Subsidizing Extremism

Although both U. S. government and mainstream American Jewish leaders avoided public partisanship in the just concluded Israeli elections, there is no doubt that most were disappointed with the results. Before the elections, Americans had begun earnest discussions as to whether a revived Labor government should turn its initial efforts toward peace with Israel's Arab neighbors or to the country's economic muddle.

Now, with no clear mandate for either Labor or the Likud, it appears there may be no serious attempt at either peace or economic rationalization unless the U.S. forces the issues. No government including, or threatened by, the Menachem Begin Yitzhak Shamir Likud is going to make real West Bank territorial concessions voluntarily. Without such concessions, there will be no peace. Without peace, there is no permanent way out of Israel's impossible economic situation.

The Likud brought Israel two world records: an inflation rate of 400 percent and rising; and the highest per capita external debt in the world. Each month Israel prints twice as much currency as it printed the previous month. How could a government that has done all that, and at the same time plunged Israel into a fruitless and costly war in Lebanon, avoid being decisively rejected by the voters?

Part of the answer lies in Israel's other world record, established under the Labor government and maintained unbroken by the Likud: Israelis, who have received some $28 billion in direct U.S. government aid since 1948 and who, at present, receive close to $1,000 per Jewish citizen per year, are the world's highest per capita recipients of U. S. foreign aid, by far. Israeli Prime Minister Shamir boasted during the campaign that "relations with the U.S. are better than ever" and "Israel's international position has improved." No sensible American would agree, but in so misleading Israeli voters Shamir could cite accelerating U.S. aid to back up his assertions.

Americans expect citizens of other democracies somehow to understand in their collective wisdom what ultimately is good or bad for their country. This seems not to be happening in Israel whose friends still insist on calling it the Middle East's only working democracy since most of the votes lost by the Likud went to even more fundamentalist and fanatical religious parties of the right.

In 1948, 85 percent of Israel's Jewish population were Ashkenazim who had come from Central and Eastern Europe. Now 55 percent of the Jewish population traces its roots to Sephardic communities with few democratic traditions. Twelve percent of Israeli women are completely illiterate. Many of Israel's soldiers, whose votes were crucial in keeping the right wing religious parties in the picture, cannot function at even a third grade level of literacy. A Hebrew University survey in 1978 revealed that 40 percent of Israel's entire population could not follow the radio or television news because they could not understand the meaning of words like "inflation."

So long as the U.S. provides financial support without strings to any policies adopted by any elected government of Israel, we have made our entire Middle Eastern policy, and consequently our standing in the world at large, hostage to an Israeli electorate running increasingly out of control. We are now actively subsidizing extremism.

It is U.S. economic aid that makes possible Israel's West Bank settlements which amount to nothing more than government subsidized housing for Israeli commuters who will agree to live on expropriated Palestinian lands. Yet settlements make Middle East peace ever harder to attain.

U.S. military aid makes it possible for Israel to continue its occupation of large areas in Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza. Yet that occupation is reaping the U.S. a harvest of bitterness among nearly one billion Muslims, many of them in nations that are friends and allies of the U.S.

Before 1977, Israelis like Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir were political pariahs. When the extremist Likud took over the government of Israel, there were disclaimers from Israel's American supporters that since the Likud did not represent "the real Israel," its temporary incumbency must not be allowed to damage the ongoing U.S. Israeli relationship. U.S. aid continued to flow.

Now the Likud has become a permanent feature of the Israeli political landscape. If we look still further to the right we find other growing extremist parties. Even the Rabbi Meir Kahane's fanatical and violent Kach movement has attained its first seat in the Israeli Knesset.

Is this what American supporters of Israel want? If not, why are they methodically going about their election year business in the United States, demanding that each Presidential and Congressional candidate endorse more aid and political support for Israel, no questions asked?

Isn't it time, instead, for the U.S. to use its aid to nudge and chide Israel back to reality? Although Israel is by far the largest recipient of U.S. assistance, it is the only major recipient with no U.S. AID mission directing how the money is spent. If the U. S. restores to its Israel aid the procedures it observes elsewhere financing only those Israeli programs that enhance the prospects of Middle East peace and Israeli economic recovery it will strengthen reasonable Israeli leaders and weaken their demagogic opponents. And it will restore U.S. control to American foreign policy.

SIDEBAR

Correction

In the editorial of our July 9th issue we meant to say that Shimon Peres could become the next prime minister of Israel, not Lebanon. We regret the error.