A TIME TO SPEAK

Vol. V:11 (No. 59)

November 2005 - Heshvan-Kislev 5766

ISRAEL AND AMERICA

PART II -- AGAINST THE GRAIN

"Part I: Affinity" discusses why the United States of America is uniquely designed for friendship with the State of Israel. This special bond also fosters a dependency that gives a U.S. administration unique power to do harm to Israel -- indeed, more power than can be wielded against it by the enemies sworn to its destruction.

Just as it is at times more accurate to attribute a policy or act to "Israeli government" rather than to "Israel" [see Issue No. ], it is at times more accurate to attribute a policy or act to "U.S. administration" or specific officeholder than to "America" or "the United States".

It is natural and proper that the policy of U.S. officials be first and foremost for the good of their own nation and people, but not all officials choose policies that can produce that good. In both past and present, that has included policies on the Middle East that do not and cannot benefit America and do impose damage and danger on Israel.

These policies go against the American grain. Often, they also go against the will of the American people collectively. For example, by overwhelming majority the American public rejects the current U.S. administration's plans for the diminishment of the State of Israel, and carving up the Land of Israel for the invention of an anti-historical "State of Palestine" populated by people who joyously cheer and celebrate when a disaster befalls America and pray for its destruction. [See Issues No. 52, 58, and Twelve Bad Reasons for a State of Palestine]

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Among the persons, groups and classes that go against the grain --

-- banks, oil companies, and other international industries that pursue financial profit from dealings in the Arab Middle East

-- Government functionaries preparing for future careers doing business with Arab governments or in institutions that benefit from Arab largesse. (For example: Edward Abington, who went from U.S. Consul-General in Jerusalem to public relations man for the PLO.)

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, long-time Saudi Ambassador to the United States brazenly explained the power of bribery: 'If the reputation then builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you'd be surprised how much better friends you have who are just coming into office." [See Issue No. 25]

-- Academics who follow the anti-Israel principles of MESA [Middle East Studies Association] and university administrators who accept hefty donations from Arab benefactors. Some of these are merely trendy, or venal, or stupid. Some are personally dedicated to the destruction of Israel. [See Issue No. 27]

-- Popular news media, dominated by a herd of reporters and editors short on knowledge and intelligence, who bellow misinformation. There are but few mavericks from this herd. These media have members in good standing who sob eulogies for Yasser Arafat comparing him to George Washington and Moses. Some even fabricate and disseminate false charges against Israel, including the phony staged "martyrdom" of the Arab boy Muhammad al-Dura. [See Issue No. 13]

-- Religious denominations of the "replacement" or "successionist" persuasion that deems all Divine and biblical promises to the Children of Israel have been cancelled, and they have been stripped of their spiritual and temporal rights -- including the right to the Land of Israel. This tenet sends high-level leaders of U.S. denominations to pay courtesy calls on the Hezbullah terrorists, whose avowed purpose is not merely to evict the Jews but to annihilate them. These denominations tend to overlap with those drifting the farthest away from traditional Christian morality.

Many members of the above coteries practice lucrative "ticket-punching", moving from post to post in government, law firms, universities, foundations, business and industry. They carry their special interests in Middle Eastern affairs along with them, disseminating them through these dominant branches of American society.

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George Washington, in a letter to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island, averred that the United States was a nation that "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance". Not all Americans live up to the ideals of their greatest man, but Judeophobic bigotry in America has rarely gone beyond discrimination to actual persecution.

Yet there were instances when government policy was made for the sake of bigotry and/or self-interest, and did not advance any genuine American interest. The results could be lethal.

[1] Breckinridge Long, Department of State, ruled that Jews fleeing the Nazi Holocaust must not barred from the United States, even though there were many unused places in the U.S. immigration quotas. He ordered U.S. consuls in Europe to refuse visas to Jews, but not to tell them at once that their applications were refused. The consuls were told to stall and dely a reply, so the Jews would cling to false hopes of haven in America and not seek other ways to escape their doom.

The Department of State recalled two American men stationed in Nazi-ruled Vichy France, U.S. Consul Hiram Bingham IV and private citizen Varian Fry, for the offense of helping Jews trapped in Vichy to escape by way of Spain.

