and should not recieve economic aid from the US. It doesn't need it with an advanced and growing economy that is also integrating its Israeli Arab citizens economically better than most west european countries. As for military aid, Israel could also live without the vast majority of it, as it often is really a form of pork-barrel weapons procurement (to help the american arms industry) and are often not necessarily to most suitable in the middle eastern setting. However the following conditions should also apply to the US:
1. Israel should not be restricted from developing its own arms system and if need be also to sell any advanced system it developes (Lavi, Phalcons Awacs, etc.) to whom ever it desires including India, China, certainly with as much freedom as western Europe has in its arms dealings.
2. Israel will undoubltly help in any anti-terror effortst to protect American and other Western or far eastern interests and will always go the extra mile given Israeli strong suppor for the democratic world and in particualar towards the American people not to mention its commitment to humanistic values (despite the severe biases of western media, they should remember where Christianity/humanism came born from?). At the same time, Israel as a lone country facing a 22 arab states and many more adverserial muslim states, should not face an unjust and rigged UN international legal system. ( or perhaps Israel should be a appointed permanenet member of the UN with veto rights, like France and UK are but India is not?). If Israel cannot be able to uphold its vital interests like the US can at the UN then one nation, at the very least, should support Israel in the security council. You can be certain that even the most militant Israeli would agree that Isreal would do the same if it could (I dont think you would get the same response from a militant muslim).
3. Despite your unwavering criticism of Israeli actions against the Palestinians (and I agree that sometimes Isreal errs in its actions), ask yourself if the tables were turned upside down, how would the Palestinians/Arab states (or even some non-Arabs states) have treated Israel if they had won the conflict? Would the there even the slightest semblence of respect for human/civil rights (Shalit still does not have access to independent medical care/letters from family, or vistation from the Red Cross). The truth is, that the almost blind hatred of Israel by some (particularly left leaning activists - mostly the result of continued long-term media bias against Israel) has prevented an objective understanding of this conflict. Just as a started consider that the Palestians under occupation (both in Gaza and WB) show a higher life-expantancy (according the WHO figures) than nearly all of the Arab world. If the occupation was so brutal then how could this be reconciled with such elementary objective facts describing basic welfare measures?
4. Finally, As for my previous letter (and in response to your comment), my reference was not to GWBush but of Bush senior (as the article write about).
Israels Actions: Ethnic cleansing, refugee camps, bombing refugee camps, invasions, leibenstraum, water theft, racist laws, spying on the US, murders and assasinations, plowing under palestinian crops, walls, checkpoints, cluster bombs, white phospherous, beatings, bulldozers, uprooted olive trees,endless lobbying for the US to go to war, massive intervention in US politics, payoffs, bribes, more land grabs,the premeditated attack on the USS Liberty, hurling all over Biden, humiliating the turkish ambassador, humilliating Obama, more spying, more land grabs.....But hey they have 'purity of arms" and are a "beacon of democracy"!
The US Response: F15s F16s, C130s KC135s, Appaches, cluster bombs, white phospherous, artillery small arms AH1s, Chinooks, Blackhawks, M113s, M60s, AWACs, Hummers, trucks, satelite intelligence, ( and they still couldn't advance mor than 5000 meters against the mighty Hezbollah!) rote knee jerk cover in the UN whatever the attrocity, billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions..all out of the pockets of the oppressed US taxpayer. Such a deal! Time to end our support and throw out the bought congress that gave us this!
However, the article is riddled with grammatical errors. I would expect better from FP.
My take on the whole thing, having studied and followed this ever since I was old enough to read and understand a newspaper living most of my early life in the Middle East until the age of 28, I'm 55 now, is if the Israeli power structure truly wanted peace we would have it.
Trouble is; they don't. I suspect the American power structure already knows this and shares the view that peace isn't the true objective. What is the true objective? IMHO it's the maintenance of power.
