Israel’s Last Tango in Washington: Will the U.S. Attack Iraq?

Why the Push to Attack Iraq?

Israel’s Last Tango in Washington: Will the U.S. Attack Iraq?

By Andrew I. Killgore

“Looming above all other causes of alienation from America…was…the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American unilateralism.”

—Clyde Prestowitz, The Washington Post, July 7, 2002.



“Israel should have exploited the suppression of the [Tiananmen Square] demonstrations in China, when the world’s attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.” —Deputy Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in 1989, as quoted by Alexander Cockburn in The Nation, Jan. 8-15, 1990.



“If the Jewish people would make an effort…we would not have any problem bringing another million Jews here.”

—Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, AFP item in Saudi Gazette, April 28, 2001.



“Every American thought…that Israel cannot remain in the territories.”

– Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal after meeting with President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Bush domestic adviser Andrew Card, The Washington Post, July 19, 2002.



In 1948-1949 Israel expelled 750,000 to 800,000 Palestinians from their homes. In 1967 Israeli troops forced out another 300,000. Since 1967, up to 400,000 Israelis have been planted in the occupied Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip. Binyamin Netanyahu, quoted above, made explicit Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” policy: empty Palestine of Palestinians.

Brute Israeli military force has now put all of Palestine under Israel’s physical control. However, the current situation is deeply troubling to the country’s fanatical Likudist leaders. Every brutality and indignity that Israel can heap on the Palestinians has not budged them from their land or from their drive to increase their numbers.

Israel’s uniquely opaque immigration/emigration statistics conceal from the world and from Israel’s own people that the Palestinian population in the old British Mandate of Palestine (Israel proper, the West Bank and Gaza) now exceeds that of the resident Jewish population (more than one million Israelis are believed to live in America).

A dramatic new initiative to rescue the situation for Israel has been to provoke an American war on Iraq.

The cost of Israel’s brutalization policy is proving to be prohibitively high in manpower and in money. Israel seeks to conceal the truth, but the Israel-leaning Washington Post recently reported the reality as seen at Tel Aviv’s foreign embassies. In scenes reminiscent of the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire, long lines of Israelis seeking visas were gathered at the American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand embassies. The reporter in Tel Aviv was surprised to see lines at the Czech and Polish embassies, as well. A German Embassy spokeswoman said there were 75,000 nationals of Germany already living in Israel, and that the number of Israelis applying at the embassy to ascertain/assure their German nationality status was so great that daily restrictions of those wanting to apply had had to be imposed.

As the above quotes by Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon demonstrate, Israel’s Likudist government fears that it is losing the Jewish/Palestinian demographic race. The country’s many think tanks have not yet worked out a formula for brutalization: what “x” number of Israelis is required to brutally repress “y” number of Palestinians? Nevertheless, it is clear that Israel cannot sustain the present balance.

After the al-Aqsa intifada broke out in September 2000, Prime Minister Sharon announced that he would crush the uprising within 100 days. Since the beginning of the intifada the Palestinians have inflicted on Israel one death for every three deaths that they suffered. Sharon can see no indication that the Palestinians will ever give up. He cannot but admit to himself that his policy of brutality has failed.

Sharon’s nightmare and that of America’s slavishly loyal Israel-first cabal is that the American people will see through the lame “they-hate-us-because-we’re-rich” lie, that they will “connect the dots” and see the link between a despised U.S. Middle East policy and the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

A dramatic new initiative to rescue the situation for Israel has been to provoke an American war on Iraq. The desperate attempt by Israel and its fellow travelers to con the U.S. into attacking Iraq is the only possible explanation for the unprecedented avalanche of hate-the-Arabs-and-Muslims-and-especially-Saddam Hussain ads, and for the frenzied op-ed meisters’ drive to perpetrate myths that American wealth causes Arab-Muslim animus toward the U.S.

The stars, however, are stubbornly refusing to line up for Israel. (See executive editor Richard Curtiss’s article on American opinion polls, p. 11.)

Sharon and his brazenly anti-American Zionists in this country realize that time may be running out for them. They see that world public opinion is alienated from the U.S. because of Israel. Clyde Prestowitz, quoted above (and reprinted in its entirety in this issue’s “Other Voices”), found this out during six weeks visiting 14 Asian, European and Latin American capitals.

If Prestowitz’s findings were not distressing enough for Sharon and his U.S. cohorts, the statement by Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal (quoted above) that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, National Security Advisor Rice and domestic adviser Andrew Card agree that Israel cannot remain in the [Palestinian] territories must have been shocking in the extreme. Sharon and his American cabalists could not but note that the White House had not issued a denial, or even a clarification.

The fact that the Oval Office meeting to which Prince Saud referred had also been attended by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher strengthened the credibility of Prince Saud’s statements.

The only way out was to con Washington into a war against Iraq, in the chaos of which Israel would try to expel two million Palestinians from the West Bank. A battle of titans for control of U.S. Middle East policy is now joined. The Israel-first cabal centered in the Pentagon—described as “civilians” by The Washington Post—includes notorious Israel-firsters Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Pentagon number three Douglas Feith, and non-government employee Defense Policy Board director Richard Perle (a.k.a. the Black Prince).

In spite of their views on Israeli settlements as described by Saud al-Faisal, Cheney and Rice generally are known as “attack-Iraqers” around Washington. Furiously beating the drums of war are noisomely pro-Israel New York Times and Washington Post op-ed meisters—called “windbags of war” by the Los Angeles Times—and the usual suspects throughout the American media.

Leading the anti-war forces in the United States are the military brass at the Pentagon and the indispensable secretary of state. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) is a welcome new addition, and Senators Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Joseph Biden (D-DE) are raising skeptical questions on the talk shows.

Although few of them carry any brief for Saddam Hussain, the Arab and Muslim worlds are adamantly opposed to a U.S. war of aggression against Iraq. The European Union and NATO are opposed. Only Britain’s Tony Blair seems to be going along—but the British media are unrelenting in attacking him for his stand.

The early August hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Senator Biden, on a war-on-Iraq scenario, asked some searching questions, to which there were no answers—or, at best, lame answers. How many American troops will be required, how much will it cost, how long would it take and what would the repercussions be in the Middle East? Only the miserable Richard Butler, Australian former chief arms inspector in Iraq, was really gung ho for war.

So U.S. Middle East policy has reached a crunch stage. If Israel cannot force the U.S. into attacking Iraq, it will have lost its war against the Palestinians. The brazen Israel lobby will have to go back underground and look for new ways to subvert America. Finally, it is up to President George W. Bush and the American people.

And the people are wise.

Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.