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Based on your cogent explanation in post #39, I have a favor to ask of you.

Last weekend, at a family party, I got into conversation with a (normally) sensible, conservative, usually well-informed family member who told me he agrees with Paul. I went on to list the things that I have heard Paul say that make sense, and then I challenged the relative on Paul’s outrageous comments about September 11. To my astonishment, he told me that he agrees with Paul. This relative stated that our problems with the Middle East began with our assistance in establishing the state of Israel!

I was totally flabbergasted, but I realized how uninformed I am when I fumbled around trying to find an explanation beyond the moral right of the Jews to their Holy Land. I also pointed out how Israel has created a beacon of civilization and democracy in the dismal reason. But I found myself pretty weak in this debate territory searching for arguments showing practical reasons.

Could you please help me? Thanks

To my astonishment, he told me that he agrees with Paul. This relative stated that our problems with the Middle East began with our assistance in establishing the state of Israel!

You might tell your relative that Ron Paul does not support aid to Israel, "Palestine", or Egypt or our meddling in a "peace process" that compromises Israel's security. We oppose all foreign aid and meddling, including the usual nation-building farces. You can't build a nation for someone else. We've never done so and our few Wilsonian attempts have always failed.

Israel is an established country. While the circumstances of the founding of many countries may be discussed or questioned, Ron Paul and his supporters do not question Israel's right to exist, her control over her territory or her means of dealing with internal security matters including the so-called Palestinians.

We also oppose continued meddling in Kosovo or recognizing its independence by carving off a chunk of Serbia. Another example of Bush/Xlinton unity in foreign policy and a miserable failure although Bush pretended to oppose Xlinton prior to election on this issue. Unless you just really like to reward Muslim genocide against Christians and giving the long-established lands of Christian nations to Muslim narco-terrorists who are the scum of the Balkans and the main processing center for the heroin trade with Europe and the United States. Oh, yeah, and provoking the Russians far far more than even our expansion of NATO to the east. That is why the Russians started talking tough and flying their old Cold War air patrols against the West again too.

I'm highly complimented at being asked, frankly. This goes rather far afield from the thread but does have a couple of interesting points of congruence.

That the United States has been given the opprobrium for the establishment of the state of Israel throughout not only the Arab world but most of the educated West as well is a triumph of Soviet propaganda. There had been a Zionist movement for years, but the initial push for the postwar creation of Israel was to a great deal Soviet, and it wasn't an altruistic effort to aid the Jews, it was a means of making mischief against the British, who had been assigned the mandate over Palestine since before the end of the first World War. Following the war of independence the U.S. and Soviet Union recognized the state of Israel within a few hours of one another.

Incidentally, it is one of the ironies of history that the pro-independence army was termed the Palestinian army in contemporary accounts. Run into that one in the old books and it's likely to leave you scratching your head for awhile.

The real source of the problem is the continuing support of Israel by the United States within the UN (who created the problem in the first place) and internationally. This is portrayed as an undue influence on the part of Jews within the U.S. political structure in support of a broader Zionist project. The most effective propaganda is partially true - yes, of course there's influence, and no, I do not consider it "undue." Don't try selling that point of view to a determined conspiracy enthusiast.

The difficulty, as in all things with regard to foreign policy, is past commitments we are obligated to live up to because somebody in a position of authority agreed to do so. Aid to the entire area is one example of this. Essentially the Israelis don't really need it but we're giving it to them because we're giving it to the Palestinians in order to get them not to fight. For better or worse we agreed to this. One difficulty with the inception of a radical shift in foreign policy such as the ones recommended by Paul is that breaking these commitments carries with it its own disadvantages. Who will make a commitment with a country that discards them every time a Presidential election comes around?

That does not mean we're entirely stuck. In this I agree with Paul, at least partially - if what we're paying for is peace and we're not getting peace then why continue paying?

Getting back to your original question, the real issue is that the problem is historically complex and subtle, and frankly blaming the United States saves the blamer the trouble of attempting to understand it.

It's a backhanded compliment in a way - most historical treatments, even in the eyes of our political opponents, are fantastically U.S.-centric and imbue us with intentions and a level of power that we simply don't have. The notion that the world is as it is out of an enormous conspiracy is easier to fathom than the truth that it is the resultant of a myriad of little decisions that were made for what seemed sound reasons at the time. The notion that principle should guide policy decisions is a good one. The practice of taking a set of policy decisions and ascribing - accusing would be a better word - them to a malign principle in retrospect keeps a lot of popular historians in business but simply isn't the way we got to where we are. IMHO, of course.