[WCUSP] A Declaration of Independence from Israel

[yvonne simmons]

Declaration of Independence from Israelby Chris Hedges


Israel, without the United States, would probably not
exist. Thecountry came perilously close to extinction
during the October 1973 warwhen Egypt, trained and
backed by the Soviet Union, crossed the Suezand the
Syrians poured in over the Golan Heights. Huge
Americanmilitary transport planes came to the rescue.
They began landing everyhalf-hour to refit the
battered Israeli army, which had lost most ofits heavy
armor. By the time the war was over, the United States
hadgiven Israel $2.2 billion in emergency military
aid.

The intervention, which enraged the Arab world,
triggered the OPEC oil embargothat for a time wreaked
havoc on Western economies. This was perhapsthe most
dramatic example of the sustained life-support system
theUnited States has provided to the Jewish state.

Israel was bornat midnight May 14, 1948. The U.S.
recognized the new state 11 minuteslater. The two
countries have been locked in a deadly embrace
eversince.

Washington, at the beginning of the relationship, was
able to be amoderating influence. An incensed
President Eisenhower demanded and gotIsrael’s
withdrawal after the Israelis occupied Gaza in 1956.
Duringthe Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli warplanes
bombed the USS Liberty.The ship, flying the U.S. flag
and stationed 15 miles off the Israelicoast, was
intercepting tactical and strategic communications
from bothsides. The Israeli strikes killed 34 U.S.
sailors and wounded 171. Thedeliberate attack froze,
for a while, Washington’s enthusiasm forIsrael. But
ruptures like this one proved to be only bumps,
soonsmoothed out by an increasingly sophisticated and
well-financed Israellobby that set out to merge Israel
and American foreign policy in theMiddle East.

Israel has reaped tremendous rewards from this
alliance. It has beengiven more than $140 billion in
U.S. direct economic and militaryassistance. It
receives about $3 billion in direct assistance
annually,roughly one-fifth of the U.S. foreign aid
budget. Although mostAmerican foreign aid packages
stipulate that related military purchaseshave to be
made in the United States, Israel is allowed to use
about 25percent of the money to subsidize its own
growing and profitabledefense industry. It is exempt,
unlike other nations, from accountingfor how it spends
the aid money. And funds are routinely siphoned offto
build new Jewish settlements, bolster the Israeli
occupation in thePalestinian territories and construct
the security barrier, which costsan estimated $1
million a mile.

The barrier weaves its way through the West Bank,
creating isolatedpockets of impoverished Palestinians
in ringed ghettos. By the time thebarrier is finished
it will probably in effect seize up to 40 percentof
Palestinian land. This is the largest land grab by
Israel since the1967 war. And although the United
States officially opposes settlementexpansion and the
barrier, it also funds them.

The U.S. has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to
developweapons systems and given Israel access to some
of the mostsophisticated items in its own military
arsenal, including Blackhawkattack helicopters and
F-16 fighter jets. The United States also givesIsrael
access to intelligence it denies to its NATO allies.
And whenIsrael refused to sign the nuclear
nonproliferation treaty, the UnitedStates stood by
without a word of protest as the Israelis built
theregion’s first nuclear weapons program.

U.S. foreign policy, especially under the current
Bushadministration, has become little more than an
extension of Israeliforeign policy. The United States
since 1982 has vetoed 32 SecurityCouncil resolutions
critical of Israel, more than the total number
ofvetoes cast by all the other Security Council
members. It refuses toenforce the Security Council
resolutions it claims to support. Theseresolutions
call on Israel to withdraw from the occupied
territories.

There is now volcanic anger and revulsion by Arabs at
this blatantfavoritism. Few in the Middle East see any
distinction between Israeliand American policies, nor
should they. And when the Islamic radicalsspeak of
U.S. support of Israel as a prime reason for their
hatred ofthe United States, we should listen. The
consequences of this one-sidedrelationship are being
played out in the disastrous war in Iraq,growing
tension with Iran, and the humanitarian and political
crisis inGaza. It is being played out in Lebanon,
where Hezbollah is gearing upfor another war with
Israel, one most Middle East analysts say
isinevitable. The U.S. foreign policy in the Middle
East is unraveling.And it is doing so because of this
special relationship. The eruptionof a regional
conflict would usher in a nightmare of
catastrophicproportions.

There were many in the American foreign policy
establishment andState Department who saw this
situation coming. The decision to throwour lot in with
Israel in the Middle East was not initially a
popularone with an array of foreign policy experts,
including President HarryTruman’s secretary of state,
Gen. George Marshall. They warned therewould be a
backlash. They knew the cost the United States would
pay inthe oil-rich region for this decision, which
they feared would be oneof the greatest strategic
blunders of the postwar era. And they wereright. The
decision has jeopardized American and Israeli security
andcreated the kindling for a regional conflagration.

