Resources > The United States, Israel and the war on Iraq
THE UNITED STATES, ISRAEL, AND THE
WAR ON IRAQ
Since the 1960s, critics of Israel’s policies regarding the Palestinians have regularly been accused of anti-Semitism by those who strongly identify with the Jewish state. In recent years, as criticism of Israel’s 35-year-old occupation of Palestinian lands has increased, such charges have become routine, especially on college campuses. Moreover and of more immediate concern, the right-wing Likud government of Israel under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has expressed strong support for a planned U.S. war against Iraq. This support is of more than rhetorical interest, as many of President Bush’s most hawkish advisors--especially in the Department of Defense--have a history of strong connections with Likud ideology and policies. This confluence of support for war has provoked even more criticism of U.S. support for Israel, and increasingly vitriolic counter-charges of anti-Semitism by Israel’s defenders.
AWARE agrees with the view that U.S. support for Israel’s illegal and destructive occupation of Palestinian lands is not only wrong, but reflects a double standard in relation to our treatment of Iraq.
AWARE agrees with the view that this support and double standard constitute a primary factor evoking hatred for U.S. policies among extremists in the Arab and Muslim worlds, and partly explain the abhorrent terrorism that was perpetrated on 9/11.
AWARE supports a just peace in the Israel-Palestine conflict based upon the human rights and self-determination of all those involved.
AWARE is opposed to a U.S. invasion of Iraq, and is highly critical of the support that Israel’s government and U.S. officials with strong connections to it have lent to this proposed invasion, which has catastrophic possibilities for the people of Iraq.
AWARE rejects the notion that criticism of Israel’s policies, U.S. support for these policies, and the relationship between the Bush and Sharon administrations in the march toward war can be equated with anti-Semitism.
AWARE, as its name clearly asserts, opposes racism in all of its forms.
OVERVIEW: WHY DO THEY HATE US?
The 9/11 terrorist attacks were not supported by a majority in the Arab and Muslim worlds, but the perpetrators articulated three grievances that resonate among many in these worlds: first, American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, the spiritual center of Islam; second, deadly U.S sanctions against Iraq; and third, U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Given ongoing Israeli violations of Geneva Convention rules governing occupation in general and U.N. resolutions concerning Israel’s occupation in particular, most Muslims are also critical of a double standard in the treatment of Arab countries and Israel. This has become particularly important after a decade of deadly sanctions against Iraq, and as claims of Iraqi violations of U.N. resolutions have served as a pretext for a “preventive” war.
The current Bush administration has signaled a new stage in the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Israel. Neoconservative proponents of the culture of anti-terrorism with strong ties to the ruling right-wing Likud Party in Israel have assumed influential positions as foreign policy advisors. They are among the most hawkish voices promoting an attack on Iraq and further measures against the “Axis of Evil.” Even though Israeli military analysts perceive no threat from Iraq, such an attack is also strongly supported by the current Likud government of Ariel Sharon. But this is not a conspiracy of Israeli or Jewish interests to control U.S. policy. It is, however, a coordinated effort to serve American geopolitical and oil interests by “re-drawing the map of the Middle East.” It may also provide Israel’s leaders with an opportunity to settle the Palestinian problem on their own unjust terms: through either the normalization of apartheid in the occupied territories, or through massive expulsion and the de facto creation of “Greater Israel.”
THE “SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP”
The “special relationship” between the U.S. and Israel dates to 1948, when the U.S. supported the partition of Palestine and pressured other countries to do likewise. But the nature of the current relationship has its origins in the weapons transfers of the early 1960s and Israel’s triumphant show of force during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. This period secured Israel’s position as a U.S. client state with global responsibilities—for example, in Central America, resulting in Israel’s role in the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s. This period also secured Israel’s position as by far the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, with important implications for the relationship between the American and Israeli militaries and weapons industries.
Between 1967 and 1993, the U.S. rhetorically supported U.N. resolution 242, which calls for Israel to abandon control of the occupied territories. But in practice and in contradiction to 242, the U.S. failed to challenge Israel in its settlement policies, its denial of Palestinian rights, and its rejection of Palestinian overtures for a two-state solution. These overtures began in the late 1970s and culminated in the de facto recognition of Israel by the PLO in 1988. After the Oslo Accords of 1993, the U.S. allowed Israel to continue the expansion of illegal settlements and the implementation of disruptive closures in the occupied territories, stifling the Palestinian economy, which was cut in half prior to the beginning of the current intifada in September 2000. Since then, the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons that have been used in the collective punishment of the Palestinian people and the re-occupation of areas that had been governed by the Palestinian Authority.
