Arming Israel’s Enemies

David Isaac
http://shmuelkatz.com/wordpress/?p=449&Source=email

In part I of this series, we looked at the failure of AIPAC, America’s largest pro-Israel lobby, to make an effort to thwart the sale to Saudi Arabia of an assortment of advanced fighter planes and helicopters worth $60 billion, the largest arms deal in U.S. history.

According to The New York Times, AIPAC has a “$100 million endowment, membership of more than 100,000 and annual lobbying expenditures of about $1 million.” So it’s not resources the lobby lacks, but will. Our last blog suggested a path whereby AIPAC, and other pro-Israel lobbying groups, could again find their fighting spirit – one that would permit them to take action as independent actors concerned about American policy towards Israel without either relying on Israel for policy direction or crossing the line into subverting Israel’s elected government.

Should AIPAC choose such a path, we offer a vision of what a more muscular pro-Israel policy might look like.

1) End U.S. Pressure on Israel
Here is the most basic, most salutary change America’s pro-Israel lobby can work to bring about. Although America has shown itself supportive of Israel in any number of fields, on the fundamental points, the U.S. has fashioned its policy to suit the Arabs. It has been doing so for decades. Shmuel Katz called this the “abysmal American blunder.”

It is the historic continuing absurdity of U.S. policy in the Middle East: a world power tied to the coattails of Arab ambitions and fantasies – to the delight of its ill-wishers and the dismay of its friends. ("Washington’s ‘Arab Mistake’", The Jerusalem Post, April 22, 1983)

To this blog’s readers the reasons are familiar: Fear of antagonizing the Arabs, oil dependence, a historically anti-Zionist State Department. But these reasons are not familiar to many others. How could they be when most are fed a fat-headed diet of ‘America’s staunch support’, ‘the abiding U.S.-Israel friendship’ and ‘the unbreakable bonds of mutual mutualness’?

Already decades ago, this sort of rhetoric had reached a point of reductio ad absurdum where its pronouncement affirmed the opposite. As Shmuel wrote in “Beware of Washington” (The Jerusalem Post, December 25, 1981):

The cant that accompanies every blow at Israel states that there has been no weakening of the American commitment to this country’s security. This is a transparent cover for the undeniable thrust of American policy — the reduction and emasculation of Israel in accordance with Arab prescriptions.

The first step of a reinvigorated Israel lobby is to state the simple truth that, despite our common values, polls showing the American people in favor of Israel, and the overwhelmingly pro-Israel Congress, U.S. foreign policy has consistently taken a pro-Arab line, pressuring Israel to abandon territory it won in a war of aggression waged upon it.

It’s the job of groups like AIPAC to explain to the American public why this policy is horribly wrong both from a security and a moral viewpoint – how it unjustly negates the Jews’ superior historical, legal and religious rights to the land of their forefathers.

2) End U.S. Economic Aid to Israel
“[J]ust a few years ago, the possibility that external aid could be detrimental to Israel was not brought up in polite conversation,” according to a Sept. 1995 article in The Middle East Quarterly. Money was the measure of U.S. support for Israel.

This is no longer the case. A growing number of dissenters recognize that U.S. economic aid is not just useless, but harmful. There are a number of reasons for this, but the most important, as the above article points out, is that it chips away at Israel’s sovereignty.

Shmuel understood this “side-effect” sooner than most. Indeed, he believed America, like a drug-dealer looking to get a future customer hooked on his product, was consciously encouraging a sense of dependence within Israel through its economic contributions.

In “Purse-String Tangles” (The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 12, 1982), Shmuel wrote:

Washington is objectively interested in promoting a high standard of living in Israel because it breeds acquiescence in the state of “dependence” on U.S. aid....

[This] sense of “dependence” on the United States has time and again sapped the will of Israeli leaders and dictated to them a retreat from positions long and sincerely held, an abandonment of tested national, and rational, axioms basic to Israel’s security…

And, as Shmuel wrote in the same column, just as Israel is left feeling dependent because of U.S. aid, cutting off that aid would have the reverse effect.

Its central feature would be an Israel living within its means. There would be less cake and chocolate, but nobody need go short of bread, nor clothes, nor a dwelling.

Those in Israel who live in dread of their government being forced into policies opposed to the will, democratically expressed, of the people, will breathe freely, straighten their backs, and hold their heads high.

When U.S. aid is no longer a crucial item in Israel’s budget, disagreements with Washington will be thrashed out in free and friendly discussion, by argument and persuasion, not by threats or the hint of threats.

