Peace in the Middle East

by Dennis Green

All you need to know about the Middle East right now is that support for U.S. President Barack Obama in Israel is down to 4%. Since his speech in Cairo, the fear there is that the American unilateral backing of Israel will begin to weaken as Obama offers negotiation and peace overtures to Iran, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. They also know that Israel, and our foreign policy toward that nation, is the lynchpin to peace in the Middle East.

Nothing else really matters. Since 1948, America has sided with Israel against her Arab and Persian neighbors no matter what actions she has taken, and no matter what her treatment of the Palestinians might be. This U.S. stance — far more than our meddling in other nations there, and even more than our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq — has stimulated radical Islamic Jihad and hatred of the West.

The reasons for that unilateral support of Israel are many, including the powerful Israeli lobby in the U.S. which many American Jews support with their contributions and their votes. But each of the various Jewish communities in the U.S. is very different — Chicago Jews different from New York Jews, San Francisco Jews very different from the Jewish community in L.A. — and there is a lasting schism within American Jewry following the Six Day War in 1967.

Beginning with a split among Jews in New York between those who favored keeping the territories captured by Israel in that war, and those who favored returning them and aiding in the creation of a Palestinian State, Norman Podhoretz founded the “Neo-Conservative” movement, a new wing of former liberals who joined the GOP and began lobbying for the “One State Solution” in Israel favored by radical conservative extremists there.

In the meantime, Israel practices apartheid against its Palestinian population, bullies its neighbors, and has invaded southern Lebanon and Gaza, committing many war crimes against civilian populations in the process, as determined by investigations by the United Nations. The only Jewish leader who seriously negotiated with Egypt, Menachim Begin, was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli extremist, and moderate Israelis favoring a Two State Solution are marginalized.

And all the while, the U.S. continues to pour more than $4 billion a year into Israel, completely now in weaponry, not peaceful aid. And after stealing nuclear secrets from the U.S., Israel has developed more than 200 nuclear warheads, further de-stabilizing the Middle East. And we don’t even blink.

In one sense, nothing else matters in what we do there — not in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or in Pakistan, or in our dealings with Iran. So long as we continue this uncritical, unilateral support of everything Israel does, Jihad will continue, and the U.S. will be a prime target.

It isn’t likely that our policies toward Israel will change. But if we lessened our foreign aid to them, even threatened them with sanctions if they don’t vigorously pursue resolution of the Palestinian homelessness through the Two State Solution, such actions would do more to relieve tensions in the Middle East than a hundred thousand troops will ever achieve.

©2009 Dennis Green