Part Two: Dangerous Liaisons
A Palestinian child stands outside of her family's demolished house. The house was destroyed by Israeli bulldozers. Photo by Adam Moft.
Despite the
arguments lobbied by supporters of the United States’ relationship with Israel,
many critics today believe that Israel’s strategic value dried up over twenty
years ago with the fall of the U.S.S.R. Cold War rationale placing Israel at
the pinnacle of U.S. security interests in the Middle East was the
straightforward case for Israel’s strategic value until the collapse of the
Soviet Union; by serving as America’s proxy in the Middle East, Israel was able
to help contain Soviet expansion in the vital region as well as occasionally
help the United States handle other regional conflicts. Following the end of
the Cold War, however, critics charge that Israel has failed to live up to its
image as a protector of U.S. interests abroad and in fact has become a major
liability to American security.
One such critic,
Chas Freeman the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, claims that the
relationship has become a one-way street and he believes that Israel gets whatever
it wants in terms of top-of-the-line weapons systems and foreign aid handouts,
and American taxpayers pick up the tab[1]. The
U.S. even doles out cash to Israel to develop weapons America neither wants nor
needs: $3 billion in aid was given to Israel by the U.S. to develop weapons
like the Lavi aircraft, the Merkava tank, and the arrow missile, all of which
the U.S. never planned on purchasing[2].
Freeman notes that today Israel’s per capita income is $37,000, on par with
Great Britain, yet Israel continues to receive more American foreign aid than
any nation. Additionally, he points out that the U.S. has on a number of
occasions worked to shield Israel from the international political and legal
consequences of its policies and actions in the Occupied Territories, against
its neighbors, or, most recently, on the high seas. This has come in the form
of 40 vetoes at the UN on behalf of Israeli interest as well as sponsoring a
number of Israeli programs that were criticized by the international community
at large; according to Freeman, the political costs of these actions have been tremendous.
As a consequence
of America’s unilateral support of Israeli policies, critics allege that the
alliance is endangering U.S. security. While supporters of the relationship
argue that the Israel is the U.S. best ally and partner in the fight against
terrorism and that the partnership has not motivated anti-American terrorist
attacks, there are several critics who believe the exact opposite. Khaled
Shaikh Muhammad, who is credited with masterminding the 9/11 attacks, claimed
the purpose of the attacks was to focus the attention of “the American people .
. . on the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel against
the Palestinian people”. Prior to 9/11, the mastermind of the first attack on
the World Trade Center in 1993 Ramzi Yousef said that he felt guilty about
causing U.S deaths but that “he truly
believed his action had been rational and logical and in pursuit of a change in
U.S. policy toward Israel”[3].
The 9/11 Commission
itself came to the conclusion that Bin Laden and other key Al Qaeda members
were motivated both by Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinians and by U.S.
support for Israel. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt also argue that the “partners
against terror” rationale for the American-Israeli alliance is based on a
popular misconception that the U.S. and Israel are fighting the same war
against terror. This conception derives from a fundamental misunderstanding of the
nature of terrorism. Terrorism is not an organization or a movement or even an
“enemy” that one can declare war on; terrorism is a tactic of indiscriminately attacking enemy targets-especially
civilians-in order to sow fear, undermine morale, and provoke counterproductive
reactions from one’s adversary[4].
With that in
mind, while all acts of terrorism are morally wrong, not all terrorist groups are alike and
therefore not all present a clear threat to the United States. In contrast to Al-Qaeda,
organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad do not attack the United
States and are primarily only a threat to Israel. With regards to Hezbollah,
Moshe Maoz, a historian at Hebrew University, says, “It is mostly a threat
against Israel. They did attack U.S. targets when there were American troops in
Lebanon, but they killed to oust forces from Lebanon. I doubt very much whether
Hezbollah will go out of its way to attack America”[5]. There
is also a common misunderstanding that Al-Qaeda and the Palestinian Liberation Organization share similar
beliefs and ideologies, but this is far from the truth. Palestinian terrorists
do not share Al-Qaeda’s desire to launch a global Islamic restoration or to
restore the caliphate; in fact the PLO is in actuality largely secular and
based on nationalist, not religious, principles. Additionally, the PLO’s
terrorist acts do not share the random pattern of Al-Qaeda’s actions, but
instead are usually in response to or directed at Israeli policies and
intiatives. Thus, what the two organizations have in common is not any specific
ideology but only the tactic of terrorism, which, as previously pointed out, is a tactic employed by militant groups
worldwide regardless of their beliefs and aims.
Many of the
arguments for the alliance against terrorism has been centered around the
belief that terrorist organizations target the U.S. and Israel together because
of shared beliefs in. Mearsheimer and Walt point out that supporters of the
relationship deny any connection between U.S. support of Israel and the terrorism
attacks on the U.S. and its citizens, and especially the September 11th
attacks. Supporter of the alliance Robert Satloff claims that Bin Laden’s
identification with Palestine is “a recent-and almost surely
opportunistic-phenomenon”. There is, however, ample evidence that indicates the
close relationship with Israel has harmed the U.S.’s image and reputation within
the Arab and Muslim world in general. A 2004 report by the Pentagon’s Defense
Science Board concluded that Muslims do not hate American democracy and freedom, but rather they resent
the privileged status Israel enjoys in the region, bolstered by U.S. support.