THE RISE OF THE NEOCONSERVATIVES
Neoconservatives emerged in the 1960s from the cold war liberalism of the Democratic Party. Unlike other elements of the conservative mainstream, neoconservatives have historical social roots in liberal and leftist politics. Disillusioned first with socialism and communism, and later with Democrats (like George McGovern) who opposed the Vietnam War, neoconservatives played a key role in boosting the New Right and Ronald Reagan into political dominance in the 1980s. Support for Israel as a western culture and “the only democracy in the Middle East” has always been central to the neoconservative ideology.
Neoconservatives are not politicians but political analysts, activist ideologues, and scholars who have played a central role in forging the agendas of numerous right-wing think tanks, front groups, and foundations, most notably the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. Neoconservatives have a profound belief in America’s moral superiority, which facilitates alliances with the Christian Right and other social conservatives. But unlike traditional conservatives with isolationist tendencies, neoconservatives are committed internationalists. As they did in the 1980s, the neoconservatives have been instrumental since the late 1990s in helping to fuse diverse elements of the right into a unified force based on a new agenda of U.S. global supremacy.
THE CULTURE OF ANTI-TERRORISM
The “culture of anti-terrorism” defines the dualistic, “good vs. evil” ideology of the neoconservative movement that has come to dominate U.S. foreign policy. Anti-terrorism has replaced anti-communism as a rationale for the unbridled exercise of American power around the world—power that is in reality exercised on behalf of elite economic interests. The neoconservative movement emerged in the late 1960s with an ideology of anti-communism. During the Reagan Administration of the 1980s and the initial declaration of a “war on terrorism” in response to upheavals in Lebanon and Iran, neoconservatives combined anti–communism and anti-terrorism while gaining significant influence over U.S. foreign policy.
There are many connections between the current Bush and Reagan (1981-89) administrations that illustrate the transition from anti-communism to anti-terrorism; Elliott Abrams, convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal, is currently the National Security Council’s chief advisor on Middle East policy. He spent the intervening years advocating a neoconservative form of Jewish-American identity and religiosity that was aligned with both the Israeli right and the Christian Right in this country.
The culture of anti-terrorism in relation to the Arab and Muslim worlds has its origins in a belief that in the post-Soviet era we are confronted with a “clash of civilizations,” as articulated by Princeton orientalist Bernard Lewis and popularized by Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington. Influential advocates of this view such as Kenneth Adelman and Eliot Cohen of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board argue that Islam itself is America’s enemy because Islamic religion and civilization are intolerant, hostile to Western values, proselytizing, expansionist, and violent. The essential nature of Islam cannot be changed, and thus Muslims can only be addressed by force, which is now being justified as pre-emptive or preventive.
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the Israeli leader who has been most identified with the culture of anti-terrorism at an ideological level, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at a practical level. They are both members of the right-wing Likud Party. In the U.S., the most extreme and visible anti-Muslim and anti-terrorist ideologues are Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson, and Michael Ledeen. More important, the most influential practitioners of the culture of anti-terrorism from within the Bush administration are Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board; and Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Policy at the Defense Department, one of the Pentagon’s four most senior posts. Both are close advisors to Vice-President Richard Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who are relentlessly promoting a war against Iraq.
The line between public policy and private advocacy within the culture of anti-terrorism is not easily distinguished. At a “private” level, it has been nurtured by many neoconservative think tanks. Two of the most important but least well known are the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and the Center for Security Policy (CSP). Perle and Feith have been or are currently associated with both of these think tanks, as are representatives of many major weapons manufacturers that benefit from the aggressive policies of both the U.S. and Israel.
Feith has a long paper trail of anti-Arab tracts against those who challenge or seek to compromise Israel’s strength and “moral superiority” over the Arabs. Since he defines the Middle East conflict in absolute terms, the only option for Israel is to confront and defeat its enemies while gaining sovereignty over all of mandatory Palestine (Israel and the occupied territories). The culture of anti-terrorism, as the dominant force in the Bush Defense Department, identifies with “good” Israel against Arab forces of “darkness.” Thus it is asserted that the U.S. should never pressure Israel either to surrender land or to compromise its hegemonic position in the region. Since 9/11, this view has become seamlessly consistent with the promotion of wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond.
LABOR & LIKUD; DEMOCRATS & REPUBLICANS
In Israel, the Likud Party is identified with both increased government support for the settler movement, and the Labor Party is identified with the exchange of “land for peace” in the occupied territories. But since the Oslo Accords of 1993, settlement in the illegally occupied territories actually has grown faster during Labor than during Likud administrations. Since the 1967 war, Labor policies have promoted Israeli control of at least 40% of the West Bank, and this vision has evolved with “facts on the ground” into a form of apartheid. The “generous offer” at Camp David in 2000, which was understandably rejected by Yassir Arafat, reflected this vision and reality, even though the Palestinians were offered 80% of the West Bank in the form of 4 discontiguous South African-style Bantustans with borders controlled by Israel.
