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April
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Uri
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Total War
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April
1, 2003
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March
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March
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April 5,
2003
The "Special Relationship" Comes
Home
Israelization of the United States
by M. SHAHID ALAM
The images of the American armada plowing through
the deserts of Iraq, bombing military and civilian targets, laying
siege to Iraqi cities, targeting Iraqi leaders, shooting civilians,
blinded by sandstorms, stalled, ambushed, shocked by the Iraqi
resistance, facing suicide attacks, suggests an eerie but inescapable
comparison. Is this America's West Bank? Is this the Israelization
of United States--heading to its logical conclusion?
Most Americans have been taught by their
captive media to interpret what happens today in the Middle
East in terms of what happened yesterday. The clock of
history in this region always starts with the most recent "suicide"
attack mounted by Palestinians against "peaceful,"
"innocent" Israeli "civilians." If, somehow,
these Americans could be persuaded to take the long view, they
might begin to understand that the war against Iraq is perhaps
the culmination of a process that had been long in the making:
the Israelization of United States.
The founding fathers of Zionism understood
clearly that their colonial project had no chance of succeeding
without the patronage of a great power. The Zionists tried but
failed to persuade the Ottoman Caliph to open up Palestine to
Jewish colonization; he declined their inducements. Then, the
British found themselves in a tight spot in the midst of World
War I. They sought Jewish help in accelerating US entry into
the war. In return for their help, the Zionists got the vital
support they wanted. In the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917,
the British promised "to use their best endeavour"
(what charming language) to facilitate the creation of a "national
home for the Jewish people" in Palestine.
The British occupied Palestine in December
1917 and immediately opened it up to Jewish immigration. At the
end of the war, according to the terms of a secret agreement,
the British and French vivisected the Arab territories of the
Ottoman Empire to splinter Arab unity. Syria was carved up four
ways: Lebanon, to create a Maronite-dominated state; Jordan,
to reward one of the sons of the collaborating Sharif Hussein;
a French-controlled Syria; and the British mandate of Palestine,
the future Israel. Soon, the Jews of Europe came pouring into
British-occupied Palestine, setting up a parallel government
with their own military.
The die was cast for the Palestinians.
They were no match for the combined Zionist and British forces;
and there was no help from weak Arab "states," hamstrung
by imperialist control. Still the Palestinians fought to save
their homeland. When the British stopped the Jewish im-migration,
the Zionists mounted a terrorist campaign. The British lost nerve
and passed the buck to the United Nations, or, effectively, to
the United States, which now dominated that august body. Motivated
in part by anti-Semitism and still strong Christian sentiments,
but also swayed by a determined Jewish campaign, United States
pushed a partition plan that strongly favored the Jews. The Palestinians
rejected the partition plan. They and other Arabs mounted a feeble
resistance, but were routed by the Zionists. Close to a million
Palestinians were expelled from their homes, and never allowed
to return.
It should be understood that the creation
of Israel did not--at least in the early years--advance America's
strategic interests. At the time, United States and Britain exercised
firm--and very profitable--control over the oil resources of
the Gulf through a clutch of weak and pliant monarchies. The
emergence of radical governments in Egypt in 1952, and, later,
Syria, only deepened the dependence of the oil-rich Arab monarchies
on Western powers. When the Iranian nationalists sought to nationalize
their oil in 1952, the Americans and British organized a coup,
and reinstated the deposed King. In other words, the British
and Americans were firmly in control of the region--without any
help from Israel. A "special relationship" with the
Israeli interloper could only undermine this control by inflaming
Arab nationalist sentiments.
The record of American assistance to
Israel shows that the special re-lationship did not develop until
the late 1960s. US aid flows to Israel remained well below $100
million annually until 1965, and, more importantly, very little
of this was for military hardware. The aid flows doubled in 1966,
increased six fold in 1971, and five fold again in 1974 when
it rose to $2.6 billion, going up to $5 billion in more recent
years. Further, this aid was disbursed mostly in the form of
grants, and nearly all of it was spent on military hardware.
Indeed, these terms indicate a very "special relationship,"
not available to any other country.
Most commentators, especially those on
the left, attribute the emer-gence of this special relationship
to Israel's stunning 1967 victory over Egypt, Syria and Jordan.