[2] John J. McCloy, Department of War, rejected all pleas that U.S. bombers making regular raids on German factories near Auschwitz also bomb the gas chambers of the death camp and/or railroad lines leading to it. McCloy ruled that would be a "waste of bombs". (He also banned bombers from touching Nurenberg, out of concern for its medieval architecture,)

A generation later, at the start of the Yom Kippur War, McCloy joined David Rockefeller in a hasty -- unsuccessful -- mission to persuade President Nixon not to supply Israel with weapons for its self-defense.

[3] Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense, was notorious for his loathing of Israel and his intent to do it damage. On one occasion, the victims of his spite were U.S. Marines, wounded in a massive terrorist bombing in Lebanon. Weinberger rejected Israel's immediate offer that the injured men be flown to nearby Israeli hospitals where they could receive expert medical care within a matter of minutes. He ordered that they must instead endure a long flight to Germany, and some of them died during that long flight. It is not known whether they might have been saved by quick treatment in Israel. It is known that Weinberger denied them the chance.

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The U.S. Department of State is nicknamed "Foggy Bottom", after the Washington, D.C. neighborhood where it lives rather than the quality of its work.

It fought against the establishment of the State of Israel, and ever since it lost that battle has been trying to subdue and whittle it down. It is a rare aberration when a Secretary of State does not view Israel as a nuisance and treat it as a vassal. The worst of them do not even bother to hide animus behind a veneer of diplomacy.

[1] John Foster Dulles, served 1953-1959 in Administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower: He and his brother Allen Dulles -- who became Director of the CIA -- were international lawyers in the service of the wealthiest U.S. business interests. Their roster of clients included the names Rockefeller, Harriman, Walker, and Bush. On their behalf and on their own the Dulles brothers had close associations and dealings with Nazi Germany.

John Foster Dulles became Secretary of State after losing an election for Senator from New York, in which he ran an openly Judeophobic campaign against his opponent, former Governor Herbert Lehman.

As Secretary of State he explained to Congress that "The Arabs hate Israel because the Jews killed Mohammad". [Comment: Mohammad died a natural death.] This Freudian slip was quickly expunged from the Congressional Record but was attested by a roomful of witnesses.

One of his notions for solving the problem of that hatred was for Israel to cede the entire Negev -- one-half of its territory -- to the Arabs, and thereby give Egypt and Trans-Jordan "contiguity".

He was the one who introduced into the United Nations Security Council the one-sided anti-Israel resolution, that never mentions much less objects to Arab terrorism against Israel but harshly condemns any Israeli response to the terrorism. This became a standard U.S.-sponsored format for years to come. (In recent years the U.S. delegate vetoes such resolutions, but only on the grounds that they are "one-sided" but does not otherwise find flaw in them.)

In the mid-1950s, Egypt's dictator Colonel Nasser used the Gaza Strip it as a launching pad for raids on Israel, and flaunted international law with blockades of the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran against Israeli merchant ships and even cargoes to and from Israel carried by merchant ships of neutral nations.

In 1956, he mobilized Egyptian military forces, trained and equipped by the Soviet Union, in the Sinai Peninsula poised for invasion of Israel. President Eisenhower, prompted by Dulles, issued a harsh warning -- not that Egypt must not attack Israel but that Israel must not pre-empt such an attack.

Israel did pre-empt it, and quickly took over Gaza and the Sinai. When the U.S. administration ordered Israel to withdraw from those areas vital to its defense, Israel tried to hold out for some reciprocal check on Egyptian aggression.

The President of the United States then went on nationwide television to deliver an address demanding immediate unconditional withdrawal by Israel, with disobedience to be punished by international sanctions and even a block on private charitable contributions to Israeli causes. Israel was forced to give in, and within hours of its retreat Egypt re-imposed the blockades and resumed the terrorist and military menace.

Long after he retired from office, Eisenhower recalled those days with regret. Paraphrased from Quiet Diplomat, by Peter Golden, a biography of Max M. Fisher:

In October 1965, Fisher met with President Eisenhower in Gettysburg to get agreement to accept the U.J.A. [United Jewish Appeal] medal for his role in the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps twenty years earlier. Toward the end of the visit Eisenhower wistfully commented "You know, Max, looking back at Suez, I regret what I did. I never should have pressured Israel to evacuate the Sinai".

Almost as an afterthought, as they started to depart, Eisenhower said: "Max, if I had a Jewish advisor working for me, I doubt I would have handled the situation the same way. I would not have forced the Israelis back."

Richard Nixon, Vice President at the time of the Sinai Campaign, reported: "Eisenhower many years later, in the 1960s, told me -- and I'm sure he told others -- that he thought that the action that was taken [over Suez] was one he regretted. He thought it was a mistake."

