If the Cold War Ends, What Next For Our Costly "Strategic Ally?"

By Andrew I. Killgore

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the sun: A time of peace. —Ecclesiastes 3 (Solomon)

There are many strange US conventions, but perhaps the strangest of all is the constant reference to Israel as America's strategic ally. Newspapers, magazines, and politicians routinely employ it.

That there is not a word of truth in it is revealed by the lack of specifics as to how Israel helps the United States. The most concrete assertion is that Israel keeps a hostile Soviet Union out of the Middle East. This supposedly "justifies" $3 to $4 billion in annual US gifts to Israel.

No one explains how 4 million Israelis can keep 300 million Soviets at bay. Nor how 180 million highly individualistic and religiously oriented Arabs would fall for the blandishments of a regimented state officially dedicated to atheism. Such absurdities cannot be "explained."

Soviet Threat Diminishing

Now a problem has arisen. As the Soviet Union, under President Gorbachev, looks decreasingly dangerous, the "justification" for lavish US subsidies to Israel decreases as well. Nor can the USSR any longer be depict6d credibly as trying to take over the Middle East.

That separates the men from the boys among Israel's supporters in the United States. Those who love Israel for its own sake—call them "Israel lovers"—tend to welcome Gorbachev's peaceful overtures and to hope that he will succeed in lifting the fear of nuclear annihilation that descended upon humankind in 1945.

Those whose love for Israel is a means by which their own influence is strengthened—call them "me-me'ers"—denigrate Gorbachev and predict his failure. Israel lovers may outnumber them, but the me-me'ers are more vociferous. Media stars among them are George Will, Morton Kondracke, William Safire, Fred Barnes, Norman Podhoretz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Henry Kissinger.

The fact is that no one credits the exaggerated hype about Israel's value to the US, but many accept it as a cover, and not a very good one, for grotesquely disproportionate US aid to Israel. If both pay lip service to the cover, what is the essential difference between the Israel lovers and the me-me'ers?

No one explains how 4 million Israelis can keep 300 million Soviets at bay. Nor how 180 million highly Individualistic and religiously oriented Arabs would fall for the blandishments of a regimented state officially dedicated to atheism.

The latter fear the Cold War is ending, that PLO overtures to Israel will end in a Middle East settlement, and that they can no longer project Israel to the world as an endangered state. They would lose the emotional focus through which they gain influence.

Israeli Knesset member Yossi Sarid of the Citizen's Rights Movement has launched a bitter complaint against the American-Jewish community and, he could have added, their Christian allies. Writing in the Jerusalem Post of Dec. 1, 1988, Sarid accused US Jews of supporting Israeli extremists, betraying the moderates, and using Israel to enhance their own status.

George Will, most vociferous of the American me-me'ers, is a classic example of William Butler Yeat's bleak observation in his poem, "The Second Coming," that "the worst are full of passionate intensity." Not that Will and his imitators are endangering Israel. Not immediately at least. Israel is far too strong militarily to be honestly portrayed as beleaguered.

Nevertheless, those who exploit a supposedly endangered Israel for their own purpose are Israel's most dangerous enemies. Yossi Sarid, Abba Eban, Ezer Weizmann, and scores of former Israeli generals and colonels and more than 50 percent of Israel's population understand that Israel has to negotiate peace with the Palestinians. They perceive that internal rot and loss of self-esteem stemming from brutality against the Palestinians weaken Israel from within.

The me-me'ers, therefore, will not prevail. The spirit engendered by the longing for peace of 5 billion of the earth's inhabitants cannot be exorcised by a few dead souls seeking a continuation of warfare in the Middle East. There is a time for peace, as King Solomon said 3,000 years ago.

Although skeptics may doubt that the current world spirit of peace can transform the Middle East, here are some facts.

Israeli brutality against stone-throwing Palestinian children protesting military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza has turned world opinion around. Who does not sympathize with the nearly 400 Palestinians killed, and tens of thousands maimed and imprisoned, only for asking for the most basic human rights?

Israel's alacrity in following Henry Kissinger's secret advice to ban the TV cameras and then put down the intifadah as brutally and quickly as possible has not prevented the American public from seeing the light.

For Americans, the intifadah turned a revealing spotlight on Palestinians in their human dimension, and on Israelis in their inhumanity. Israel's alacrity in following Henry Kissinger's secret advice to ban the TV cameras and then put down the intifadah as brutally and quickly as possible has not prevented the American public from seeing the light.

At the same time, the PLO has denounced terrorism and agreed to recognize Israel. Suddenly the publicly perceived roles of the Arabs and Israelis are reversed. Palestinians say yes to peace, while the Israeli government says never.

Yet US Aid to Israel Continues

With Israel no longer seemingly beleaguered by Arabs in the Middle East, and the Soviet Union no longer seeming to threaten the security of the United States, the real reason Israel receives so many billions of US taxpayer dollars is clear. Very clear. The Israel lobby mobilizes its political action committees and well-heeled individual donors to buy American congressmen. Our legislators receive millions from Israel's lobby, and vote billions for Israel in return. The best deal in town. The Biblical seven to one for those who cast their bread upon the waters becomes a thousand to one for a foreign state supported by a powerful domestic lobby.

Finally, Israel is bankrupt, with its basic institutions seemingly irretrievably in debt. An Israel at war with 1.7 million Muslims and Christians within its occupied territories needs a lot more than $3 to $4 billion annually.

In a "kinder, gentler" world, however, a brutally intransigent Israel will not get it from the United States. And there is no other source for a racist ministate that has burned its bridges to the rest of the world, where the spirit of peace is strong. An Israel that can no longer afford war will, therefore, ultimately have to accept peace.

Andrew I. Killgore, a former US ambassador to Qatar, is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.