Israel’s Betrayal of the United States?

Scott Ritter’s US Must Reevaluate Its Relationship With Israel astounds. It astounds through the sheer force of what is being stated. It astounds because it is being stated.

According to Ritter, among other things, Israel’s current policies are betraying the United States.

The government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has embarked on policies that are questionable at best when one examines them from a purely Israeli standpoint; they are nothing less than a betrayal of the United States when examined from a broader perspective.

Let’s critically consider Ritter’s claims about Israel’s policies as betrayal.

1. He states the “Israeli government has manipulated the domestic political machinery of the United States” in favour of its own policies with a pro-Israeli lexicon fully embraced by the U.S. mainstream media such that “responsible discussion” of relevant issues is retarded (e.g., recent events related to Lebanon, Syria, Iran). He deems such “insidious” manipulations uncharacteristic of a so-called friend, uncharacteristic enough to warrant questioning the nature of this friendship.

2. He states that Olmert et al., are acting within a post-9/11 environment that is facilitated by the Bush/Cheney mentality on foreign policy objectives. The result is an unfettered Israeli viewpoint that dominates American policy. The problem, however, is that the Israeli viewpoint is unbalanced. “… the Israeli point of view is increasingly constructed on a foundation of intolerance and irresponsible unilateralism that divorces the country from global norms.” His illustrative example is Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal (and delivery systems) - undeclared genocidal devices in an age of nuclear non-proliferation. This, he holds, “is the core of instability for this very volatile region.”

3. Another example of this intolerance and irresponsible unilateralism is exemplified by Israel’s negative response to the recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that judged Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Israel claims it knows better despite the NIE being fully informed by Mossad intelligence and despite the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arriving at the same conclusions as the NIE.

Ritter then focuses on the notion of friendship between nations asserting that:

Israel at present can have no friends, because Israel does not know how to be a friend. Driven by xenophobic paranoia and historical grievances, Israel is embarked on a path that can only lead to death and destruction. This is a path the United States should not tread.

He develops an analogy worth giving a read but the crux of it is that Israel is not behaving like a friend of the United States (i.e., incitements to war) but rather like a spoiled child too long coddled.

So what does Ritter suggest the United States ought to do about this so-called friend? A few things. “The United States must redefine its national security priorities in the Middle East and position Israel accordingly.” All further aid to Israel must to linked to “Israeli behavior modification”. No more massive and unaccountable financial support without meaningful actions on the ground to make the U.S. investment one that benefits rather than damages the United States.

Sounds good but to even get near a radical rethinking of how the United States aids Israel in its current policies, the United States itself will have to modify its own behaviour. Ritter notes some of the problems. One needs to deal with a powerful “Israel-only” lobby and the general pro-Israel slant to U.S. foreign policy. To deal with these problems, however, the electorate is going to have to think very differently about why it elects its politicians. Are its politicians acting mainly in the interests of the United States or are they acting mainly in their own personal interests (you know, through all that sycophantic pandering to the policies of their money lenders, for example).

Astounded?

To be sure but still there is something worth questioning here.

How is it that the Israeli government has insidiously manipulated the political machinery of the United States? Presumably such could only come about were the relevant players of Israel and the United States sufficiently aligned and connected such that somehow Israeli foreign policy could be introduced into U.S. political circles and then actually implemented as if it were also U.S. foreign policy. The Israelis would have had to somehow persuade sufficient numbers of relevant Americans that all this was good policy for America. But if the Israelis have been successful at making U.S. foreign policy more or less their own and of doing such despite how it is, in fact, detrimental to the United States, isn’t this a fault of the United States? If Israel played them like a bunch of emotive, weeping, “never again” suckers, it may indeed be a good reason to question Israel’s friendship but why not place the real onus here on the politicians of the United States?

Also, since the Bush/Cheney neo-conservative mentality is an American mentality (not exclusive but until recently dominant) why think that the unbalanced Israeli warmongering point-of-view isn’t shared by an unbalanced cadre of Americans? I mean, obviously it is so why not again place the onus on the politicians of the United States? Israel might certainly be a paranoid nation terrified and hateful of everyone not Jewish and it might be prepared to continue to advocate for the massive killing of Arabs, Persians and Palestinians because it views such policies as good for itself and its people. But why is it Israel’s fault that American politicians and the American electorate think such heinous, mass murdering policies ok? To be clear, the American electorate are not genuinely mass murdering advocates but nor are they doing what it takes to make their nation stop its government from conducting mass murder. Why blame that on Israel?

Accepting the view that Israel aims to manipulate U.S. foreign policy at the expense of U.S. interests, it is clear that Israel is no friend of the United States. It appears it would be happy to watch the U.S. expend itself on futile, costly wars. It seems to think that destroying the Palestinians and many a country around it is in its long term interests. However, even if one thinks Israel is basically an insane nation, acting irrationally, self-destructively and immorally, why blame it for the United States political failures?

Better to make the U.S. face itself yes?