Living Dangerously

Charles Kapar, the only one of three Agency for International Development auditors to survive the December hijacking of a Kuwaiti airliner to Iran, told newsmen afterward "it's dangerous to be an American overseas today." That, unfortunately, is not news, although the U.S. press headlined it. What the press might better have done was relate to their basic causes the deaths of Kapar's colleagues, Charles Hegna and William Stanford, and the attempt by the hijackers to pressure Kuwait into releasing 17 persons sentenced for bombing the U.S. and French embassies and other buildings there.

Kuwait stood commendably firm, and in the resulting long interviews with U.S. journalists, Kuwait's ambassador to the United States, Shaikh Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, tried hard to remind Americans that neither the hijackings nor the original embassy bombings took place in a vacuum. Such tragedies will inevitably continue, he pointed out, so long as the basic grievances remain.

Basic Grievances Are No Mystery

What are the basic grievances that underlie the violence that has killed more than 260 Americans in the Middle East in the past two years?

There's no mystery about them. In this issue of The Washington Report read the review of Father Elias Chacour's Blood Brothers. It describes how the Palestinian Arabs were deprived by intimidation, force and even massacre of lands in which they and their forefathers had been born.

If it seems harsh to retaliate now for massacres that took place 35 years ago, think about what has emerged in former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon's libel suit against Time magazine for its reporting of his role in the Sabra-Shatilla massacres of families left behind when PLO fighters were evacuated from Beirut under U.S. protection. Sharon personally led a similar massacre of 60 men, women and children by Israeli troops in the West Bank village of Qibya in 1953. The 1982 massacres of Palestinians in Beirut, after the fighting had ended, were no aberration.

But if the grievances are against Israel, why are Americans singled out to die by international terrorists? For an answer, look at the article in this issue on the economy of Israel, which since the 1973 war has allowed its military budget to grow from a sensible 7 percent of gross national product to an unheard of 30 percent. Why? So that it can continue to hold lands belonging not only to Palestinians but to Syrians and Lebanese, like those who hijacked the Kuwaiti airliner.

And if you're still not sure why American diplomats and servicemen are coming home in boxes because of Israel's policy of expanding the borders it refuses to define officially, read the two articles from the Christian Science Monitor enclosed, with permission, with this issue of The Washington Report.

The Monitor is a happy exception among U.S. dailies too frightened of their advertisers to present unbiased Middle East coverage. The two articles explain that it is only the incredible flow of American taxpayer dollars to Israel that makes that country's extraordinary military build-up, and consequent expansionism, possible.

The total of direct U.S. aid to Israel since 1948 has been some $32.4 billion, not counting the loss to the U.S. Treasury from tax-free individual contributions to Israel, and it is accelerating unbelievably. It has been $29.7 billion just since 1973. It is $2.6 billion in gifts, not loans, so far the current fiscal year, and since that is already spent, the Israelis now are asking for $800 million more in "emergency aid" this year. For next year they are asking $4.05 billion, all in grants and payable in the first quarter. That's more than $1,000 per Jewish Israeli this year, far more than that next year.

U.S. Allies Embarrassed and Aghast

Our natural allies, the conservative regimes in the Middle Fast and Islamic world, are deeply embarrassed by this no-questions-asked largesse to a country making no effort to deal justly with its Muslim Arab neighbors. Our European and Japanese allies are aghast at the peril in which we are placing their petroleum sources solely for U.S. domestic political reasons.

Our own politicians seem to fear domestic Jewish reaction if they call a halt, so they occupy themselves with concealing from U.S. taxpayers the increasing bounty enjoyed by Israelis, while all Americans are asked to make financial sacrifices to deal with our own disastrous national deficit.

Two years ago Editor Joseph C. Harsch of the Christian Science Monitor estimated that Israel costs us $10 billion a year when all subsidies, overt and hidden, are tallied. If Israel has its way you can add $4 billion to that. In gratitude to Egypt for making peace with Israel we tied the two aid programs together. Egypt now receives an amount totaling about 90 percent of whatever Israel gets. Thus doubling Israeli aid means doubling Egypt's aid as well.

Even the most long-suffering U.S. taxpayer must have a breaking point. We'll know this year when Israel's accomplices in Congress begin their annual power play to squeeze 12 to 14 billion dollars from taxpayers to pay all the costs associated with Israel's militarism.

This year, or maybe next, someone is going to have the political courage to blow the whistle. We might even ask Israelis to join all Americans in tightening their belts. And once we start treating Israel like any other foreign country, watch how quickly things change at home, in the United Nations, and abroad. Then it may no longer be so dangerous to be an American overseas.

—RC