Posted on 02/25/2002 2:14:43 PM PST by RCW2001
American Aid to Israel:
Is It Good for the Jews?
by Derek Copold
Some years ago a Jewish friend of mine met a man who worked for AIPAC, a political action committee that lobbies on behalf of the State of Israel. Judging by my friend’s reaction to him, I gathered that he was quite the salesman. The AIPAC worker had talked my friend into contributing, and that same friend, knowing my father was Jewish, thought I too might be interested. I wasn’t.
My friend was a bit put out when I declined the oppoturnity, and I felt bad at the time, having brought him down a bit. But the fact of the matter was that I didn’t, and still don’t, care for the idea of Americans lobbying our government for the purpose of sending tax money to a foreign power, even an ostensibly friendly one like Israel.
This is not to imply that my friend bore within him the seeds of disloyalty. Quite the opposite. A Vietnam veteran, he proudly served 12 years in the armed forces. Even if I disagree with his political choice, it doesn’t change the fact that he loves his country through and through.
His evident discomfort, though, raised a question. Are AIPAC and other Israel-boosting organizations in the United States doing any good when they help procure billions and billions of dollars of free aid for the Jewish State? And I ask this, not so much in relation to the United States, but rather to Israel itself, and to Jews in general.
Before answering this question, allow me to also note a twist in this situation. Most of Israel’s supporters in America hail from the political Right. Ironically, many of the people who denounce government money as a corrupting influence will, in almost the same breath, demand that Israel continue to receive her cut. So which is it? Are government subsidies bad, as is claimed for welfare recipients, charities and corporations, or are they good, as is argued for Israel?
The evidence suggests the former. Before the late 1960s, Israel was for the most part a self-sufficient country. Despite being surrounded by hostile forces, she was able to take care of herself without relying on any other power for direct aid. This status changed once she began to accept American aid. As a result of this ‘free’ money’, the Jewish State has become an American dependency. The once proud Zionist nation has been reduced to relying on the charity of Washington.
The number of visits Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has made to Washington in the last year alone attests to Israel’s servile status. Many of Israel’s boosters proudly point to Ariel Sharon’s four White House visits as a sign of favor, an accomplishment. But how can any supposedly independent country take heart in the fact that their leader has been forced to show up at another nation’s doorstep, hat in hand, humbly asking permission to do what it believes it must do to survive? Far from securing Israel's independence, America's aid has effectively destroyed it.
So much for helping Israel. But what about the Jews in general and American Jews in particular? Is America’s aid to Israel good for the Jews?
Again, the answer is not encouraging. American aid to Israel has been cited as a factor that led to the 9/11 massacre. For the moment, set aside the question of whether this allegation is true or not; simply note that it is there. Note also, that most Jews, understandably, take severe umbrage with it, and have gone to extraordinary lengths to rebut it. Now whether or not they are correct, their efforts, including the often inaccurate cries of anti-Semitism, have raised questions (most of which remain unspoken) amongst their non-Jewish compatriots about whose interests the Jews are really serving.
To be sure, these Jews believe completely and sincerely that the United States’ interests coincide with Israel’s, and though I question their logic, I don’t doubt their loyalty.
Yet the question is out there, and having that question of ‘dual loyalty’, which is inseparably tied to Israel's American aid, remain out there is deleterious to the Jews. If Israel had never accepted American largesse and remained self-sufficient, no one could have raised this question. Either there would be no terrorism directed against America, as Israel’s critics believe would happen, or if it did, there would be no aid for those critics to blame.
So if this aid is as harmful as I claim it to be, why do Israel and her friends insist on continuing it? For the same reason a heroine addict keeps looking for smack, even after he realizes that it’s killing him. Like that addict, Israel will do everything and anything to maintain a steady supply, and just like any junkie, she will never truly control her own destiny as long as she allows herself to be injected with billions of dollars of American aid.
Unfortunately, her American friends, particularly those on the Right, have suspended their better judgment, and they refuse to address this problem in any kind of an honest manner, preferring instead to revel in alternating emotions of triumphalism and self-pity. Meanwhile, the object of their affections becomes more and more enervated by their 'help.'
Excuse me but the 500,000 deaths were the result of economic "aid" and military intervention. The direct result of an economic embargo and an 11 year bombing campaign. It's working. Working for whom?
We can always hope. After September 11th, most Freepers wouldn't hold with his filth.
Terrorism has been practiced for thousands of years. Yassir Arafat cannot make that claim.
My answer is simple: Let them kill eachother.
With nukes I suppose? Once again though who is to say that some of these actors (including terrorists) will not direct nuclear weapons toward the US? Iraq was working deligently toward aquiring nuclear weapons *until* the West intervened. Who do you think they would have used those nuclear weapons on? Perhaps the United States, but probably Israel -- and yet you claim to be a friend the Israelis? It sure doesn't sound that way.
I'm saying that it works enough to be a reasonable tool of foreign policy decision making.
Nobody can say that. It is much less likely however that the U.S. would be involved if we have no presence in the region. If our soldiers are still in Afghanistan and Pakistan and things escalate we are assured to become involved. First when our personell are anihilated because they're right in the middle of a volatile situation and then when some State department assesment has us trading missiles with Pakistan or North Korea.
What is the product or task we are accomplishing with this so-called tool?
Without US money, the Pakistani ISI would've been too cash-strapped to aid the Taliban.
Not that the Pakistani ISI were "big givers" by any comparative standards. It was US Interventionists who were trying to "reform" the Taliban by shovelling hundreds of millions a year to the drooling homicidal mullahs.
What if a more fundamentalist government were to gain power in Pakistan?
