American support of Israel is not forever. The American military efforts in the Middle East conflict necessitate American cooperation with Arabs and dilutes partnership with Israel—a good reason Israel should have opposed the Iraqi invasion. Israel is mistaken to believe the United States would keep supporting Israel if only to prevent Israel from using nuclear weapons. There are other ways to do stop Israel, most easily by offering American protection to Arabs in case of conflict with Israel.
America’s support for Israel is not built in. Alliances are based on concrete mutual interests, not metaphysics. France is more important for America in Europe than Israel in the Middle East, yet U.S.-French relations fluctuate wildly. Henry Kissinger brought the U.S. commitment to Israel to its current level to corner the Soviets with Israel; but that need has passed, and another determined man could extinguish the American support for Israel. The United States has walked away from allies before: the South Vietnamese, the Kurds. America stood by while the Soviets butchered the Czechs whom American-funded radio incited to revolt. France for years subverted an American client, the Shah of Iran, unopposed. Israel hopes she is different, but Israel is not, not for the American Protestant establishment. America refused as little as bombing Nazi death camps to save the Jews, did not help Israelis threatened with annihilation in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and did not stop Arabs from launching the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, expected at the time to destroy or economically suffocate Israel. Israelis must be mad to count on America.
Massive Islamic terrorist acts on American soil will erode popular support for Israel and prompt anti-Semitism because Islamic terrorists blame the Israeli lobby. America will seek escape from the Middle East conflict in isolationism and estrangement from Israel, especially when American counter-terrorism measures prove ineffective. Israel' prolonging the Palestinian imbroglio will further diminish American goodwill toward Israel. People sympathize with victims, no matter their moral complexion. The United States will likely rationalize a defeat in Iraq[1] as it did the Vietnamese disaster by invented humanitarian concerns: Iraqis, like Vietnamese, will become nice people not deserving sufferings of war. Like Vietnamese, unknown to the Americans before the war and hated during it, America would welcome Iraqi immigrants, affecting the vote. Similarly, when the U.S. loses the war with Islamic terrorists and withdraws into isolationism, American attitudes toward both Muslims and Israel will change. Withdrawing of American support for Israel will upset subjective Arab-Israeli balance of power, and prompt the Muslims to reevaluate any treaties with Israel.
The Arabs say they have no general fight with the West but oppose specific infringements of Muslim sovereignty, specifically the matter of Israel. An implicit suggestion is that the West abandon Israel—but that would not work. Said Qutb, the spiritual godfather of today’s Islamists, hated the United States long before it got behind Israel. If the U.S. cut Israel loose, the Arabs would claim victory over the Israeli infidels and press on, just as the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan led to the Chechen war. Islamists see the French decision to disallow veils in public schools and the United States dislike of polygamy as a cause for asymmetric warfare. Islamic fundamentalists hate Western values and the West’s decadent culture, though it is not America culturally encroaching on the world of Islam but Muslims fascinated with Western culture, bringing it into their countries, the Islamic fundamentalists fear. Islamic terrorists do not deal in mutual deterrence. They would promote Islamic values against Western culture in any case. Democratic Western freedom of speech provides opportunities for peaceful agitation as well, and if the United States security agencies crack down on Islamists for inciting anti-Israeli terrorism and jihad, the Islamic fundamentalists will cry religious persecution and call for more Islamic terrorism.
While Israel inevitably imports Western influence into the world of Islam, other forces beyond Israel are in play—satellite TV, the internet, movies, McDonald’s, godless physics, too low oil prices, unfavorable exchange rates, and so on and on. If the West, on the contrary, shut down TV satellites and blocked the internet, Muslims would cry discrimination. Muslims inevitably import Western influence, since they must spend the oil proceeds in dollars and euros—for Western consumer goods. America cannot meet Islamist demands of pressuring Russia, China, and India to stop local persecution of nominally Muslim minorities. Those three countries, historically insouciant about human losses, will not accede to Islamic terrorists, and America could do nothing to resolve the issue. If Israel vanished, the Islamists would go on to Chechnya, Bosnia, Kashmir, Indonesia. Islamists see it their duty to protect Muslims living among the infidels and insist the West to let them live under sharia, not local law. Even if America found some unimaginable way to satisfy all the Muslim demands by severing cultural and political ties while preserving economic relations, that would end only the defensive Islamic jihad. That tremendous Islamic victory would clear the way for an offensive jihad to bring Western infidels under the Koran and sharia. Without Israel, the American problems with Islam would suddenly become many.
Why doesn’t America pressure Israel to settle the Palestinian conflict? American influence on Israel is limited: Israel won her wars without the U.S. assistance. America does not pressure Palestinians into the settlement with Israel, either. America is not bound with Israel by a special relationship and is as indecisive as any democracy. America twisted Israel’s arms and stopped Israeli war successes in 1956, 1967, and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, even forced from Israel a partial retreat never demanded from Arabs—yet shrieks when Israel overextends its influence.
