The Israelization of American Policy Is No Paranoid Fantasy

By Eugene Bird

Is the Israelization of American foreign policy in the Middle East continuing? Does Israel come first, last and always in the hearts of American policy-makers? Judging by recent appointments of at least two Israeli dual citizens to key posts in the administration, one would have to say yes. Yet there must be a few honest people left on the Middle East policy-making side, judging by the fact that the U.S. deducted $437 million from Israel's $2 billion in annual loan guarantees scheduled for the 1994 fiscal year.

But wait, even the deduction was reversed by a presidential promise that Israel would receive an unstated amount ($250 million was suggested) to aid "redeployment." The money was to be additional loan guarantees, though the choice is still not certain since Congress required the earlier loans not be spent in the occupied territories, beyond the Green Line of 1967. Deducting with one hand and then offering with the other additional untied aid that Israel would be free to use to harden the settlements leaves grave doubts about the balance of this administration's Middle East policies.

Denying U.S. Access to Dotan?

For example, there is the matter of U.S. Laws specifying non-renewal of military aid agreements with countries which deny American investigators access to local officials involved in corrupt practices in the use of American aid. For reasons of its own, Israel refuses to make General Rami Dotan, former head of Israeli air force procurement, available in his Israeli jail to U. S. investigators trying to trace some $70 million in skimmed-off funds. For three weeks last fall, lower-ranking U.S. officials held up signing the fiscal year 1994 military aid agreement with Israel. Then the White House intervened and it was signed, in defiance of the law and against the advice of congressional staffers.

Israel appears to have a one-way strategic relationship with the United States: No American official can expect to survive in his job if he applies the same rules to Israel as to other countries. If application of U.S. Law harms Israeli interests, as defined by the Israeli government, time and time again U.S. officials have been forced to back down. This has little to do with pressures from members of Congress, and much more to do with pressures from the White House, where the key Israel-oriented policy-makers now are situated.

An example is the so-called "Lantern" investigation of the application of U.S. Laws regarding the re-transferring of technologies from Israel to other countries, particularly South Africa, China and quite possibly Iran. "Lantern" was the code name for the 1991-92 investigation of the political-military affairs office in the Department of State and the failure of the official in charge there to pursue clear evidence of Israeli transfer of missile and other technology obtained originally from the United States to other countries without U.S. permission. One State Department official was moved, none were fired, and the whole matter was hushed up.

Taiwan: Another Israel? No!

Would the same thing have happened if Taiwan, for example, had been caught passing on U.S. secrets to South Africa, Iran or Syria? Or even to friendly countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Tunisia? There would have been hell to pay, yet Taiwan supposedly has many of the same U.S protections as does Israel. If we are to avoid further disasters for U.S. policy in the Middle East, the strategic relationship with Israel must be reined in and brought under some common-sense control.

It is out of control not just because of members of Congress who are fearful for their continuation in office. Career civil servants and military and foreign service officers charged with protecting U.S. technology and intelligence information are afraid that if they do not make an exception for Israel when they do their jobs, they will lose them. Witness the U.S. Navy counterintelligence personnel who provided Jonathan Pollard with hundreds of highly classified documents weekly, and saw him come and go daily with bulging briefcases, were suspicious, but were afraid to blow the whistle on him for years.

The Clinton administration has top policy advisers who have retirement homes in Israel, one or two actual dual citizens, and at least one ambassador to an Arab country (Morocco), who was raised in Israel and whose family members are still there.

The takeover of the handles of power over U.S. economic assistance to the republics of the former Soviet Union by stridently pro-Israel personnel will be complete with the appointment of Thomas Dine, until 1993 executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel's principal Washington lobby, as deputy administrator for the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the former Soviet Union.

Now, in addition to the more than one third of U.S. bilateral foreign aid that goes to Israel and the one-fifth that goes to Egypt for keeping the peace with Israel, another one-third will be under Thomas Dine's control. You can be sure it will be doled out generously only to those states that establish not only diplomatic relations but also real economic cooperation with Israel. Virtually the entire U.S. foreign aid program has gradually been converted into a mechanism to subsidize or support the economy of the state of Israel.

Should Some Officials Rescue Themselves From Decisions Involving Israel?