They argue that this victory convinced the US that Israel could
serve as a vital ally and a counterpoise to Arab nationalism
and Soviet ambitions in the region. But this explanation is both
one-sided and simplistic. It completely ignores the part Israel
played in initiating this relationship, deepening it, and making
it irreversible.
If the special relationship was the product
of an Israeli victory over Arabs, US should have embraced Israel
as a vital ally after its first victory over Arab armies in 1948,
or after 1956 when it seized the entire Sinai in a lightning
strike. Why did US have to wait until 1967, after Israel
had humiliated the leading nationalist states and Soviet allies
in the region. Presumably, the Arab defeat should have
reduced Israel's usefulness to the US. In addition, the doubling
of American aid flows to Israel in 1966 as well as the cover-up
of the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty--a reconnaissance
ship--off the Sinai coast, indicate that a special relationship
had begun to develop well before the 1967 war.
If America's special relationship with
Israel was slow to develop, in large part, this was because Israel
was doing quite well without it. At least in the 1950s, the British
were still the paramount power in the Persian Gulf, a position
it would yield only slowly to United States. In addition, Israel
entered into a very fruitful military relationship with France,
which supplied not only heavy arms and combat aircraft but collaborated
on its nuclear weapons program. Israel was quite confident of
its military superiority over its Arab adversaries even in these
early years. Apparently, the British and the French too knew
about this, since they persuaded Israel to invade Sinai in 1956
as part of their campaign to regain control of the Suez canal.
This confidence was well-placed. Within a few days, Israel had
taken the Sinai from the Egyptians.
If the war of 1967 produced stunning
Israeli victories, it also drove Israel to look for a new partner.
First, since it had started the war against French advice, President
De Gaulle suspended all arms shipments to Israel. In order to
make good the loss, Israel turned to the US, which had the added
advantage of being the world leader in military technology. At
the same time, Egypt and Syria would seek to rebuild their decimated
military by pursuing an even closer relationship with Soviet
Union. Given the logic of the Cold War, this forced the US to
develop Israel as a counterweight against the growing Soviet
influence in the region. The conditions were now ripe for the
growth of a special relationship between Israel and the US.
This Israeli decision to realign itself
with the US was pregnant with consequences. Israel would have
to persuade Americans that their vital interests in the region--protecting
their oil supplies, rolling back Arab nationalism, and containing
Soviet influence--could be best served by building up Israel,
militarily and economically, as the regional hegemon. This would
not be an easy task since American support for Israel was certain
to alienate the Arab world. And Americans knew this.
The Israelis undertook this task with
seriousness. In casting itself as the regional hegemon, Israel
was playing a high-risk, high-stakes game that could succeed
only if it was supported and financed by the US. Also, Israel
could not build a new strategy on a special relationship that
Americans would be free to reverse. In order to make this an
enduring relationship, Israel would bolster it at two levels.
At the grass-roots level, it worked to
build a strong, emotional American identification with Israel.
This was pursued in a variety of ways. Most importantly, American
consciousness was saturated with guilt over Jewish suffering.
In his book, The Holocaust Industry, Norman Finkelstein
has shown that the sacralization of the holocaust began only
after 1967, and how the guilt this produced has been used
to silence Israel's critics. Americans now feared that criticism
of Israel would be seen as anti-Semitism. As a result, few dared
to criticize Israel in public.
Israel was also portrayed as a democracy,
constantly under attack from Palestinians and Arabs. Two explanations
of Arab hatred of Israel were offered. It was a species of anti-Semitism.
Like its older European cousin, Arab anti-Semitism was unprovoked;
it had no causes. Alternatively, unable to modernize, the Arabs
hated Israel because it was the only country in the region that
was both free and prosperous.
At the political level, organized American
Jewry amplified its efforts to increase the pro-Israeli bias
of American politics. While individual Jews continued to play
a distinguished role in liberal and left causes, nearly all the
major Jewish organizations now worked feverishly to put pressure
on the media, the Congress and the Presidency to offer unconditional
support to Israel. In several states, Jewish money, votes and
media tilted elections towards the most pro-Israeli candidates.
In addition, Jewish organizations worked more effectively to
defeat candidates who took positions even mildly critical
of Israel. This is documented in Paul Findley's book, They
Dare to Speak Out.