American support of Israel is not exceptional. The United States gave France a billion dollars annually for the colonial conflict in Vietnam before getting directly involved there at much greater cost.[2] American stakes in the Middle East conflict are much higher, well hedged by supporting both Israel and various Arab states, particularly, Egypt, which receives only a little less aid than Israel, though no country threatens Egypt. Comparing the aid per head is wrong, since America pays for regional influence, irrelevant to Arab or Israeli population. The cost of weapons increases faster than the amount of aid to Israel, diminishing its importance. America even pays the Palestinian Liberation Organization, openly and vehemently anti-American and anti-Israeli, instead of suffocating it. Palestine gets $2 billion annually, 120% of its GDP. Israel’s special relationship with America is a delusion.
American war aid to Israel is modest compared to what America gives Islamic countries—which received even more from the Soviet Union. The aid to Muslims should be counted combined, because their power is combined in conflicts with Israel. Saudi Arabia and Egypt routinely buy more American weapons than Israel, and China becomes an important and uncontrollable supplier of inexpensive arms to Islamic countries. Kuwait buys almost as much as Israel, and tiny Qatar sometimes even more. The United Arab Emirates, a country never threatened, bought a large number of F-16 attack jets superior to those of the USAF and Israel, uniquely equipped with a software code that lets them target United States or Israeli planes, and several Arab countries are expected to buy next-generation Joint Strike Force jets. The United States fought for Kuwait, something it did not do for Israel in 1973. America cooperated with the Iraqi military during the Reagan—pro-Israeli—years and gave Saddam the green light to use chemical weapons, unthinkable for Israel. American support for another Muslim state, Indonesia, far exceeds what it offers Israel in terms of atrocities tolerated. After liberating Kuwait, America did not ask it to sign a peace treaty with Israel or sell Israel oil to break Arab boycott of Israel. The U.S. supports Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, both bastions of radical Islam threatening Israel. America arranged no cease-fires when Israel needed them, but always when truces benefited Arabs,[3] and never firmly opposed Soviet arms shipments to Muslims, vastly exceeding American war aid to Israel. America never prevented an Arab military build-up or military concentration at Israel’s borders, yet heavy-handedly stopped Israel from preemption in 1973 Egyptian-Israeli war.
The relationship with Israel is even less special for the American elite. The Bush family keeps close ties both with Israel and Saudi Arabia. Arab oil economies with concentrated wealth can offer much more to the governing families of America than Israel could. Their corporate friends often influence world leaders more than intelligence provided by Israeli experts. Most American corporate interests are aligned with the Arabs, not with Israel, and lobby Arab interests more strongly, though less pompously, than Jews do through media and contacts open to public scrutiny.
The Saudis lobby and suborn foreign-policy officials all over the world, promising sympathetic politicians golden parachute jobs upon retirement. The bin Laden family firm built the American army bases in Saudi Arabia and has strong relations with the Carlyle Group, whose leadership includes George Bush, John Major, James Baker, and others of similar standing. With such vested interests, it is no wonder the United States has a hard time pressuring Saudi Arabia to stop supporting Islamic terrorists and fundamentalists.
Jewish influence did little for Israel before 1973 when the U.S. first critically supported Israel to prevent the Middle East from falling prey to the Soviets. Some American officials work with the Saudis after they leave office; almost none, with Israelis. There are more Muslims than Jews in the U.S. and more anti-Semites than Jewish votes. Jewish mass media and corporate ownership have declined in recent years with more Japanese and Arab investment.
Historically, privileged Jews in European and other countries have aroused resentment which became persecution of Jews, often after a major political or economic change. American policy presently favors Israel and seeks to preserve America’s as arbiter of the balance of power in a protracted Middle East conflict—but that could change any time. Arabs could buy journalists and media and turn American voters against Israel. Jewish influence in media diminishes as ownership shifts to corporations lacking individual controlling Jewish shareholders. Jews also hold relatively fewer jobs in media outlets.
[1] Saddam seemed to accommodate Israel: in theGulf War, only one Israeli died from thirty-nine Iraqi barrages. SCUD missiles hit reliably even when slightly out of range, and many misses are not easily explained other than by Saddam’s instructions. He showed the Arab world his anti-Israeli stance, and kept Israel from retaliation. Next to nothing evidences Saddam’s support for Islamic terrorists; he was at odds with Kurdish and Islamic fundamentalist outfits, and Islamist Iran. Now Israel faces a failed state with massive Islamic terrorist presence instead of a well-established dictatorship with no designs on Israel. Iraq made Arabs dependent on the U.S. for protection, and thus tolerant to Israel. Iraq drained Saudi Arabia and Iran through military buildup; the Gulf War almost bankrupted Saudis. Attacking Iraq, a long-time U.S. ally with no nuclear weapons, instead of clerical Iran, a long-time enemy active in acquiring nuclear bomb, was absurd. Now that replacing Saddam with another strongman is unlikely, the best Israel could do is to push for democratic elections which would bring Shia majority to power, dividing the Muslim world, and greatly destabilizing the Middle East close to Saudi oil fields.
[2] America repeats this error in the Middle East now. Dissatisfied with its proxy Israel, the U.S. military officials want to take over, largely to justify bizarre defense procurement; they drag America into another irresolvable conflict in the Middle East.
[3] Arabs, unlike Israel, routinely refused unprofitable armistices.