In my view we (the US) should treat Israel as any other "friendly" country and end the billions in subsidies used to repress and kill innocent civilians which enable Israel's worst behavior, which puts it squarely in the camp of "rogue" states.
that the comments here haven't devolved into name calling and accusations of antisemitism. Even when readers disagree they're at least civil. Thank you for that. This is one of the main reason I enjoy reading FP.
In no particular order, there are several problems with your views:
1. US support for Israel is a post-1967 phenomenon. In part, that is a result of recognition that Israel's victory in the Six-Day War gave the US a big boost in its competition with the Soviet Union, which may have manipulated the Arabs into starting this war. This aspect of US support accounts ultimately for much of the Left's opposition to Israel. Many people on the Left are too young to be aware of this fact. They also don't know that the Soviet Union sponsored the "Zionism is racism" resolution to provide itself with international cover for its campaign of defamation against Soviet Jews who sought to escape persecution in the USSR and the latent racism they faced there. The resolution had rather little to do with Israel, but is cited today to support claims that Israel is racist.
A second reason for post-1967 US support for Israel, very important in this context, is US recognition that it had squandered an opportunity to advance the cause of peace by forcing Israel to withdraw from Sinai after the Suez Campaign in 1956 without obtaining any Arab concessions on peace. Even Pres. Eisenhower, who had forced that withdrawal to maintain US relations with the Arabs, eventually understood that this had been a big mistake. And one thing diplomats work very hard to avoid is repeating past mistakes. Except that Obama now seeks to repeat this mistake.
2. When he was Finance Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu proposed that US economic aid to Israel be phased out over ten years. That process has now been completed, so your advocacy of stopping such aid betrays your ignorance of the actual state of affairs.
3. Military aid to Israel continues, but as some of your interlocutors have reported, most of it is spent in the US. Cutting military aid to Israel would almost certainly lead to Israeli companies expanding their output and efforts at selling internationally, in direct competition with the US. That would actually reduce US influence in the region.
4. The US gets no credit for anything it does to pressure Israel. Muslims believe that their interests are superior to those of other peoples by virtue of being Muslim, so they feel entitled to be served by them. (Substitute the name of any other ethnic group for "Muslim" in this sentence and everyone would recognize that it is a racist sentiment, but we don't acknowledge that for Muslims.) 9/11 came at the end of a decade in which US forces were used in support of Muslims in several places: Somalia (our presence there was an attempt to establish sufficient order to enable humanitarian agencies to function), Bosnia (where the US attacked Christian Serbs in defense of Muslim Bosnians), and Kosovo at the very least.
Meanwhile, the US is the principal source of funding for UNRWA, the special UN agency established to handle the Palestinian refugees (the only refugee group to have an agency for them alone), which, in 2009, finally decided the time had come to begin rehabilitation efforts among them. Objectively, UNRWA has been the worst thing to happen to the Palestinians because it has worked to keep them from integrating into the societies where they live, the outcome every other refugee group experiences. Yet every attempt to close down UNRWA is deemed "anti-Palestinian."
5. Although anti-Israel forces make this claim repeatedly, terrorist attacks against the US are not a result of US support for Israel. Rather, they reflect a long-term strategy for the Muslim takeover of the world. Muslim sources, especially in the Muslim Brotherhood, make no bones about this; that the West doesn't take them seriously is mainly a result of a mistaken belief that
there is no way they can succeed, so that isn't their goal.
Islamists label Israel the "Little Satan;" the US is the "Great Satan," and is thus the primary target. It would remain the primary target even if there were no Israel. Osama bin Laden didn't get around to blaming al Qaeda's activities on Israel until opposition to its attrocities against Muslims led to denunciations from the Muslim street.
6. What does the US get from Israel--
In economics: The chip in your computer enabling you to participate in this discussion was probably designed in Israel. Much medical technology comes from Israel. Israel is a leader in alternative energy technologies and will probably be where the alternative to petroleum is finally developed. Israel has a company working to convert vehicles to electric power. Israeli agronomists and water engineers have contributed very extensively to improving agriculture around the world. Israel is second only to the US in the number of start-ups and pattents issued. You probably don't know this, but Israel is roughly the size of New Jersey in both territory and population.