Once Israel's special relationship with
the US was in place, it would acquire its own logic of success.
This logic worked through several channels. First, as Jewish
organizations worked to shape US policies towards Israel, they
would improve their tactics, and their initial victories would
bring more Jewish support and, in time, more success. This logic
even worked to turn temporary reverses to Israel's advantage.
People who argue that the US special relationship with Israel
was prompted by its victory in 1967 should also note that its
near-defeat in 1973 led, the following year, to a more than five-fold
increase in the US aid package to Israel to $2.6 billion. Egypt
took this message to heart, deciding that it would be futile
to challenge this special relationship any further. In 1978,
it signed a separate peace with Israel, after US promised to
sweeten the deal with an annual aid package of $2 billion. It's
chief rival eliminated, Israel's hegemony over the Middle East
was now more secure.
Iran's Islamist revolution in 1979 added
new strength to Israel's special relationship with the US. The
overthrow of the Iranian monarchy, the second pillar of American
hegemony in the Middle East, increased Israel's leverage over
US policies. In addition, the accession to power of Islamists
raised the bogey of the Islamic threat to the West. The Israeli
lobby, especially its Middle East experts, had been making the
case for some time that the Islamist movements in the Middle
East opposed the US per se, and not merely its policies
towards Israel. The alarm caused by the Iranian Revolution gave
strength to this interpretation.
The end of the Cold War in 1990 stripped
the special relationship of its old rationale. Israel would now
have to invent a new one to continue to sell itself as a strategic
asset. It would now market itself as the barrier, the break-water,
against the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism. For many years,
the chief opposition to the corrupt and repressive regimes in
the Arab world, whether dictatorships or monarchies, had taken
Islamist forms. Pro-Israeli apologists in the media and academia--mostly
Jewish neoconservatives and Middle East experts--argued that
the West now faced a new Islamic threat, global in its scope,
which hated the freedoms, secular values and prosperity of the
West. Bernard Lewis, the "doyen" of Middle East experts
and a passionate Zionist, solemnly intoned in 1993 that this
was nothing less than a "clash of civilizations." This
was a clever move, but also a necessary one, to convert Israel's
conflict with the Arabs into a new Crusade, the war of the West
(read: United States) against Islam. It was clever move also
because it had support from Christian fundamentalists, who were
now a strong force in the Republican party.
The new Crusaders worked in tandem with
Islamic extremists in the al-Qaida camp who also wanted to provoke
a war between Islam and the US. Every time Osama's men struck
at American targets, it was exploited by the pro-Israeli lobby
to promote the Clash thesis. When the nineteen hijackers struck
on September 11, 2001, they could not have chosen a better time.
The man at America's helm was a born-again Christian, an isolationist,
elected by right-wing Christians, with a cabinet that took its
advice on foreign policy mostly from Jewish neoconservatives.
The neoconservative's plan for a new Crusade had been ready long
before 9-11. They had the President's ears after 9-11, and the
President bought into their plan.
In no time, George Bush had been converted
into a new Crusader. He described Ariel Sharon as a "man
of peace," after embracing every one of his extremist positions
on the Palestinians: reoccupation of West Bank, repudiation of
Oslo, removal of Arafat, and dismantling of the Palestinian authority.
He laid out his binary doctrine--you are with us or against-us--and
prepared for pre-emptive wars against the "axis of evil."
The new Crusade is now underway. The
world's only superpower, commanding one-third of the world's
output, and nearly one-half its military expenditure, has entered
Iraq to effect "regime-change," to bring democracy
to a people it has emasculated with bombs and sanctions for twelve
years. In its new Crusade, United States stands at the head of
a numerous "coalition of the willing," now including
forty-five countries. But Israel is missing from this long list,
even though a team of colonial administrators, handpicked by
Paul Wolfowtz, has already arrived in Kuwait City to take over
Baghdad. That is a trick no magician could imitate. The Israelization
of United States is complete.
M. Shahid Alam
is an economist, essayist, political satirist, and poet. He teaches
economics at Northeastern University, Boston, USA. His recent
book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published
by Palgrave (2000). He may be reached at m.alam@neu.edu.
© M. Shahid Alam
Today's
Features
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
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