Wednesday, January 08, 2003

Israel paid to stay out of war

by pv vivekanand

When United Airlines appealed for $1.8 billion loan guarantees to bail itself out of financial troubles, the Bush administration turned down the plea and the airline went bust. Today, Israel is seeking $8 billion in loan guarantees and the administration appears to be more than willing to extend it, but Israel is not going to go bust if it does not receive it.
In fact, the $8 billion sought by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is in addition to another $4 billion, which would eventually be converted to aid, and that is the price Washington is paying Sharon to stay out of a possible US-led war against Iraq. That is the way leading American commentators see it, and they include columnist and former presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan.
Indeed, it is an issue to debated among American taxpayers. They are footing the bill for what their administration calls as "strategic partnership" with Israel and they should be the ones to demand an explanation to the lopsided policies of their government in the Middle East.
If they need any pointers -- from the look of things it would seem that they do indeed need a nudge since the mainstream media that reach them do not tell them the full truth -- let us remind the Americans that their country is officially paying $3.1 billion in annual aid to Israel, not to mention an equal amount that reaches Israel as contributions from powerful Jewish organisations. In addition are the periodic doses of hundreds of millions of dollars disguised as "emergency assistance," "special project aid" and various other forms. These allocations need not be cleared through the US Congress since the funding comes from the budgets of the various departments of the administration.
The American taxpayers should be looking at the per capita "tax" that they are paying to maintain their administration's "strategic" ties with Israel. Has it been useful to defending the security and safety of Americans, whether in the US or outside? Well, if anything, the US has only reaped the hostility of the Arabs and Muslims around the world. This makes it a simple equation: American tax dollars are sent to Israel and spent on increasing hostility towards the US. It has made life difficult for Americans, and, today the number of countries where American lives are perceived to be under threat and hostility is more than where they are deemed safe and secure.
As Buchanan highlighted it, "journalists and diplomats alike, returning from the Mideast, attest that our almost-blind support of Israel is a major cause of the anti-Americanism that is sweeping the Islamic world."
"Why should we do this?" he asked. "What does America get out of this? What has all the $100 billion in aid we have shovelled out to Israel bought us, other than ingratitude and the enmity of the Arab World?"
Buchanan's sharp references to the unhealthy relationship between the US and Israel represent a segment of the conservatives in the American society, but it is a minority.
However, the silver lining in the horizon, if you will, is the gradual increase in the number of people who realise that there is something wrong in the US approach to the Middle East.
Among them is Victor Marshall, a research fellow at the Independent Institute, a public policy group,.
In Jan.5 issue of the Los Angeles Times, Marshal wrote a courageous article "The lies we are told about Iraq."
He asserts that during the Gulf war of 1991, the then administration of George Bush Senior of misrepresenting the "cause of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the nature of Iraq's conduct in Kuwait and the cost of the Gulf war."
He says that the administration demonised Iraq, exaggerated Iraq's military capabilities, and used
"the confrontation to justify a more expansive and militaristic foreign policy in the post-Vietnam era."
Isn't it ironic? But the irony seems to lost on the American public at large.
On the political front, US President George W.Bush, who is reportedly "very understanding" of the Israeli request for $12 billion, seems to have a short memory.
When, in mid-2001, when Bush articulated his "vision" of Israel and a Palestinian state existing side by side, it was none other than Sharon who warned him off and had the audacity to assert that Israel had more clout in the US Congress than the president himself. Wasn't such an assertion the deepest of the depths of humiliation and insult to an American president?
Wasn't it Sharon who scoffed at Bush, who seemed to have put the prestige of the White House on the firing line and publicly asked him to withdraw the Israeli army from the West Bank?
In simpler terms, Sharon -- and indeed his predecessors -- have always acted as if it was the God-assigned responsibility and duty of the US to back Israel to the hilt wherever, whenever and however asked to do so even it meant losing American prestige and credibility. Whenever the administration showed any reluctance, Israeli leaders have always whipped out their ace card and threatened to "go to the American Congress and people."
Well, Washington has not behaved any different from the Israeli expectations either. That could perhaps also explain why the US spent more than half of the $2.5 billion funding for the much-touted "Arrow" missile defence system for Israel and seems to be willing to shell out another $1 billion for a third battery of the missile system that offers a protective umbrella against missiles that might come Israel's way.
However, the Arabs and Palestinians could not maintain silence and leave it to American debate. The US "aid" to Israel has a direct bearing on life in the Middle East. The $8 billion "loan guarantees" sought by Israel are to be spent on building more settlements in the occupied West Bank to further the Israeli grip on the Palestinian territories. It would only compound the already complex problems that need to be sorted out when the time comes up for realistic peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Again it is only a small patch in the overall picture of the Arab-Israeli equation. Had it not been for the almost unlimited political, military, diplomatic and financial support that the US extended to Israel over the decades, Israel would not have been encouraged to ridicule international laws and conventions and the situation in the Middle East today would have been different.
Amid the mounting US-condoned Israeli brutality against the Palestinians and rising clouds of war against Arab Muslim Iraq, one could only hope for a miracle that Washington wakes up to the realities of its policies and comprehend that its blind support for Israel and obvious hostility towards the Arabs are leading the Middle East to a disaster.