March 16, 2010--U.S. to Israel: "Call Us When You're Serious"
As an American and as a Jew I write this in great pain.
Tom Friedman got it right the other day in his column in the New York Times when he wrote that our proper response to Israel after they announced the construction of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem--the Arab Quarter--should have been:
"You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you’re serious. We need to focus on building our [own] country.” (Full column linked below.)
The press focused on the fact that this announcement occurred during Vice President Biden's visit; but, as usual, chasing the gossip, they missed the larger point--the announcement was not offensive because it embarrassed Biden (he's a big boy and can handle embarrassment) but because of the arrogance of the Israeli government's policies toward the Palestinians and the occupied territories.
Thus they did not need to apologize for the timing, as they did, but rather need to rescind the policy.
Don't hold your breath.
It is time for us to disengage from the Israeli government, telling them that they are on their own, that we will not be held political hostage by the Israel lobby here in the United States nor will we allow premillennialist Christians, also here, help drive U.S. policy toward Israel, much less the rest of the Middle East. For, to be sure, it is the confluence of pressure from organized conservative, truthfully fundamentalist Jews who are more loyal to Israel than to the United States plus that from those Evangelicals who see it necessary for Israel to occupy all the lands from the Nile in the west to the Tigris-Euphrates valleys in the east (read, Iraq) in order to bring about the Rapture, the Final Days, and the Last Judgement. Just what we need.
This unholy alliance between these most fundamentalist of believers for decades has managed to hold our Middle East policy hostage while they pursue their own narrow, doctrinaire beliefs and practices. They are largely behind our expansionist polices in the region and have contributed mightily to the inflexibility of our policy toward Iran and the Arab world.
If Iran is in fact a threat beyond its borders, and one can make a non-jingoistic case that it is, the threat Iran poses is most immediately to Israel. We have stood steadfastly beside Israel as its closet friend and defender since its founding in 1948, and we continue to do so, in spite of the beginning, at last, of some tough-love talk from the Obama administration.
But Israel has heard versions of this before; but never did we, as Friedman suggests, fold up our papers and walk out of a visit when the Israel government has been at its most intransigent. As during Biden's visit last week.
The time has come that no matter the threats that they face, or imagine they face, we need right now to tell Israel that unless our relationship works in both directions--that they take into consideration the threats that we are confronting, including from an inflamed Islamic world--we will no longer stand unequivocally beside them.
At the moment they still have a version of a blank check from us. If within the next few months Israel decides to take preemptive action to reduce Iran's nuclear capacity and Iran, as one would expect, were to retaliate, we are on record as saying that we will come to Israel's direct defense. So we could easily find ourselves in a third war against an islamic country.
And, between now and then, if we do not reverse course, we will continue to stand by and mutter impotently while Israel expands its settlements in the West Bank, all in the name of security, while in fact making themselves--and us, thank you--much, much less safe.
Some ally.
Tom Friedman got it right the other day in his column in the New York Times when he wrote that our proper response to Israel after they announced the construction of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem--the Arab Quarter--should have been:
"You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you’re serious. We need to focus on building our [own] country.” (Full column linked below.)
The press focused on the fact that this announcement occurred during Vice President Biden's visit; but, as usual, chasing the gossip, they missed the larger point--the announcement was not offensive because it embarrassed Biden (he's a big boy and can handle embarrassment) but because of the arrogance of the Israeli government's policies toward the Palestinians and the occupied territories.
Thus they did not need to apologize for the timing, as they did, but rather need to rescind the policy.
Don't hold your breath.
It is time for us to disengage from the Israeli government, telling them that they are on their own, that we will not be held political hostage by the Israel lobby here in the United States nor will we allow premillennialist Christians, also here, help drive U.S. policy toward Israel, much less the rest of the Middle East. For, to be sure, it is the confluence of pressure from organized conservative, truthfully fundamentalist Jews who are more loyal to Israel than to the United States plus that from those Evangelicals who see it necessary for Israel to occupy all the lands from the Nile in the west to the Tigris-Euphrates valleys in the east (read, Iraq) in order to bring about the Rapture, the Final Days, and the Last Judgement. Just what we need.
This unholy alliance between these most fundamentalist of believers for decades has managed to hold our Middle East policy hostage while they pursue their own narrow, doctrinaire beliefs and practices. They are largely behind our expansionist polices in the region and have contributed mightily to the inflexibility of our policy toward Iran and the Arab world.
If Iran is in fact a threat beyond its borders, and one can make a non-jingoistic case that it is, the threat Iran poses is most immediately to Israel. We have stood steadfastly beside Israel as its closet friend and defender since its founding in 1948, and we continue to do so, in spite of the beginning, at last, of some tough-love talk from the Obama administration.
But Israel has heard versions of this before; but never did we, as Friedman suggests, fold up our papers and walk out of a visit when the Israel government has been at its most intransigent. As during Biden's visit last week.
The time has come that no matter the threats that they face, or imagine they face, we need right now to tell Israel that unless our relationship works in both directions--that they take into consideration the threats that we are confronting, including from an inflamed Islamic world--we will no longer stand unequivocally beside them.
At the moment they still have a version of a blank check from us. If within the next few months Israel decides to take preemptive action to reduce Iran's nuclear capacity and Iran, as one would expect, were to retaliate, we are on record as saying that we will come to Israel's direct defense. So we could easily find ourselves in a third war against an islamic country.
And, between now and then, if we do not reverse course, we will continue to stand by and mutter impotently while Israel expands its settlements in the West Bank, all in the name of security, while in fact making themselves--and us, thank you--much, much less safe.
Some ally.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:38 AM
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