The abuse of Israel instigated by Dulles did not bring about any benefit or advantage at all for the United .States. Eisenhower learned though belatedly that he had been misled from Foggy Bottom. Subsequent presidents have failed to benefit from his example -- if they are even aware of it.

[2] James E. Baker III, served 1989-1992 in Administration of George Herbert Walker Bush: Baker is very rich, very powerful, and very vulgar. He is a manager of and heavy investor in the Carlyle Group, a select consortium of some of the world's wealthiest commercial interests. (Until 12 September 2001, the membership included the Bin-Laden family.)

His law firm of Baker & Botts is attorney for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Robert Jordan, one of the partners in Baker and Botts, was appointed U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Baker is also attorney, consiglione, and political representative of the Bush family, his fellow Texans and long-time close friends.

Early in the administration of George H.W. Bush, Baker described Israel as "a turkey to be hunted and carefully stalked". Throughout his term as Secretary of State he addressed open public remarks to the State of Israel of a nastiness unique toward any nation not an avowed enemy. (Reportedly, some of those remarks were ghost-written by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.) Perhaps his most non-quotable bon mots is "[Expletive] the Jews. They don't vote for us anyway".

As Secretary of State he had his own Baker Street Regulars whom he referred to as "my Jew boys". They include:

-- Martin Indyk, an Australian whose U.S. citizenship was rushed through so he could be named U.S. ambassador to Israel. He served two terms in that post, both times behaving more like a pro-consul than a diplomat.

-- Daniel Kurtzer, who later filled the same post.

-- Dennis Ross, who grew gray while shuttling between Israel and the PLO ineptly seeking an impossible accommodation.

In the George W. Bush administration, Baker has an office in the White House and tampers with Middle East policy.

[3]. Condoleezza Rice, has served since April 2005 in the George W. Bush Administration. She has been an apt pupil of James Baker, has her own past associations with the Carlyle Group. And rendered such good service to the Chevron Oil Company that it named a tanker "The Condoleezza Rice".

She has gone farther even then her predecessors in opening flaunting the intent to diminish Israel as close as possible to a vanishing point. She was National Security Adviser when the Quartet promulgated its Roadmap to reduce Israel to a rump vassal entity. She then ruled that the dictates are "non-negotiable" and Israel "has no veto" on its own destiny.

As Secretary of State, her negotiating style with Israeli government officials is the tantrum. She meets with Israeli government officials not to discuss or negotiate but to dictate. When she met with Shaul Mofaz, Israel's Minister of Defense, at a Jerusalem hotel. Hotel staff had no need to eavesdrop to hear the abusive shrieks with which she dictated that Israel (1) open its borders to PLO and Hamas terrorists; (2) allow convoys of PLO trucks to drive through Israel without security checks.

She is in a relaxed mood with the topic is any request that the PLO or Hamas being requested to curtail their murderous terrorism, explaining that: "There are periods of time of transition in which one has to give some space to the participants, in this case the Palestinians, to begin to come to a new national compact."

During this "period of time" Israelis are almost daily attacked, murdered, injured and bereaved. Madam Doctor Secretary Rice's fiat is that the terrorists must also be granted free pass to enter Israel and to transport themselves and their implements of death through Israel without check o9r hindrance.

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There has always been U.S. administration pressure on Israel to make concessions and surrenders that weaken Israel morally and physically without doing the United States any benefit at all. In recent years, there has been a steady slide of U.S. administration policy into negation of Israel's rights and its needs, and the future of the disputed territories within the Land of Israel. At this point, the incumbent administration has actually adopted the terrorist PLO as a protégé. It is coming ever closer to compromising Israel's sovereignty.

-- In 1967, in the wake of the Six-Day War, President Lyndon Johnson said: "We are not the ones to say where other nations should draw lines between them that will assure each the greatest security. It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders. Some such lines must be agreed to by the neighbors involved."

-- In 1982, President Ronald Reagan said: "In the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely 10-miles wide... the bulk of Israel's population within artillery range of hostile armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again."

-- In 1988, Secretary of State George Shultz declared, Israel will never negotiate from or return to the 1967 borders."

-- In 1992, President George Herbert Walker Bush said: We do not support the creation of a Palestinian state. Moreover, it is not the United States' aim to bring the PLO into the process or to make Israel enter a dialogue or negotiations with the PLO."

