August/September 1991, Page 18

Is Putting Immediate Strings on Aid to Israel The Best Hope for Peace?—Three Views

Unconditional US Aid Gives Israel "More Gas for the Next War"

By Hilda Silverman

"Israel is like a bus careening downhill without brakes. What we need are new brakes, and what the Americans are giving us is more gas!" The speaker was a prominent Israeli Jewish anti-occupation activist. He was responding to a question about US aid to Israel during a telephone discussion with members of my Philadelphia-area synagogue about two-and-a-half years ago.

While I was quite taken with his graphic imagery, I was not totally surprised by his conclusion. As early as 1983, during my first visit to Israel/Palestine on a New Jewish Agenda peace tour, I had heard persons associated with the groups most vigorous in their opposition to Israel's invasion of Lebanon express similar sentiments. But the overwhelming majority of Jews with whom we met—including most vehemently the speaker from Peace Now—opposed any idea whatsoever of conditioning US aid to Israel on Israeli government policy and behavior.

Having met hundreds of Israeli peace activists since that time, I am convinced that there has been a slowly building sea-change in Israeli-Jewish opinion on this issue. Given the current, difficult realities of Israeli politics and the deep, historically based, and pervasive Jewish fears of abandonment and annihilation, however, this change is generally not being given public expression.

Not long ago I heard a respected member of the Israeli Knesset from a moderate, Zionist left party speak at an event in a Washington, DC-area synagogue. A few of us approached the speaker after his presentation for clarification of some apparently contradictory remarks about US aid to Israel. Much to our surprise, he answered that he believed Israel would cease its settlement activity "tomorrow" if the US were to apply serious economic pressure.

When asked why he hadn't made such a clear statement to the large audience he had just addressed, he said that if US Jews were seen to be asking for this, it would be perceived by Israeli Jews as an act of abandonment.

Organizationally, Peace Now and its American support group continue to oppose the use of US economic pressure on Israel. Individually, however, there are cracks in such opposition, reaching far into the Israeli mainstream. On a recent one-month stay in Israel, I heard person after person exclaim that the only thing that would get the Israeli government to stop its self-destructive behavior would be economic pressure from the United States. These were not "self-hating Jews" or less-than-patriotic Israelis, and they were not all from organizations or parties associated with the far left. Most were, however, reluctant to be quoted publicly, either as individuals or on behalf of the groups with which they are associated. Some public statements emerged nonetheless:

1. The Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace ran an ad in the July 3 Jerusalem Post calling on the US to condition loan guarantees on a complete cessation of all Israeli settlement activities in the occupied territories.
   
   
2. The July-August issue of Challenge ("A Magazine of the Israeli Left") features an editorial, "The US Doesn't Mean Business. " Current US actions, it concludes, "will not take us far down the road to peace. They are only inviting the next war to come sooner."

"The Next War." I heard that ominous phrase again and again from Israeli Jews committed to the well-being of their country and to a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict. And for increasing numbers of them, the "gas" that will be used to fuel that war—the "gas" that directly or indirectly allows for the monumental expansion of settlement activity—has US dollar signs written all over it.

Hilda Silverman is a peace activist living in Washington, DC