-Caveat Lector-
--------forwarded message--------
From: Karolyn Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, December 23, 1999
Subj: *** Israel's Shame *** --safire--
December 23, 1999
ESSAY / By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Israel's Shame
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WASHINGTON -- Li Peng, China's hardest-line Communist leader --
the man famed for ordering the Tiananmen massacre -- was feted
in Israel this month.
After a visit to the Holocaust memorial, Foreign Ministry
officials took him to the Israeli Aircraft Industries facility
near Ben-Gurion Airport. He inspected a Russian-built plane,
owned by the Chinese, on which Israel is installing an advanced
AWACS battle-management system called the Phalcon.
Israel is charging a quarter of a billion dollars for the
aerial reconnaissance radar installation, and has a contract
for three more. It's a lucrative deal. It may also be the
biggest geopolitical blunder any Israeli government ever made.
Free Chinese on Taiwan have no such high-altitude early-warning
system. Combined with the new long-range and surface-to-air
missiles being installed by China in Zhangzhou, its Israeli
purchases will give it a "qualitative edge" in any military
confrontation in the Taiwan Strait. That would include, of
course, new ability for China to look down on and target any
U.S. warships sent to discourage invasion.
Why is Israel, a small democratic nation threatened by powerful
neighbors, helping to menace Taiwan, another small democratic
nation threatened by a nearby tyranny?
Prime Minister Ehud Barak has been ducking me on this (Shimon
Peres and Yitzhak Rabin were more courageous about facing
embarrassing questions), but here are the reasons behind
Israel's amoral policy:
1. Arms exports enable Israel to improve its own defenses.
Besides, America's Boeing and Loral have done more to build
Beijing's military than all other nations combined.
2. China offers a huge market for Israeli technology; moreover,
its position on the U.N. Security Council offers big-power
diplomatic engagement long limited to the U.S.
3. Israel has avoided the transfer of technology it received
from the U.S. to any third party without clearance; Phalcon
avionics were Israeli-developed. And the U.S. for years did
not object to Israel's efforts to follow the U.S. into the
Chinese arms market.
4. China's vast network of human intelligence agents can,
better than U.S. satellites, relay secret information to Israel
about North Korea's sales of missiles to Iraq and Russia's
nuclear development of Iran.
That's the case for Israel's supply alliance with China against
Taiwan. Here is the case against:
This flies directly in the face of United States security
interests. When China last threatened Taiwan, President Clinton
was forced to put two U.S. aircraft carriers into the strait.
When that happens again, American forces will be directly
threatened by Chinese air, naval and missile forces emboldened
by Israel's Phalcon battle management.
That's why the Senate Foreign Relations chairman, Jesse Helms,
long a supporter of Israel, wrote to its government privately
on Nov. 17: "The Pentagon has informed me that this system may
be more advanced than the U.S. AWACS and will definitely
enhance China's power projection capabilities. ... United States
security will be put at risk by the Phalcon and other Israeli
sales to Beijing."
Though candidates for U.S. president today are fearful of
raising this question, American supporters of Israel want to
know: If Israel tips the technological military balance
against a democratic American ally in Asia, why should the U.S.
guarantee that Israel continue to have a "qualitative edge" in
the Middle East?
Throughout the cold war, Israel and America were together on
the side of freedom. In the coming superpower rivalry in Asia,
will Israel choose neutralism? And when the multibillion-dollar
bill comes in to subsidize a settlement with Syrians and
Palestinians, will Israel's prime minister seek economic aid
from his big new Asian customer?
Let's talk tachlis, Yiddish for "brass tacks": If the freedom
of an island with 22 million souls is of no concern to Israel,
the world will care even less about 6 million Jews getting
pushed into the sea. Israeli survival has one dependable
guarantor, and the powerful U.S.-Israel alliance is nothing
without its moral dimension.
That's why some of us hope that after being shown around the
Holocaust museum and the Phalcon plant, the "butcher of
Beijing" did not get an idea for the final solution to the
Taiwanese question.
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Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
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