ZGram - 12/4/2002 - "US Policy Toward Israel - Stop Pretending"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

December 4, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Another voice of reason!  Read it and pass it on!

The writer of this essay is a retired senior foreign service officer 
of the United States Department of State.

[START]

US Policy Toward Israel -
Stop Pretending
Terrell E. Arnold
12-4-2

State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher last week expressed deep 
US concern about recent civilian casualties, including the death of 
UN director of reconstruction, Mr. Ian Hook, resulting from Israeli 
military actions. That expression of concern, as far as it went, was 
appropriate and timely, but Boucher went on to say that the United 
States remains solidly behind Israel's efforts to combat terrorism, 
and he concluded by saying that Washington's concerns are not a 
condemnation of the Israeli offensive.

That formula appears designed more to avoid offending Israeli 
leadership than to secure corrective action, and the Israelis seem to 
treat the formula as a continuing carte blanche endorsement of their 
actions in the West Bank and Gaza. They normally reject rather than 
respond to any criticism.

In the meantime, under an asserted 'war on terrorism' the Israeli 
Defense Force operates without restraint throughout the West Bank and 
Gaza, keeps three million Palestinians under rigorous curfew and 
surveillance, has brought the Palestinian economy to a standstill, 
destroys homes and properties only alleged to be related to 
militants, protects old and new settlers as the settlements continue 
to expand, and regularly shoots people who are only suspected of 
being terrorists. On the other hand, the Palestinians, who have no 
army, are not supposed to fight back; if they do, they are treated as 
terrorists.

It is time for the United States to stop pretending that any part of 
the IDF operation in the West Bank and Gaza is acceptable. Israeli 
shootings of people who have neither been tried nor found guilty of 
crime, the IDF occupation, continuing settlement building, and 
Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as inferior are constant 
provocations to which the Palestinians respond with suicide bombings.

Both Israeli and US models of the War on Terrorism involve disturbing 
erosion of the justice system and of national sovereignty. Israel has 
the only armed force in Palestine, and we have not objected to 
Israeli use by the IDF of accusation and suspicion as justifications 
for killing Palestinians. We, the United States, therefore, have 
bought into a corruption of the international justice system by 
placing the fight against terrorism outside the law. The United 
States moved into this same shadow land with the assassination of six 
suspected Al Qaida members in Yemen. Israel ignores any sovereign 
rights the Palestinians may have or aspire to enjoy. The US has 
indicated that in the War on Terrorism national boundaries may not 
deter attacks on suspected terrorists.

US tolerance for Israeli excesses in the West Bank and Gaza is a 
reflection of our own creeping loss of moral focus. The Israeli 
treatment of Palestinians is not right, and we know it. We may use 
the Palestinian suicide bombings, as the Israelis do, as an excuse 
for the occupation, but those bombings are constantly provoked by IDF 
actions. As a rule, the United States would be working overtime to 
terminate the occupation of any other country by a hostile army, but 
not in the case of Israel. We would be screaming for explanations of 
such attacks as the killing of Ian Hook, but not from Israel. We 
would hold any other aid receiving country to legal standards of 
accountability and performance, but not Israel. And now we encourage 
the Israelis in their attitude toward international criticism or 
responsibility by ignoring Israel=E2s acquisition of weapons of mass 
destruction and Israel=E2s failures to comply with more than 30 UN 
resolutions, while pounding Iraq for far lesser infractions in both 
fields.

The =E3special relationship=E4 with Israel has been a cornerstone of US 
policy for more than half a century. However, from the beginning it 
provided political cover to Israeli excesses, starting with the 
systematic expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and property in 
the late 1940s, to which we did not object. In recent years, it has 
provided for greater economic and military assistance to Israel than 
to any other country. In fact, US aid to Israel in some years has 
equaled aid to all other countries combined, and if the currently 
requested package goes through, it will be more than twice US aid to 
all other countries in 2003.

What have we gotten for those enormous investments of our national 
prestige and treasure? Rewards are hard to find. The US Congress 
decided to fund the peace process initiated by the Camp David Accords 
by giving half of worldwide US assistance to Israel and Egypt, mainly 
to Israel. But at present and for the indefinite future Israeli 
excesses in the West Bank and Gaza are likely to remain the chief 
stumbling blocks to peace in the Middle East. Our largely uncritical 
support of Israel, despite continuing excesses, has alienated much of 
the Arab world and many others as well. And now, unless effective 
ways are found to moderate Israeli behavior toward the Palestinians, 
our future is at risk due to increasing terrorism by people 
sympathetic to the Palestinians and/or opposed to Israel.

The solution is not rejection, but a more balanced relationship. We 
cannot continue to acquiesce in Israeli military destruction of the 
Palestinian state. Polite criticism accompanied by unwavering support 
is a giant hypocrisy. We have to work on getting and keeping the 
Palestinians on a path to peace, but Israelis have to recognize that 
the special relationship is a two way street, and they must start 
delivering on their part of the peace process. Israel must accept 
that much of its current predicament is its own doing, and therefore 
the only way out is for Israel to behave responsibly toward the 
region and its neighbors. Israel should begin to repay its enormous 
debt to us, variously estimated at $85 billion, instead of using its 
clout with the US Congress to get that debt forgiven.

=46inally, we must not allow the War on Terrorism or the special 
relationship to undermine the values that have made our country 
great. No relationship with any country is worth that order of 
sacrifice. It is time to stop pretending that the relationship in its 
present form is a good thing. It clearly is not, and it is costing us 
dearly with everyone else.

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(Source:  =1Fhttp://www.rense.com/general32/pretned.htm )