- Richard Cohen - Israel is a Liability for US
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- Critics of the US "special relationship"
with Israel hold that it is detrimental to American interests in the Middle
East. Its supporters, however, normally claim the opposite-that Israel
is actually an American strategic asset. (The Chomskyites are the odd
men out since even though they are critical of American and Israeli policies,
they maintain that US support for Israel is beneficial for the imperialistic
interests of the (predominantly gentile) US ruling class, though harmful
to the American masses.)
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- Considering this normal constellation of opinions, it
is a novelty to read Israel supporter Richard Cohen's admission that the
Jewish state is not a strategic asset, but rather a liability, for the
United States, and was recognized as such by United States officials even
before its creation. As Cohen writes in the Washington Post (Aug. 31):
"A fundamental document in this area -- a once-secret CIA analysis
from 1947 -- was unearthed (to my knowledge) by Thomas W. Lippman and reported
in the winter 2007 issue of the Middle East Journal. The CIA strongly argued
that the creation of Israel was not in America's interests and that therefore
Washington ought to be opposed. This was no different than what later diplomats
and military men (most recently, David Petraeus) have argued and it is
without a doubt correct. Supporting Israel hurts America in the Islamic
-- particularly the Arab -- world and, given the crucial importance of
Middle Eastern oil, makes no practical sense."
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- http://tinyurl.com/cohenisraelliability
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- "The CIA further argued," Cohen observes,
"that the so-called Arab-Israeli conflict would soon widen to become
an Israeli-Islamic conflict -- another bull's-eye for what was then an
infant intelligence service. That process was already underway, which is
why some non-Arabs (Bosnian Muslims, for instance) fought the creation
of Israel, and has only intensified as radical Islam, laced with healthy
doses of anti-Semitism, has gotten even stronger."
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- Cohen thus claims that the US support for Israel is
motivated by ideals, not by any material self-interest. "What neither
the CIA nor, for that matter, the anti-Israel State Department recognized
in the late 1940s," he maintains, "is that America's interests
are not always measurably pragmatic -- metrics, in the jargon of our day.
Sometimes, our interests reflect our national ethic, an affinity for other
democracies, sympathy for the underdog. These, too, are in America's interests
and they may be modified, but not abandoned, for the sake of mere metrics."
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- While expressing the objective truth in his observation
that America's "special relationship" with Israel is detrimental
to America's material interests, Cohen's explanation for this support
is totally off the mark . According to Cohen, the American people just
naturally like Israel because America's "interests reflect" its
"national ethic, an affinity for other democracies, sympathy for
the underdog." Thus they are presumably quite willing to sacrifice
their country's strategic interests for the benefit of Israel.
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- In Cohen's scenario, there is no need for any action
by the Israel Lobby, or what James Petras calls the Zionist Power Configuration,
because the American people do not need any special persuasion to support
Israel. But the very fact that American Zionists devote considerable time,
effort, and money to promoting the interests and image of Israel would
indicate that they do not regard American support for Israel to be forthcoming
naturally. And, as a result of their efforts, they are essentially able
to dominate the discourse in the mainstream media on the Israeli/Palestinian
issue, which means that the great majority of the American people simply
do not know the actual facts of the situation.
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- Cohen writes that Americans naturally identify with the
underdog. But why would any knowledgeable person regard Israel as the
weak underdog and the Palestinians the all-powerful top dog? For it was
the Zionist Jews who expelled the Palestinians from their homeland and
currently treat them as subordinate class in Israel proper and militarily
dominate them on the West Bank and Gaza. It is clear that the Israeli
Jews are the wealthy oppressors and the Palestinians are the impoverished
oppressed, and this is exactly how the rest of the world sees the situation.