While Labor has since 1993 been amenable to the establishment of an ineffectual Palestinian state, Likud has continued to oppose even this much. Instead, Likud has continued to identify with the most extreme aspects of the settler movement who believe in “Greater Israel,” and to flirt with the notion of expulsion—referred to as “transfer” in Israeli discourse, referred to elsewhere as ethnic cleansing.
During the Democratic Clinton administration, pro-Israel diplomats like Dennis Ross worked with Labor to convince or force the corrupt Yassir Arafat to agree to a two-state solution that would have resulted in the removal of a minimal number of Israeli settlements, while offering the Palestinians a state that would remain essentially under neo-colonial Israeli economic and military control. During the current Republican Bush administration, officials like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith have allowed Likud to destroy Arafat’s authority while demanding that the Palestinians “democratize” their society under conditions of occupation, closure, curfew, and the constant threat of violence.
During the Clinton administration, Israel’s interests were still viewed as separate from and subordinate to U.S. interests in “stability.” During the Bush administration, Israel’s interests have been increasingly viewed as nearly identical with U.S. interests in “regime change” and “re-drawing the map of the Middle East.” Under neither administration has there been a meaningful concern for Palestinian human, civil, or national rights.
NEOCONSERVATIVES, LIKUD, AND THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION: “A CLEAN BREAK”
In 1996 Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and other prominent neoconservatives wrote an advisory paper for the newly elected Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In “A Clean Break: a New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” they advised Netanyahu to: “make a clean break from the peace process;” reassert Israel’s claim to its land by rejecting “land for peace” as the basis for peace; strengthen Israel’s defenses to better confront Syria and Iraq; and forge a new and stronger relationship with the U.S. based on self-reliance and mutual interest. Netanyahu in part rejected their advice in the short term. But in the long term these suggestions have been largely accepted by Likud under current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon--with the approval of the same neoconservatives, now in power under Bush.
The views of Perle, Feith, and their colleagues at JINSA and the CSP are clearly influential in the Bush Defense Department, although not unchallenged by some in the military, the CIA, and the State Department. Writing in The Nation, Jason Vest comments on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: “He repeatedly referred to the ‘so-called occupied territories,’ . . . with which Israel can do whatever it wants, as it has ‘won’ all its wars with various Arab entities—essentially an echo of JINSA’s stated position that ‘that there is no Israeli occupation.”
REDRAWING THE MAP OF THE MIDDLE EAST
Israeli military assessments have concluded that Iraq would not launch unprovoked aggression against it. Regardless of reports of alarm and precautions that emanate from Israel, missiles launched during a U.S. invasion are viewed as a manageable risk. In the final analysis, Israel supports a U.S. invasion for 3 reasons: first, resource-rich and highly educated Iraq is viewed as an economic and military rival; second, bad relations between the U.S. and the Arab world are viewed as good for Israel; third, an invasion is seen as an opportunity to push a few hundred thousand Palestinians into neighboring countries--perhaps realizing the belief among many Israelis that “Jordan is Palestine.”
Ali Abunimah (electronicintifada.net) writes “for some of Israel’s supporters both within the U.S. administration and think tanks, catastrophic developments even short of ethnic cleansing . . . fit into a broader plan to completely remake an unruly Middle East with Israel as the dominant local power under overall U.S. hegemony.”
Sandy Tolan writes in the L.A. Times (12/1/2002) that a “neo-imperial vision, which can be ascertained from the writings of key administration figures and their co-visionaries in influential conservative think tanks, includes not only regime change in Iraq but control of Iraqi oil, a possible end to OPEC, and newly compliant governments in Syria and Iran—either by force or internal rebellion.” Ariel Sharon has joined the call against Tehran, arguing in a November 2002 interview with the Times of London that the U.S. should shift its focus to Iran “the day after” the Iraq war ends.
In conclusion, it must again be stressed that this is not a conspiracy of Jewish interests, but a coordinated effort of neo-colonialist elites in both countries that reveals the militaristic aspect of neoliberal globalization in its most naked form. Edward Said writes that such plans are “in keeping with U.S. Middle East policy built on two mighty pillars: the security of Israel and plentiful supplies of inexpensive oil.” Underlying this is a familiar racist mindset: “The complex mosaic of traditions, religions, cultures, ethnicities, and histories that make up the Arab world—especially in Iraq—despite the existence of nation-states with sullenly despotic rulers, are lost to U.S. and Israeli strategic planners.”
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