In security: Israeli victories against the Arabs contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union and the West's victory in the Cold War. Israel captured much Soviet-made hardware in these wars which enabled the US to study them and incorporate the knowledged gained in American military technology. Israeli intelligence is a keystone of the global war against terror and has helped thwart Islamist attacks, both in the US and around the world. US police forces go to Israel to learn how to prepare for attacks on their home cities. Israel destroyed Iraq's Osirak reactor, thus ending Saddam's effort to develop nuclear weapons. This made possible the US lliberation of Kuwait. Israel provided the technology that protects American forces in Iraq from IEDs. The financial value of this is far in excess of what the US has provided to Israel in financial aid.
This message could go on, but I'm sure you stopped reading it long ago, so I will finish here. The bottom line is that the anti-Israel Lobby is pushing a line of lies adopted ultimately from the anti-Israel propaganda of the Muslim Brotherhood. If you are female, gay, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, a liberal, etc., your future is being destroyed by your efforts.
Leon Hadar points to actions that are necessary for Obama to take in dealing with Israel that would serve the US regional and global interests, something that our unconditional support of Israel does not do, contrary to the myths purveyed by AIPAC and its like-minded pundits in the US media.
Bush Sr. took the unprecedented step of taking his dispute with Israel over the loan guarantees to the American people when he realized that the Congress, which had long ago defected to the Israeli side, had the votes in both houses to overcome his threatened veto. Never before nor since had a president spelled out to the American public the financial relationship between the US and Israel and that the Jewish state which he implied was ungrateful, received the equivalent of $1000 for every Israeli man,woman and child.
When the polls taken immediately afterward showed that 85% of Americans supported Bush, AIPAC and its lackeys in Congress scurried back into the shadows,biding their time.
The immediate reaction within the Republican Party was that the president lost some of his key supporters, like William Safire, and suddnely found himself blamed in the press for the state of the American economy.
Although he eventually released the guarantees after Rabin had replaced Shamir, Bush never recovered from the savaging he took in the media which chose to attack him on the economy rather than his stance on Israel.
Obama on the other hand, has not only been blindsided by Congress, 76 senators and 330 House members, including the majority of Democrats having signed letters last spring telling him not to pressure Israel even before his first meeting with Netanyahu, but as of yesterday, over 300 members of the House had signed a similar letter initiated by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, this one to Clinton, which called on her and the Executive to do nothing to harm the Israel-US relationship.
There is no question that if Obama went to the American people and told them the truth about the Israel-US relationship and how it negatively affects US interests in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of the American people would come to his side. But what would happen the next day and in the next election? The Democratic Party has become addicted to getting the majority of its major funding from pro-Israel Democrats, such as Haim Saban who in 2002, alone, gave the party $12.2 million. If Obama would take on Israel, that funding would either dry up or shift to the Republicans. That a majority of Jews might actually agree with Obama would be irrelevant because while they may vote Democratic, when it comes to money, they are not the Jews that count.
The tone of this article is identical to the state of George Mitchell - too old, too slow, too late. Here is what is important: Obama has proved himself to be an utterly amoral spineless politician (I voted for him 2X). He doesn't particularly care about America, per se (neither do the Republicans), although he pays lip service to it as do all politicians. And like all politicians, his only real concern is political pressure - and the masters in Israel, through their proxies in AIPAC and others, have put the screws to Obama and he knows it. Congress is in lockstep with Israel, no questions asked. If Israel were to nuke Chicago, Congress would pass a resolution of approval the next day. Obama has already caved - end of story. No controversy, no split, no "peace" with the Palestinians. Just a continuous muddling through at the expense of America (and at the expense of Middle East peace, with all its attendant horrors). This, on behalf of Israel's most extreme right wing - until one day when it finally blows up in our face, at which time it will be too late and we will reap the reward of our completely unprincipled actions. To pretend otherwise is just to put your head in a hole in the sand.
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