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- Cohen, however, manages to obfuscate the whole situation
to the benefit of Israel. He presents the Palestinian desire to undo some
of the effects of their expulsion from Palestine in 1948 (obviously they
cannot undo over a half century of pain, misery, and death) by the "return
of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel and control over all of Jerusalem"
as being a ridiculous impossibility. But while Cohen demands that the
Palestinians ignore the harm done to them in the past, it is a common practice
for Jews to demand recompense for harm done to them going back not only
to the Holocaust, but for mistreatment over the past two millennium. And,
of course, part of this recompense was their recreation of the state of
Israel on land inhabited by the Palestinians. In short, while Cohen denigrates
the idea that the Palestinians have a right-of-return after an exile of
a little over 60 years, the state of Israel is based on a right-of-return
after an exile of almost nineteen hundred years!
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- Moreover, Cohen writes that the "What the Arab world
seems to appreciate is that America will never agree to what the Arab world
most wants -- an Islamic state where a Jewish one now exists." What
Cohen presents here is a false dichotomy. Many Muslims may desire an
Islamic state in Palestine, but it is not clear that this is what the Arab
world demands. And while it is what Hamas wants, it has not been what
the Palestinians have officially sought over the years. Until the rise
of Hamas, the representative of the Palestinian people, the Palestinian
Liberation Organization (PLO), officially called for a secular democratic
Palestine, which would incorporate Israel. The non-Islamic PLO was vehemently
opposed by Israeli governments. Moreover, it would seem that the Israeli
Mossad, in fact, supported the creation of Hamas for the purpose of weakening
the PLO.
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- http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ZER403A.html
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- As the PLO became sufficiently weak and pliable, Israel
would begin to back it against the increasingly powerful Hamas.
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- Cohen's facile assumption that the only alternative
to the Jewish state is an Islamic one still remains false. Since there
is no evidence that a majority of Palestinians actually want an Islamic
state, and support Hamas not because of its Islamic ideology but because
of its resistance to Israel, this would be a very unlikely result of allowing
Palestinian refugees into Israel or a one-state solution in Israel/Palestine.
Obviously, the Jewish population would be unanimously opposed to an Islamic
state, which would be a further guarantee against its creation. Rather
the likely result of the melding of the Jewish and Palestinian populations
in the same country would be some type of multi-cultural state. However,
the country would not be a Jewish supremacist state, which is the sin qua
non of Zionism and is what Zionists seek to retain; and this is what the
purportedly fair-minded liberal Cohen refuses to point out.
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- Cohen writes: "But until both sides, particularly
the Arab peoples, give up on what they really want, the clock will remain
where it has been," which means that there will be no peace settlement.
However, while Cohen spells out what goals the Palestinians must sacrifice,
he does not mention what concessions Israel must make. To repeat, the simple
fact, which Cohen manages to avoid, is that the leaders of Israel and the
pro-Zionists throughout the world want to maintain a Jewish supremacist
state and they perceive it to be threatened by both a one-state solution
and a viable Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza.
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- So, in essence, it would seem that Cohen simply expects
the Palestinians to accept a position of subordination to Israel, in which
they would agree to what Israel has basically offered the Palestinians
in the past "peace processes," which is something quite short
of a viable state. Instead, Israel has offered the Palestinians only a
relatively unarmed entity (defenseless against potential Israeli military
incursions such as the attack in Gaza), consisting of a congeries of non-contiguous
Bantustans interspersed with Jewish settlements and Jews-only roads, with
an Israeli security zone along its borders, and with Israel retaining control
of the West Bank aquifers, upon which the Palestinian entity would depend
upon for its water supply.
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- In conclusion, Cohen has clearly demonstrated a definite
pro-Zionist inclination, and it is this viewpoint which makes his acknowledgement
that Israel is a strategic liability for the United States all the more
telling. Of course, the validity of this claim does not depend upon its
proponents' motives, but rather upon how it comports with the facts. And
it is clear that American support for Israel turns the peoples and countries
of the Middle East, the crucial source of the oil upon which the US and
the overall industrial world depends, against the United States.
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- Best,
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- Stephen Sniegoski
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- Transparent Cabal Website:
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- http://home.comcast.net/~transparentcabal/
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- Amazon listing of The Transparent Cabal:
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- http://tiny.cc/zNV06
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- To read Richard Cohen's story, please go here
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- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/30/AR2010083003775.html
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