Date: Thursday, March 25, 2010, 1:13 PM
Stop Funding the Israelis
Posted By Justin Raimondo On March 23, 2010 @ 11:00 pm
If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the AIPAC conference
isn’t a reason for the US to declare – finally – that they’ve had quite enough
of the "special relationship, " then nothing is. After ambushing the Vice
President of the United States with an announcement that new "settlements" are
in the works, the Prime Minister then took his anti-American jihad to the
enemy’s very gates, in Washington, D.C., where he invoked what Cato policy
analyst Justin Logan trenchantly described as "the fallacy of ‘39":
"Seventy-five years ago, many leaders around the world put their heads in the
sand. Untold millions died in the war that followed. Ultimately, two of
history’s greatest leaders helped turn the tide.
"Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill helped save the world. But
they were too late to save six million of my own people. The future of the
Jewish state can never depend on the goodwill of even the greatest of men.
Israel must always reserve the right to defend itself."
It’s always 1939 for Israel’s amen corner, and the Holocaust is always invoked
as justification for whatever atrocities they’re whitewashing at the moment,
but, really, one has to ask, if the Israelis are so damned independent- minded,
why don’t they start "defending" their state all by their lonesome selves? That
means we can pull the billions we send them – both economic "stimulus" and
military aid, not to mention generous loan guarantees – or, better, yet, let
the Israelis send those billions back. Then we’ll see how much actual substance
is behind all the bluster, the boasting, the heroic posturing – exactly nil.
Referring to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, Netanyahu averred that
"Today an unprecedented threat to humanity looms large." Unprecedented? Really?
Yet he’s old enough to remember the cold war well, a time when the Soviet Union
and the United States faced off in a nuclear stalemate that nearly erupted into
a hot war. Has he forgotten? I doubt it.
The Soviet Union possessed thousands of nukes: Iran, on the other hand, has yet
to produce a single nuclear weapon, and, according to our CIA, they abandoned
their nukes program in 2003. While they could restart at any time, presumably –
albeit not without encountering the technical problems that seem to perpetually
bedevil them – this is hardly the equivalent of the US-USSR nuclear standoff.
Yet we’re quite used to the hyperbolic language the Israelis routinely employ
to describe the threats – real and imagined – faced by the Jewish state. To
hear them tell it, a reincarnated Hitler is fiendishly planning a replay of the
Holocaust, and the "existential" threat to Israel is imminent and unstoppable
except through acts of war (sanctions, regime change, military action).
If this is true, and if Israel can only depend on itself for its defense, then
what is holding the Israelis back? Why don’t they attack Iran on their own?
They don’t do it because they are completely dependent on the US, and such an
attack would not only endanger US troops in Iraq but also plunge the entire
Middle East into a war that would decimate American interests in the region and
signal the end of the "special relationship" – a relationship based on mutual
trust and understanding. That trust would be gone if the Israelis went after
Iran without a green light from Washington – and the Israelis, who know what
side their bread is buttered on (and who’s paying for the butter), would much
prefer that someone else fight their battles. After all, it’s a strategy that’s
worked so far.
Contra Netanyahu, the Israeli survival strategy has been the complete opposite
of defiant independence and military self-sufficiency: they have been joined at
the hip to the US military machine since the Reagan years, and they depend on
us to keep their socialist economy from falling apart at the seams.
In return for such unusual generosity, Netanyahu and his fellow
ultra-nationalists of the Likud party and its extremist allies are spitting in
our faces, very publicly humiliating our public officials, and launching an
all-out political attack on the interests of the very country they depend on
for their survival.
This goes way beyond mere ingratitude – it indicates a very large gap between
the values of the givers and those of the takers.
We hear much about the common aims and culture of the US and Israel, the mutual
commitment to "democracy," and the many links that tie our two nations
together,. Yet all this is suddenly swept aside when the characteristically
Middle Eastern touchiness and hysteria of the Israelis is provoked – and it
takes very little to provoke them.
As the Israeli Prime Minister put it in his speech: "Nothing is rarer in the
Middle East than tolerance for the beliefs of others." Even rarer, however, is
Israeli tolerance for the interests of their American patrons: we are expected
to self-sacrificially put Israel first. American presidents have gone along
with it for decades – and so no one should be surprised when they pull a stunt
like the Biden ambush.
The Israelis are like spoiled children who’ve been coddled and indulged way
beyond the limits of reason. If they don’t get what they want the outcry is
deafening – and their agents and apologists are numerous, vocal, and
well-placed enough in the US to make quite a bit of noise.
Senators McCain and Lieberman likened the dispute between Washington and Tel
Aviv to a "family quarrel," and advanced the view that the dispute should never
have become public. Aside from the fact that it was the Israelis who went
public by blind-siding Biden, isn’t it long past time to apply a little "tough
love" to our adopted child in the Promised Land – and maybe even cut off his
allowance if he persists in what can only be described as the equivalent of
juvenile delinquency?
As it stands now, the US is subsidizing and supporting the expansion of the
Jewish state at the expense of the Palestinians, while Israel is doing its best
to drag us into a war with Iran, and ignite the whole region. The ensuing chaos
would give cover to complete the goal of the extremist Likud-far right
alliance: the establishment of a "Greater Israel."
This is a mission the United States should have nothing to do with, and the
Obama administration knows it. Their response to Israeli intransigence is a
good first step, but in order to make it stick they must go beyond mere
rhetoric. The Israeli government can’t build settlements if we stop paying for
them: they can’t threaten their neighbors, oppress an entire people, and
maintain a working alliance with the West unless it’s with our active
cooperation. Cut off their funding – and see how quickly they’ll turn, because
they know their survival is at stake.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