What is remarkable is that neither executive nor legislative branch officials ever are expected to rescue or remove themselves from decisions regarding Israel, no matter how close their personal links to that country. U.S. officials with family members or personal property in other countries would take such steps automatically to protect themselves and their family members from blackmail, if for no other reason.

At least Henry Kissinger, 25 years ago, pretended to have nothing to do with U.S. Middle East policy throughout President Nixon's first term and well into the second while Kissinger was National Security Council adviser. Even though in his memoirs he boasts that he really did advise the president on the Middle East, both as head of the NSC and later as combined NSC chairman and secretary of state, initially he went through a pro forma performance of rescuing himself in public from Middle East issues, leaving them to Secretary of State William Rogers.

Now, the opposite is the case, with heavy pressure on President Clinton and members of Congress to appoint Jews with a history of pro-Israel activity to policy making positions. This is accomplished to a backdrop of media hints that somehow non-Jews cannot be entrusted with anything that concerns Israel, either in the State Department, the Pentagon, or on congressional committees. Robert Kaplan's book-length racist denigration of "WASP elitists," meaning anyone who is not a Hebrew speaker and/or deeply committed to Israel, suggests a new era of entrusting Middle East policy to presidential advisers who are proven "Israelists."

The pro-Israel lobby usually is identified as being on Capitol Hill. AIPAC and the more than 40 organizations represented in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations will concentrate, supposedly, on the passing of legislation helpful to Israel and definitely unhelpful to the Arab countries, regardless of the state of their relations with the United States.

Israel Supporters Central to Policy-Making

In fact, appointments by the Clinton administration are intended to demonstrate to the American Jewish community that the administration has no Middle East agenda independent of the Rabin government, and that it will delegate U.S. Middle East policy-making only to proven friends of Israel, or to appointees from AIPAC and other like-minded organizations.

The fact that the real Israeli lobby now is ensconced in the administration itself comes as no surprise to Washington observers. The Israel lobby has for many years focused not just on passing onerous foreign aid legislation and stacking key congressional committees to make sure the aid goes to Israel.

It has concentrated also on implementing policies with many departments of national government, and many state governments as well, which directly benefit Israel. These policies are discussed in advance with representatives of the Israeli government, and even the details often are cleared with Israel before they are implemented.

Back in the 1950s, only a few years after Israel was created, Congress passed a piece of legislation called the International Media Guarantee program. It provided U.S. currency to be exchanged for non-convertible foreign currencies earned by American publishers and record companies. The point was to ensure that U.S.-produced informational and educational media products remained available to readers, listeners and viewers throughout the world. A total of $10 million was appropriated to fund the worldwide program, run by the U.S. Information Agency.

Within three years, Israel had absorbed 60 percent of the worldwide IMG funding. In 1958, the chief Israeli importer of U.S. books and records under this program was convicted of having manipulated the program to exchange Israeli shekels for several millions of dollars by submitting false claims. The U.S. government discontinued the program, but the U.S. public never learned why.

Tailor-Made Legislation to Help Israel

In 1975, legislation was passed to establish another worldwide operation, the International Housing Guarantee program, to help developing countries house their citizens. It was funded at $25 million a year worldwide. The Israelis did not discover or use this program for several years. However, when they wanted money to build housing (inside both Israel and the occupied territories) for the hoped-for one million Soviet Jewish immigrants, friends inside the U.S. government, backed by legislators and staffers on the Hill, suggested vastly expanding the housing guarantee program and making it available to Israel. Thus came the $10 billion U.S. Loan guarantee program now in the second of its projected five years.

So the lobby, which usually is identified with punishing those members of Congress it defines as enemies of Israel, and richly rewarding those it defines as friends, now is actively doing the same thing within the executive branch. It openly intimidates or replaces career officials through the power delegated by the president to his political appointees.

Arabists, except for a handful who speak Hebrew or are identified as friendly to Israel, are an endangered species. Even before the advent of the Clinton administration, in the late 1980s, the U.S. was training more American foreign service officers to staff its four diplomatic and consular posts in Turkey than to staff all 26 posts in the Arab world.

Will the U.S. foreign service soon employ more Hebrew speakers than Arabic speakers? It sounds impossible, but no more impossible than the events recounted above would have sounded only 15 years ago in the era of Jimmy Carter, or 20 years ago in the time of Richard Nixon or Gerald Ford.