Four days ago Anthony Cordesman published in the journal of the Center for Strategic & International Studies a highly unusual little essay entitled “Israel as a Strategic Liability?” He begins this article by arguing that America’s commitment to Israel is really not strategic. He says that, while Israel may provide us with some useful intelligence, that any actual Israeli military action in an Arab state could do more harm than good. Then he says this:
The fact is that the real motives behind America’s commitment to Israel are moral and ethical. They are a reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust, to the entire history of Western anti-Semitism, and to the United States’ failure to help German and European Jews during the period before it entered World War II. They are a product of the fact that Israel is a democracy that shares virtually all of the same values as the United States.
Today’s New York Times carries an article about Cordesman’s article entitled: “Washington Asks: What to Do About Israel?” The article mentions recent actions by Israel that seem to be directly contrary to American Middle East interests:
--The killings by Israeli commandos on the Freedom Flotilla
--The refusal to stop new housing construction in Arab East Jerusalem
The Times points out that both President Obama and Gen. Petraeus have in recent months specifically remarked on how the endless Arab-Israeli conflict undermines America’s strategic interests. The president said this conflict was “costing us significant in terms of both blood and treasure.” Patraeus said before Congress this year that “the lack of progress in the Middle East created a hostile environment for America.”
But neither Mr. Cordesman nor the Times mentioned the truly dark side of the story, the news about Israel that is so provocative that the American media for the most part don't even touch it. The true brutality of these Israeli actions as reported in foreign media begin to raise questions even about the underlying moral nature of our commitment to the State of Israel. We are not just talking about the recent commando raid in international waters which left nine dead – including an American citizen who received four head shots from weapons fired from less than 18 inches away.
Consider the recent story first published last year in Sweden’s Aftonbladet about Israelis harvesting body parts from both Palestinians and Israelis without their families permission. Israel of course immediately condemned the report as outrageous and anti-semitic, but then a few months later Al Jazeera reported that it was true after all in an article which began:
Israel has admitted that it harvested organs from the dead bodies of Palestinians and Israelis in the 1990s, without permission from their families.
Finally the May 24, 2010 issue of England’s Guardian magazine reports on an American journalist's new evidence that Israel’s president Shimon Peres offered to sell nuclear-tipped Jericho missiles to apartheid South Africa in 1975. Again, Israel hotly denies everything, but the journalist has the notes of the meeting between Botha and Peres and the South Africans clearly believed that the offer was on the table.
Therefore the poll question: What effect does Israel’s recent actions – the carnage in Gaza, the commando raid in international waters, the harvesting of body parts without permission (including body parts from Palestinians which Israeli soldiers had killed), and the evidence that Israel offered apartheid South Africa nuclear weapons – what effect do these actions have on America’s “moral” commitment to Israel which Cordesman argues is at the foundation of our support?