This is precisely the policy that Israel itself should initiate. It must achieve an adequate measure of economic independence if it is not to lose its political independence and if it is to halt the undeniable erosion of the social and moral values and virtues of Zionism.

3) No Weapons to Israel’s Enemies
Israel is America’s only reliable ally in the Middle East and the only stable democracy. Clearly, putting advanced weaponry in the hands of its enemies doesn’t make it safer. If this administration wants to sell F-15 fighters and Blackhawk helicopters to Saudi Arabia, it’s free to do so. But it should be made to pay a political price for it.

America feels torn between, on the one hand, the shared values it has with Israel, and, on the other, its dependence on Arab oil and fear of Arab violence. This ‘strategic schizophrenia’ reveals itself when the U.S. declares, at the same time that it is making a massive arms sale to Saudi Arabia, that it’s also committed to Israel’s qualitative military edge.

America can’t have it both ways. The sale of heavy armaments to Saudi Arabia is a breach of its commitments to Israel. Every weapon America sends to a country that promotes radical Islam and limits individual rights is a slap in the face to the Western values it purports to uphold.

4) Move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem
Jerusalem is the chosen capital of Israel. For 3,000 years, it has never been the national capital of any other people. Yet, the U.S. has still not relocated its embassy there. Moreover, it led the diplomatic community in its refusal to recognize the city as Israel’s capital – even when only the western part was in Israel’s hands.

Successive U.S. presidents have repeatedly blocked the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which required that America’s Israel Embassy relocate from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999. The reason most often given is the fear of eliciting Moslem anger. “Flaunting this bogeyman has become standard Washington practice to make up for a weak case,” Shmuel wrote.

In “Moving the U.S. Embassy”, (The Jerusalem Post, April 13, 1984), Shmuel looked at Islam’s claim to Jerusalem and raised the question of whether their anger was even justifiable.

The British Christian theologian and historian, Dr. James Parkes, writes in his book Whose Land the following:

"The common phrase that Palestine is the Holy Land of three faiths is not strictly accurate. It is not appropriate to the Islamic relationship. . . . Moreover no particular sanctity has ever been attributed to the country as a whole. Its biblical frontiers had no significance and were never used to define a Muslim administration. .. . Jerusalem also was never a Muslim capital. Even the two Ummayad caliphs who were most closely associated with the country . . . showed no special regard for it . . ."

"Jerusalem, one may add, is not mentioned even once in the Koran."

Dr. Parkes goes on:

"From the historian’s point of view there is a difficulty in the fact that the very sanctity which Islam attributes to the Haram-ash-Sharif is due to the association of the spot with the other two religions involved, and not to any comparable Muslim relationship . . ."

AIPAC and others must impart to the American people the knowledge that the Jewish people have a unique relationship to Jerusalem and that the American government is showing a distinct prejudice against the Jewish state by refusing to move its embassy there. The wrong should be righted and the embassy moved with all speed and without being tied to any new policy demands. America’s continued refusal to move its embassy is un-American in that it singles out one country, a close ally, for unfair treatment that undermines its sovereignty.

5) Stress Israel’s Contributions
In “Interdependence in U.S.-Israel Relations”, (Global Affairs, 1988), Shmuel wrote:

The notion that Israel is on a "dole" provided by America has the most pernicious implications and consequences. It is a notion that has been implanted worldwide. Every American who reads newspapers knows that it is frequently stated as a fact that Israel is so completely dependent on U.S. financial aid that if only the United States wished it, Israel would have to agree to whatever was demanded of it…

This “sense of dependence” exists still today, both in Israel and America.

An ongoing campaign to show Congress and the American people why Israel is not a “poor relation” of the U.S. should be a central tenet of any pro-Israel platform. Israel makes many contributions to America. It improves American military hardware through testing and technical improvements, and it contributes to the economic growth and quality-of-life of American citizens through its inventiveness and creativity.

As George Gilder wrote in The Israel Test (Richard Vigilante Books, 2009), “Today tiny Israel, with its population of 7.23 million, five and one-half million Jewish, stands behind only the United States in technological contributions.”

It’s an astonishing story – one that needs to be told and re-told in order to erode the belief among Americans that without them, Israel is kaput.

The platform above is just a start; some common-sense suggestions to help revitalize a tired lobby that has, as Shmuel said, been “cowed by experience”. The lobby may not win every battle, but it will give heart to Israel’s friends knowing that at least it’s out there trying, and on the issues that matter.