An enabler is someone who encourages, makes possible, or overlooks the unhealthy behavior of someone else. Making excuses for and even staying with an abusive husband is being an enabler. Paying bills for an irresponsible adult is being an enabler. Denying your daughter’s drug addiction, defending your son’s unprovoked fights, even picking up after teenagers is being an enabler.
So it is with the U.S. and the state of Israel. A smart and scrappy group of dispossessed people who only wanted a home—we saw it all in Exodus starring Paul Newman. They so deserved our support. Most Americans learned everything they know about Israel from watching that movie, hearing the theme, rooting for this underdog. Like a favorite child who starts misbehaving, over the years, an empowered Israel committed atrocities on the Palestinians and others, and we in the U.S. looked the other way. When they seemed threatened, we were more inclined to send money and military supplies, so hard-liners dominated Israeli politics and a chronic state of bad relations with the neighbors ensued. The truth is that very many Israeli citizens would prefer to live in peace, but they can’t get the majorities they need to change course, and the U.S. participation (enabling behavior) has a lot to do with that. Now there is such a history of bad events on both sides that this will be an extremely hard situation to heal.
Where do we go from here? For starters, the aid we send should be targeted to encourage businesses in the Palestinian territories that would produce high value added products from Israeli raw materials. There’s nothing like economic interdependence to help people get along. Sending military hardware to this area is like sending guns and ammunition to inner city gangs—not really moving things in the right direction.
And when the prime minister of Israel comes to Washington, the message is not that “we have your back”. We don’t take sides. We have the best interest of all people everywhere
Israel is one of our proxy client states. That's where we used to field test our weapons systems against stuff the Soviets had back during the Lebanese Civil War. Now we use them as the "bad cop" to intimidate Arab states we don't like or want to conform to a certain mode of behavior. They have an effective military because we supply them (and train them to some extent.) They didn't discover how to make nuclear weapons from a book they found in a Cracker Jack box. We told them how. That way, we always had the threat of a third-party nuclear power to hold over the heads of the Arabs. And also a nuclear power who is willing to actually use them, unlike our other allies in Europe who have them and would never use them in a first-strike capacity. The U.S. has always maintained a first-strike capacity despite our denials of it. It was "fine print". We said we wouldn't use our strategic nuclear weapons. But our tactical nukes have always been authorized for first-strike use and still are. Israel certainly learns much from the U.S. and probably emulates us on that policy as well. Which is why we have such a cozy relationship with them. Truth be known, we could aim Israel at any nation we please in the Middle East and they'd be more than happy to attack so long as we warned the Middle East that Israel was protected under our "nuclear umbrella". In fact, we said Israel is protected under our nuclear umbrella some few years ago.
ReplyDeleteSo, the situation with Israel is one of them being our attack dogs. They couldn't have taken out Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak back in the 1980s without us blessing the event. We flat do not care about the Palestinians. They have no oil, they have no army that marches to our drummer, hence, they have no value in the eyes of the American Regime.
The American people have been fooled into thinking Israel is the "only democracy in the Middle East". This is absolute balderdash. They're not a democracy. It is illegal in Israel for a Jew to marry a non-Jew. Does that sound like a democracy?
Dear Guerilla Chef,
ReplyDeletePlease accept my humble apologies for taking so long to reply. Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments. I have been drowning in springtime work--planting, watering, breaking new ground, trying to keep the cows in. Not so much critical thinking as critical timing.
The situation in the Middle East is of course as extreme as you describe. I step gently into those waters, hoping not to immediately turn anyone away. To build the largest possible group of interested, informed people gives us the best chance of solving the problem. The situation in the Middle East is an ulcer on the face of the Earth. We need to heal it--I think everyone can agree with that.