The alliance, which makes no sense in geopolitical
terms, does makessense when seen through the lens of
domestic politics. The Israel lobbyhas become a potent
force in the American political system. No
majorcandidate, Democrat or Republican, dares to
challenge it. The lobbysuccessfully purged the State
Department of Arab experts who challengedthe notion
that Israeli and American interests were identical.
Backersof Israel have doled out hundreds of millions
of dollars to supportU.S. political candidates deemed
favorable to Israel. They havebrutally punished those
who strayed, including the first PresidentBush, who
they said was not vigorous enough in his defense of
Israeliinterests. This was a lesson the next Bush
White House did not forget.George W. Bush did not want
to be a one-term president like his father.

Israel advocated removing Saddam Hussein from power
and currentlyadvocates striking Iran to prevent it
from acquiring nuclear weapons.Direct Israeli
involvement in American military operations in
theMiddle East is impossible. It would reignite a war
between Arab statesand Israel. The United States,
which during the Cold War avoided directmilitary
involvement in the region, now does the direct bidding
ofIsrael while Israel watches from the sidelines.
During the 1991 GulfWar, Israel was a spectator, just
as it is in the war with Iraq.

President Bush, facing dwindling support for the war
in Iraq,publicly holds Israel up as a modelfor what he
would like Iraq to become. Imagine how this idea plays
outon the Arab street, which views Israel as the
Algerians viewed theFrench colonizers during the war
of liberation.

“In Israel,” Bush said recently, “terrorists have
taken innocenthuman life for years in suicide attacks.
The difference is that Israelis a functioning
democracy and it’s not prevented from carrying out
itsresponsibilities. And that’s a good indicator of
success that we’relooking for in Iraq.”

Americans are increasingly isolated and reviled in the
world. Theyremain blissfully ignorant of their own
culpability for this isolation.U.S. “spin” paints the
rest of the world as unreasonable, but
Israel,Americans are assured, will always be on our
side.

Israel is reaping economic as well as political
rewards from itslock-down apartheid state. In the
“gated community” market it has begunto sell systems
and techniques that allow the nation to cope
withterrorism. Israel, in 2006, exported $3.4 billion
in defenseproducts—well over a billion dollars more
than it received in Americanmilitary aid. Israel has
grown into the fourth largest arms dealer inthe world.
Most of this growth has come in the so-called
homelandsecurity sector.

“The key products and services,” as Naomi Klein
wrotein The Nation, “are hi-tech fences, unmanned
drones, biometric IDs,video and audio surveillance
gear, air passenger profiling and
prisonerinterrogation systems—precisely the tools and
technologies Israel hasused to lock in the occupied
territories. And that is why the chaos inGaza and the
rest of the region doesn’t threaten the bottom line in
TelAviv, and may actually boost it. Israel has learned
to turn endless warinto a brand asset, pitching its
uprooting, occupation and containmentof the
Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the
‘globalwar on terror.’ ”

The United States, at least officially, does not
support theoccupation and calls for a viable
Palestinian state. It is a globalplayer, with
interests that stretch well beyond the boundaries of
theMiddle East, and the equation that Israel’s enemies
are our enemies isnot that simple.

“Terrorism is not a single adversary,” John
Mearsheimer and StephenWalt wrote in The London Review
of Books,“but a tactic employed by a wide array of
political groups. Theterrorist organizations that
threaten Israel do not threaten the UnitedStates,
except when it intervenes against them (as in Lebanon
in 1982).Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random
violence directed againstIsrael or ‘the West’; it is
largely a response to Israel’s prolongedcampaign to
colonize the West Bank and Gaza Strip. More
important,saying that Israel and the US are united by
a shared terrorist threathas the causal relationship
backwards: the US has a terrorism problemin good part
because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the
otherway around.”

Middle Eastern policy is shaped in the United States
by those withvery close ties to the Israel lobby.
Those who attempt to counter thevirulent Israeli
position, such as former Secretary of State
ColinPowell, are ruthlessly slapped down. This
alliance was true also duringthe Clinton
administration, with its array of Israeli-first Middle
Eastexperts, including special Middle East coordinator
Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, the former deputy
director ofthe American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, AIPAC,one of the most powerful Israel
lobbying groups in Washington. But atleast people like
Indyk and Ross are sane, willing to consider
aPalestinian state, however unviable, as long as it is
palatable toIsrael. The Bush administration turned to
the far-right wing of theIsrael lobby, those who have
not a shred of compassion for thePalestinians or a
word of criticism for Israel. These new Middle
Eastexperts include Elliott Abrams, John Bolton,
Douglas Feith, thedisgraced I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby,
Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz andDavid Wurmser.

