U.S. support of Israel is disastrous

(Second of two columns on Israel)
Again and again it must be emphasized: criticizing Israeli policies is not anti-Semitic.
It is not anti-Semitism to oppose Zionism, the establishment of a Jewish state. Many Jewish thinkers have long thought Zionism was wrong. They have argued that establishing Israel was setting up a religious state rather than a secular one, that it was unjust to displace people to establish a nation.
The critics were right.
The Israel Lobby and American apologists for Israel went into paroxysms of outrage over a scholarly article that appeared in the London Review of Books in March. The article, entitled “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” was co-authored by two distinguished professors, John Mearsheimer of Chicago university and Stephen Walt of Harvard.
They argued that a wide-ranging coalition of neoconservatives, Christian Zionists, the media and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee exert a stranglehold on Middle East policy and public debate in America. They deplored “unwavering U.S. support for Israel” as not in the best interest of America.
The argument by the two scholars hit a sensitive nerve, telling a truth that the coalition members could not bear to hear.
The mild-mannered, baldish professors were likened to Nazis. The Anti-Defamation League called their article “a classic conspiratorial anti-Semitic analysis invoking the canards of Jewish power and Jewish control.”
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz was beside himself, declaring that the article “could have been written by Pat Buchanan, David Duke or Noam Chomsky.”
The outcry was so excessive that you would have thought the professors had written another Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Foreign Affairs, hardly a Chomskyite magazine, reviewed the article by Mearsheimer and Walt, calling it hard-headed and cogent. Their argument “cries out for careful consideration” and “just might set in motion a useful paradigm shift in the U.S. Middle East policy.” (Fat chance with Bush in the White House.)
Chomsky in “Failed States” writes a blistering indictment of Israel past and present. The recent invasion of Lebanon was nothing new. Israel bombed Beirut in 1985 as part of “Shimon Peres’ vicious Iron Fist operations targeting ‘terrorist villagers’ in Lebanon and bombing Tunis.”
The U.N. Security Council condemned the raids. But Secretary of State George Schultz applauded.
Independent reporter James Bamford rightly says that Israel should be treated like any other country and not as America’s 51st state.
Carrots and stick? It’s all carrots for Israel. Bamford says America should tell Israel: either abandon its illegal West Bank settlements or forfeit the $4 billion annually it gets from the United States. (Alas, it will never happen even with a liberal Democrat in the White House.)
Chomsky sounds the theme of Zionist ideology: “ ‘redeem The Land’ for its true owners who are returning to it after 2,000 years.” This meant kicking out the Palestinians and making them permanent exiles.
As Israeli historian Benny Morris has written: “the refugee problem was caused by attacks by Jewish forces on Arab villages and towns” and by a “crucial Israeli cabinet decision in June 1948 to bar a refugee return,” leaving the Palestinians “crushed with some 700,000 driven into exile.”
Chomsky notes that the infamous West Bank Wall today was designed to “prevent Palestinians from entering Israeli territory--meaning occupied territory--to be eventually incorporated within Israel.”`
Israeli spin is masterful. Chomsky cites the Israeli media blitz about withdrawal from Gaza a year ago: “There were pages and pages of photos and reports of the pathos of the families forced to leave their homes…the weeping children trying vainly to hold back the soldiers and the anguish of soldiers who were ordered to evict Jews from their homes.”
Israel recently pounded Lebanon with impunity but that’s OK with President Bush. He made it clear a long time ago that an even-handed policy in the Middle East was “for the birds.” As for former Premier Ariel Sharon, Bush said: “Let him cope with the Palestinians the way he wants to. Sometimes a show of force can do a lot of good.”
Why does the Arab world hate America? Easy. For the good reasons of:
• One-sided support for Israel while ignoring Palestinian rights and backing Israel’s illegal settlements on the West Bank.
• Invasions of Arab lands, dealing death, destruction and humilation.
• Support for authoritarian Arab regimes in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia.
The persecution and oppression of Arabs by the United States and Israel is nothing less than a modern crusade.