-- In 2005, President George Walker Bush said: "Any final status agreement must be reached between the two parties, and changes to the 1949 Armistice lines must be mutually agreed to. A viable two-state solution must ensure contiguity of the West Bank, and a state of scattered territories will not work. There must also be meaningful linkages between the West Bank and Gaza." [Comment: It is geographically impossible to create such linkage without cutting Israel apart.]

This comes as a sequel to his earlier "vision" of a PLO state within the Land of Israel, and his imposition of a Saudi-inspired "Roadmap" that would place a shriveled rump of Israel under the supervision of a hostile foreign Quartet of the U.S. Department of State, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations. (Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have recently be granted Observer Status at Quartet meetings.) [See Issues Nos. 23, 24, 28, 29]

Among the current U.S. administration policies toward Israel:

[1] Israel is excluded from any part in the evasively titled War on Terror. Foggy Bottom spokesmen have an explanation: Israel is to deal with terrorism not by fighting the terrorists but through a "peace process" to bring about a "political solution".

[2] Israelis murdered, injured, bereaved, and threatened by terrorists do not even qualify as victims. President Bush recently gave a list of countries what had suffered murderous terror attacks on civilians The United States, Great Britain, Spain, Bali, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.

[3] The program to confine Israel within the 1949 truce lines -- that were never meant to be borders -- is in contempt of the professional judgment of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staffs and all their collective experience in matters strategic and military. After the Six-Day War, they sent a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense affirming that the "territories" are absolutely vital and indispensable to Israel's defense.

The current demand for full retreat is thus not merely a case of spurning Israel's historic, moral, and legal rights. It is a case of jeopardizing its very survival.

[4] The CIA has for the past ten years been training and equipping PLO "security services" personnel, who supposedly are to bolster the peace-seeking PLO regime and who regularly morph into terrorists. (Indeed, some of them were already terrorists before they were recruited into the "security services".) Vast sums of U.S. taxpayers' dollars subsidize this ongoing exercise in making a bad thing worse.

[5] The current and some previous administrations use U.S. power over Israel to downgrade its capacity to manufacture its own weapons. This policy keeps Israel dependent on U.S. military supplies, and thus vulnerable to threats to cut them off. Via this artificially imposed dependence, Israel can then be forced to make do with equipment sometimes inferior to what it could produce itself and thus limits it qualitative advantage over Arab forces.

One tactic is to weaken Israeli military industries by assuming the right of U.S. veto over sales to other countries, even those that pose no danger to the United States. At the same time, vast amounts of U.S. weaponry are bestowed on Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and others of Israel's hostile neighbors.

This tactic has the special advantage of protecting U.S. military industries form market competition with the often superior Israeli designs.

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A new assault directed against the very sovereignty and independence of Israel has come forth from the aptly named James E. Baker Institute of Rice University. It is a program designed by Baker to be enforced by Rice.

It is a program described as a "streetmap to the roadmap", concocted by representatives of the United States -- including Mr. Baker himself -- of Egypt, Canada, the World Bank, and the PLO. Israel was not represented, but few of its private citizens came bearing the concurrence of the European Union's paid stooge Yossi Beilin. [See Issues Nos. 12, 16, 35]

This program is not original in setting terms for a Final Settlement that gives everything to the PLO and nothing to Israel, except perhaps a limited extension of its lease on life. It is not original in negating Israel's sovereignty and rights of self-defense by placing its actions under the supervision of hostile foreign bodies. [See Issues Nos. 23, 29]

It is quasi-original in making formal the previous hints of stationing foreign military forces to impose Israel's compliance, and by instructing the government of Israel in the propaganda techniques to induce the Israeli people to go like lambs to their slaughter.

Its innovation is dropping any pretense of assuming the role of Honest Broker in the Final Settlement. It does not hide either its indulgence of the PLO nor its contempt for Israel. The text is long and detailed, but the theme is a repetition of Mr. Baker's personal credo: "[Expletive] the Jews".

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The new U.S. Ambassador to Israel is Richard Jones, whose past postings have been in Arab countries. He admits that he know nothing about Israel, but plans to start to learn something soon.

Jones explains his qualification for the assignment: "Maybe they [the Department of State?] wanted someone who could present the Arab perspective, too." [Comment: Normally, an ambassador presents the perspective of his own country.]

His embassy will be in Tel-Aviv, despite numerous U.S. Congress demands that it be in Jerusalem. He brings with him a pet dog he calls "Kisa" -- an acronym for "Kingdom of Saudi Arabia".

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