Gosh, if that were to happen, India might just have to lay down a can of Hindu whoop-ass on the blithering Moon-worshippers -- yet again (these people like nothing better than killing eachother, if nobody else is around to kill).
None of which has anything to do with me, and my family -- who are the true objects of homeland Patriotism.
You make quite a number of assumptions concerning what Pakistan would do without *any* financial aid from the US. It's a foolish wish that by isolating ourselves from the world that "somehow" things will work out for the best.
Nah.
I'm not worried about "things" in general working out for the "best". Hutus will still kill Tutsis by the hundreds of thousands (and vice versa). Things will never work out for the "best" world-wide, until Christ returns; because -- news flash!! -- it's a fallen world.
I'm only concerned about "things working out for the best" of Americans, in the same manner that the Swiss are concerned about "things working out for the best" of the Swiss.
Nothing ever works out "for the best", but Swiss non-interventionist policy has a funny way of working out best for the Swiss.
In a Fallen World, that's good enough for me.
Huh? Now you're beginning to commit logical fallacies. Try reading up on foreign policy journals and articles. The recommendations almost always involve either some financial aid or intervention. Do you really think that these experts are *all* wrong but you with your overly simplistic idealism are correct? LOL. Talk about insane...
This has turned to farce.
You accuse me of logical fallacies, employing as your counter-argument a couple of textbook Appeal To Authority and Appeal To Bandwagon fallacies as your attempt at "refutation"?
That's not even offensive; it's embarassing. If you were even past the level of Freshman Logical Analysis, I would tell you to be ashamed of yourself.
It's pitiable. You want me to respect your argumentative talents, Uber, not to pity you.
Sigh.
Look, watch this: "Well, Golly-Gee, Uber, I don't think all experts are Wrong; I think that only the Foreign Policy Journal Interventionist (so-called) 'experts' are Wrong, and the Foreign Policy Journal Isolationist Experts are Right!!"
Huh, wouldja look at that -- all of a sudden, I have my very own Appeal to Authority and Bandwagon fallacies with which to counter your "arguments" -- and you have no leg to stand on, because your only "argument" in the first place was an Appeal to Authority and Bandwagon Logical Fallacy, which I have now just countered in turn.
That's the problem with Logical Fallacies, Uber -- they gain you nothing when debating someone who is familiar with the science and practice of Logic.
Sheesh, you should already know that.
Oh, heck, I'll say it any way -- for that blatant argumentative blunder, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Try harder next time. I was enjoying our debate, but now you are just disappointing me.
As for myself, two gin-scented tears trickle down the sides of my nose. It is all right, everything is all right, the struggle is finished. I have won the victory over My Self. I trust Big Brother.
I love Big Brother.
Hehe.
I do appreciate your sentiments here. Yes, I believe there is corruption in "statecraft", but I also believe that there are honest State Department "experts" who still guide policy making. I think the difference here is that without (foreign) policy makers who exactly would be making these decisions?
You almost sound like an anarchist...
Good God. Pakistan's ISI was merely a funnel so that the US could have some plausible deniability that they had trained the Mujahedin to attack the USSR's puppet government in Afghanistan. It wasn't even ISI's money. It was OUR money actually.
It was the CIA and ISI that is responsible for the Jihadist terrorist movement as we know it. Most every dollar came from the US.
Nah.
LOL.
Sorry but your overly simplistic notion that all nations will somehow cancel all other nations, all to the benefit to the United States is not naively idealistic but is unsupported by the evidence. You seem to think that this balance of powers is somehow in the nature of how the world works. Ironically much of this balance of powers is *due* to foreign policy making of the United States. Nations devour other nations -- this is how the world works. Your naivity is beginning to disapoint me. Surely you're brighter than this.
Assume he "invented the car bomb". When did the Grand Mufti come on the scene? When was the Irgun formed? When you get your historical symmetry together come back and talk about the "grandfather" of terrorism.
You are making a number of overly-simplistic assumptions about my point of view, Uber.
I do NOT assume that "the balance of power is how the nature of how the world works". I take it is a given that nations devour other nations. Those they want to devour, that is, or are devoured in turn in the attempt.
But the Atlantic ocean is less than a coupla footbal fields from my doorstep, and last I checked, it's still pretty big. I even hear that the Pacific is bigger, so they say.
Hostile Nations with the capacity to move a "devouring" amphibious army across these oceans? Yep, that's right, still zero.
Can missiles reach across them? Sure. So can ours. I can't imagine why the Iraq of 1980 would've wanted to bomb New York City given that back then, pronouncements of Holy Genocide against Teheran were all the rage in Baghdad; but I am reasonably confident that if the declaration, "we will turn your nation's geography to a radioactive poll of boiling glass if you even look at us wrong" worked to deter the mighty Soviets, it would similarly deter the pissant Iraqis.
The Iraqis didn't really care to kill us then anyway; but even if they did, 1.) we're really tough; and 2.) they liked killing Iranians a whole lot more, and Teheran is right next door.
Things never work out for the best; I already stated that. The world is a hellish place for much of the world's populace.
But Swiss non-Interventionism has a singularly pleasant way of working out best for the Swiss. That is a good thing -- at least for the Swiss.
And they are a small nation surrounded by Giants with a history of War.
We ain't. We are only as vulnerable to the world's petty genocides as we make ourselves by going there.
I enjoy good-faith debates, so let's keep it friendly. But take on airs of condescension with me, and I'll be forced to crush your little pretense of logical acumen.
It's already obvious that I easily can, so let's just keep it cordial, fair 'nuff? I prefer it that way.
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