Washington was once willing to stay Israel’s hand. It
intervened tothwart some of its most extreme
violations of human rights. Thisadministration,
however, has signed on for every disastrous
Israeliblunder, from building the security barrier in
the West Bank, tosealing off Gaza and triggering a
humanitarian crisis, to the ruinousinvasion and
saturation bombing of Lebanon.

The few tepid attempts by the Bush White House to
criticize Israeliactions have all ended in hasty and
humiliating retreats in the face ofIsraeli pressure.
When the Israel Defense Forcesin April 2002 reoccupied
the West Bank, President Bush called onthen-Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon to “halt the incursions and
beginwithdrawal.” It never happened. After a week of
heavy pressure from theIsrael lobby and Israel’s
allies in Congress, meaning just abouteveryone in
Congress, the president gave up, calling Sharon “a man
ofpeace.” It was a humiliating moment for the United
Sates, a clear signof who pulled the strings.

There were several reasons for the war in Iraq. The
desire forAmerican control of oil, the belief that
Washington could build puppetstates in the region, and
a real, if misplaced, fear of Saddam Husseinplayed a
part in the current disaster. But it was also strongly
shapedby the notion that what is good for Israel is
good for the UnitedStates. Israel wanted Iraq
neutralized. Israeli intelligence, in thelead-up to
the war, gave faulty information to the U.S. about
Iraq’salleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
And when Baghdad wastaken in April 2003, the Israeli
government immediately began to pushfor an attack on
Syria. The lust for this attack has waned, in no
smallpart because the Americans don’t have enough
troops to hang on in Iraq,much less launch a new
occupation.
                          AP Photo/Hatem Moussa       
      Armed Palestinian women burnIsraeli and U.S.
flags during a protest against Israel’s operations
inthe Gaza Strip and Lebanon.       
Israel is currently lobbying the United States to
launch aerialstrikes on Iran, despite the debacle in
Lebanon. Israel’s irondetermination to forcibly
prevent a nuclear Iran makes it probable thatbefore
the end of the Bush administration an attack on Iran
will takeplace. The efforts to halt nuclear
development through diplomatic meanshave failed. It
does not matter that Iran poses no threat to the
UnitedStates. It does not matter that it does not even
pose a threat toIsrael, which has several hundred
nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Itmatters only that
Israel demands total military domination of theMiddle
East.

The alliance between Israel and the United States has
culminatedafter 50 years in direct U.S. military
involvement in the Middle East.This involvement, which
is not furthering American interests, isunleashing a
geopolitical nightmare. American soldiers and Marines
aredying in droves in a useless war. The impotence of
the United States inthe face of Israeli pressure is
complete. The White House and theCongress have become,
for perhaps the first time, a direct extension
ofIsraeli interests. There is no longer any debate
within the UnitedStates. This is evidenced by the
obsequious nods to Israel by all thecurrent
presidential candidates with the exception of Dennis
Kucinich.The political cost for those who challenge
Israel is too high.

This means there will be no peaceful resolution of
thePalestinian-Israeli conflict. It means the
incidents of Islamicterrorism against the U.S. and
Israel will grow. It means that Americanpower and
prestige are on a steep, irreversible decline. And I
fear italso means the ultimate end of the Jewish
experiment in the Middle East.

The weakening of the United States, economically and
militarily, isgiving rise to new centers of power. The
U.S. economy, mismanaged anddrained by the Iraq war,
is increasingly dependent on Chinese tradeimports and
on Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury securities.
Chinaholds dollar reserves worth $825 billion. If
Beijing decides to abandonthe U.S. bond market, even
in part, it would cause a free fall by thedollar. It
would lead to the collapse of the $7-trillion U.S.
realestate market. There would be a wave of U.S. bank
failures and hugeunemployment. The growing dependence
on China has been accompanied byaggressive work by the
Chinese to build alliances with many of theworld’s
major exporters of oil, such as Iran, Nigeria, Sudan
andVenezuela. The Chinese are preparing for the
looming worldwide clashover dwindling resources.

The future is ominous. Not only do Israel’s foreign
policyobjectives not coincide with American interests,
they actively hurtthem. The growing belligerence in
the Middle East, the calls for anattack against Iran,
the collapse of the imperial project in Iraq haveall
given an opening, where there was none before, to
America’s rivals.It is not in Israel’s interests to
ignite a regional conflict. It isnot in ours. But
those who have their hands on the wheel
seemdetermined, in the name of freedom and democracy,
to keep the Americanship of state headed at breakneck
speed into the cliffs before us.

Chris Hedges, who graduated fromHarvard Divinity
School and was for nearly two decades a
foreigncorrespondent for The New York Times, is the
author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and
the War onAmerica.”

©2007TruthDig.com





       
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