This finding was further strengthened by the 9/11 Commission, which concluded
“it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict and American policy in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary
across the Arab and Muslim world”[6]. Few
critics can deny that anti-Semitism exists within Arab nations; however, as
Walt and Mearsheimer point out, the United States pays a substantial price for
supporting Israel so consistently that has more to do with Israeli policies
than its religious identity. They believe this position fuels hostility towards
the United States in the Middle East, motivates anti-American extremists, aids in
the recruitment of militants, gives authoritarian governments in the region an
all-too-convenient scapegoat for their own failings, and makes it harder for
Washington to convince potential supporters to confront extremists in their own
countries[7].
An anti-Israel mural in Tehran.
The rationale of
the “partnership against terrorism” is used to justify the U.S. and Israel
confronting rogue states that support terrorism and aim to acquire WMD. It seems
logical to believe that authoritarian states like Syria, Iran, and Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq would be threats to both Israel and the United States. However, when
held up to closer scrutiny, many believe that although the United States may
not agree with these states’ conduct, they do not pose a vital threat to U.S.
interests abroad. The sole exception to this observation is the threat posed to
Israel. Thus, much of the U.S.’s concerns about Saddam’s and Iran’s pursuit of
WMD derives largely from their threat to Israel. President Bush admitted this
outright in March 2006, saying, “The threat from Iran is, of course, their
stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel”[8].
Many critics
argue the pursuit of WMD by several Middle Eastern states such as Iraq and Iran
is a reaction to Israel’s own WMD arsenal, which the country repeatedly denies
possessing but which the world community seems to the fully aware of. In that
respect, Israel appears to be perpetuating the proliferation of nuclear arms by
insisting it will retaliate militarily against any other state that dares
acquire nuclear capability in the region. American support of these policies
further damages the United States’ reputation in the Middle East. Such a
forthright example of hypocrisy does little to lessen Middle Eastern opinions
that Israel is allowed to get away with whatever it wants, while the U.S.
threatens any who behave in the same fashion with sanctions and even invasion.
From a realist
perspective, America’s main strategic interests in the Middle East is oil, and
protecting access to this commodity mainly depends on preventing any single
country from controlling the entire region[9]. The
close alignment with Israel does not assist in achieving this goal, and many
critics believe it has actually interfered with achieving this end. Oil-producing
nations such as Iran face severe sanctions that often grow worse after an
escalation in rhetoric on both sides. Such obstacles to free trade are not in
keeping with the United States’ economic as well as political interests.
Despite
arguments made by supporters of the alliance that the U.S. and Israel have
always been in agreement on their objectives and that Israel has always
supported the U.S., critics of the relationship say there have been several
examples of Israel working against the U.S. and acting as a “dubious ally”. In
the “Lavon affair” in 1954, Israeli agents attempted to bomb several U.S.
government offices in Cairo to create a rift between America and Egypt. During
the period from 1979-80 Israel sold weapons to Iran during the American Embassy
hostage crisis in Tehran, placing financial gains ahead of U.S. aims. On numerous
occasions that Israel has been caught conducting espionage against the United
States, leading the General Accounting Office to declare that Israel “conducts
the most aggressive espionage operations against the United States of any ally”[10].
Israel has also broken U.S. law and threatened American interests by
transferring American technology to third party countries, such as potential
U.S. adversary China. All of these actions were in Israel’s national interest, but
worked against the strategic aims of the U.S.
While Israel and
the United States were not staunch allies for the first 20 years of Israel’s
existence, it is clear that the Cold War created a set of circumstances that
convinced President Kennedy and his successors that a number of strategic
advantages could be gained from more closely aligning the U.S. with Israel.
This relationship strengthened and grew throughout the Cold War, and by the
1980s Israel had become the United States’ closest ally, receiving the largest
amount of American foreign aid and unwavering diplomatic support. Today, supporters
of this relationship believe that Israel is still a strategic asset that
assists the United States to confront rogue states as well as in the fight
against terrorism. Critics of the relationship argue that the cost of being
allied with Israel outweigh the benefits leading to increased anti-American
terrorism, damaged U.S. relationships with other nations, and the hindrance of American
ability to conduct peace negotiations in the Middle East.
The aim of this
study was to give readers an objective portrayal of both sides of the argument
in the hopes of continuing a public dialogue on the issue. As I have stated
previously, despite the fundamental differences in their positions, critics and
supporters alike can and should agree that what is always in the U.S. strategic interest is the continual
re-examination of American policies, allies, and motivations. Without
self-reflection, America stands to make the same grave mistakes other
superpowers have in the past: over-confidence, arrogance, and, eventually, self
destruction.
[3]
Steve Coll, Ghost
Wars: The Secret History of the CUA,
Afghanistan, and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
(New York: Penguin Press, 2004) 250-251, 273
[5]
Maoz quoted in Susan
Taylor Martin, “Experts Disagree on Dangers of Syria” St. Petersburg Times, November 3, 2002
[6]
Report of the defense science board task force on strategic
communication (Washington, DC: Office of
the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics,
September 2004)
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