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"The path of peace
is preferable to the path of war."
~ Yitzhak Rabin, November 4, 1995
President George Bush and the United States are in a serious
situation in Iraq for one reason only: neoconservatives will permit no
dissent.
Neoconservatives used their presidential appointments and Vice
President Cheney to silence the CIA and Defense and State Department
intelligence services, all of which disagreed with the neoconservatives�
case for invading Iraq.
The invasion did not result from faulty US intelligence. The
invasion resulted from the neoconservatives� confidence that they alone
are right.
While neocon policymakers closed down US intelligence, their allies
in the neocon media proceeded to silence dissenters. People with contrary
views, no matter how well informed, were branded unpatriotic and
anti-semitic.
Anyone who questioned the plan to invade Iraq was said to be for
the terrorists and against Israel. Some neocon media shills even went so
far as to declare that an American could not be both patriotic and against
the war.
By branding their opponents "anti-semitic," neocons created a false
picture of Israel as a closed society committed to war.
Ariel Sharon creates the same false picture of Israel when he
declares: "There has never been room in the Middle East for pity or
mercy."
But there are other voices in Israel. Many other voices, voices
that are tired of Sharon�s insistence on war.
"Israel has gone mad," declared the Israeli newspaper Maariv
when Sharon used helicopter gunships and F-16 fighter jets against
Palestinians in Gaza.
"Is it conceivable that some among us now consider the entire
Palestinian population our target?" asked a commentator in Israel�s
largest circulation daily newspaper.
Avraham Burg, speaker of Israel�s Parliament from 1999�2003 and a
Labor Party member of the Knesset, recently condemned Sharon�s
intransigence and reliance on violence as being the main threats to
Israel�s continued existence. It is not possible, he says, for Israel to
steal Palestinians� land and expect Palestinians to peacefully acquiesce:
"A state lacking justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis are coming
to understand this as they ask their children where they expect to live in
25 years. . . . The countdown to the end of Israeli society has begun."
"The Israeli nation today," writes Burg, "rests on a scaffolding of
corruption, and on foundations of oppression and injustice." Violence
cannot answer injustice, Burg says. "We could kill a thousand ringleaders
a day and nothing will be solved, because the leaders come up from below,
from the �infrastructures� of injustice and [Israeli] moral corruption."
An English language version of Burg�s statement is available in the
International Herald Tribune, September 6, 2003.
Many Israelis believe that Sharon has gone overboard with violence
because the US government no longer serves as a check. Bush�s
neoconservative policymakers agree with Sharon that violence is the
solution. Blown out of his "secure" hotel in Baghdad by rockets, US Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz vows to crush Iraqi resistance to US
occupation.
But violence hasn�t delivered for Israel. Israeli commentator Ran
HaCohen recently tallied the results of Israel�s assassination policy: 10
Hamas activists terminated and 180 Israelis killed in retaliation.
Avraham Burg says: "We cannot keep a Palestinian majority under an
Israeli boot and at the same time think ourselves the only democracy in
the Middle East."
Neither is invading Iraq the way to bring it democracy.
The Middle East is on the verge of wider war, because both Israel
and the US have gone mad at the same time.
It could have been different. Eight years ago this November 4,
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was greeted by tens of thousands of
Israelis in Tel Aviv�s Kings� Square with banners that proclaimed "Yes to
Peace � No to Violence."
 Rabin, a military man for 27 years, told the crowd: "I have
always believed that the majority of the people want peace, are prepared
to take risks for peace. And you here, by showing up at this rally, prove
that the people truly want peace and oppose violence."
As Rabin descended the steps to his car, a right-wing Jewish
student shot him in the back and killed him.
Violence begets violence. Today Israel is drowning in violence, as
are we in Iraq.
(Creators
Syndicate)
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Dr.
Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy,
Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and
Research Fellow at the Independent
Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street
Journal and
a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of
The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.
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