June 21, 2011
Tom Maertens
In
most times and places in history, it would be considered disloyal —
or worse — for politicians to support a foreign leader over
their own.
But
in 21st Century America, this is considered normal.
A
fawning Congress recently gave Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing
Israeli Prime Minister, 29 standing ovations for his speech
criticizing President Obama’s Middle East peace proposal, a
spectacle even the pro-Israel New York Times labeled “pandering.”
Every prominent Republican (and some Democrats) who could find a live
microphone attacked Obama’s proposal. The worst sycophants even
praised Netanyahu for lecturing Obama during a White House photo
op.
What Obama suggested — basing negotiations on the
1967 borders with land swaps — was virtually identical to a
joint statement issued last November by Netanyahu and Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton. Indeed, Israel’s former Mossad chief,
Meir Dagan, recently criticized Netanyahu for having foolishly
rejected a Saudi peace initiative that promised full diplomatic
relations in exchange for a return to the 1967 lines.
Dagan’s
comments also suggested that Netanyahu’s judgment was faulty,
which is now self-evident: Netanyahu just picked a fight with the
leader of Israel’s only friend in the world.
So why does
Congress fawn over Netanyahu? For the most part because
it pays.
For example, 70
percent of campaign funds the Republican senator I once worked for
received came from pro-Israel groups, including Christian Zionists.
This is not unusual.
Some
of the fervor comes from true-believers, represented by the “JINSA
crowd” (Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs),
as Colin Powell called them, led by former JINSA
board members Dick Cheney and Douglas Feith.
For them, no sacrifice is too great to defend Israel; they
essentially orchestrated the invasion of Iraq. As Philip Zelikow,
executive secretary of the 9/11 Commission said, “(T)he ‘real
threat’ from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The
unstated threat was the threat against Israel.”
They
emphasize Israel’s “strategic value” to America,
which presumes we would use Israeli territory to attack Arabs. But we
have never stationed forces in Israel except for a few Patriot
anti-aircraft batteries during the first Gulf War. In contrast, there
are more than a dozen U.S. bases in neighboring Arab
countries.
Another favorite claim is that Israel is an outpost
of democracy in the Middle East. But Israel is not a democracy for
Palestinians. Been there, seen that.
By any impartial
assessment, we
have little to show for this relationship except Arab hostility,
which led to two oil embargos in the past
— retaliation for supporting Israel in the 1973 war. OPEC
itself was created as a result of the America’s one-sided
position in the Middle East and has cost us trillions in higher oil
prices.
In addition, Congress has approved over
$100 billion in direct aid to Israel since the mid-’70s,
purportedly to enhance U.S. security, but how are we more secure?
What that money does is subsidize religious extremists who steal more
Palestinian land. George H.W. Bush termed them “an obstacle to
peace” when there were 100,000 settlers; now there are 300,000,
plus 200,000 more Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem.
A more
immediate problem is Iran. The ex-Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, publicly
fretted that the simultaneous retirements of the military chief of
staff, Gabi Ashkenazi; the director of the Shin Bet internal security
agency, Yuval Diskin; and his own, means there is no one to stop
Netanyahu from “dangerous adventures,” such as attacking
Iran.
The Israel lobby has been beating the drums for us to
attack Iran for years, led
by John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, who once made the
claim that it is unpatriotic for Americans not to support Israel.
Anyone who disputes such assertions risks
being branded as anti-Semitic,
as if criticizing a state were equivalent to discriminating against
Jews.
But Iran poses no real threat to the U.S., and —
despite Ahmadinejad’s inflammatory rhetoric — little
threat to Israel, whose
nuclear arsenal far surpasses anything Iran could possess in the
foreseeable future
(See “The Samson Option” by Seymour Hersh). Mohamed
ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient and former IAEA
director-general, said recently, “I don’t believe Iran is
a clear and present danger. All I see is the hype about the threat
posed by Iran.”
He is not alone: All 16 U.S.
intelligence agencies concluded “with high confidence” in
a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran had halted its
nuclear-weapons program as of 2003.
We can’t be misled
and stampeded again by Israel’s Fifth Column into another
unprovoked war on Muslims to protect Israel.
Tom
Maertens describes himself as a political centrist who has worked in
the White House in the area of national security for both a Democrat
and a Republican, and in the U.S. Senate for both a Republican and a
Democrat. He is part of a Free Press team of readers from all
political viewpoints asked to write columns.