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Add an EventIsrael's Proxy War? Israel's supporters have played a decisive role in the coming war
These anomalies quickly melt away if we are willing to entertain a seldom-aired hypothesis. This may not be America's war at all, much less a war of the West against Islam or Islamists. Instead, could this be Israel's war against the Arabs fought through a proxy, the only proxy that can take on the Arabs? This will most likely provoke derisive skepticism. Could the world's only superpower be persuaded to fight Israel's war? Is it even possible? Could the tail wag this great dog?
Consider first Israel's motives. Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Pakistan do not threaten the United States; but they are a threat to Israel's hegemonic ambitions over the region. This conflict between Israel and her neighbors was written into the Zionist script. A Jewish state could only be inserted into Palestine by resort to a massive ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. After such inauspicious beginnings, Israel could only sustain itself by keeping its neighbors weak, divided, and disoriented. It has since waged wars against Egypt in 1956; against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1967; against Iraq in 1981; against Lebanon, since 1982; and against Palestinians continuously since 1948.
Israel's contradictions have deepened since the mounting of the second Intifada. When the Palestinians rejected the Bantustans offered at Oslo, Israel chose Ariel Sharon, a war criminal, to ratchet its war against Palestinian civilians. Faced with Apaches, F-16s, tanks and artillery, in desperation, the Palestinians turned increasingly to suicide bombings. Sharon's brutal war was not working, and Israel's losses began to catch up with Palestinian casualties. In April 2002, Israeli tanks reoccupied the Palestinian towns, destroyed Palestinian civilian infrastructure, increasingly placing Palestinians under curfews, sieges, destroying their workshops, stores, hospitals, orchards and farms. This was the new strategy of slow ethnic cleansing through starvation.
This slow ethnic cleansing is only a stopgap. The most serious threat which Palestinians pose is demographic: their growing population could soon turn the Jews into a minority inside greater Israel. Since the Palestinians won't live under an Israeli aparthied, the Likud, with growing popular support, is turning to Israel's second option. If the aparthied plan were to fail, Israel would engage in large-scale ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, more massive than the ones implemented in 1948 and 1967.
But Israel cannot do this alone. This ethnic cleansing can only be implemented in the shadow of a major war against the Arabs, a war to Balkanize the region, a war to bring about regime-change in Iraq, Syria and Iran, a war that only United States can wage. Israel needs United States to wage a proxy war on behalf of Israel.
It should be clear that Israel has the motive; but does it also possess the capability to pull this off? Is it possible for a small power to use a great power--the only superpower, in this case--to wage its own wars. Historically, great powers have often waged wars through lesser proxies; but that does not mean that this relationship can never get inverted.
What makes this eminently possible is the way an indirect democracy--in particular, democracy in United States--works. The demos elect candidates picked by powerful lobbies, ethnic, industry and labor lobbies; once elected, the officials work for the lobbies. By far the most powerful political lobby in this country works for Israel, led by American Israel Public Action Committee (AIPAC). There is scarcely a member of the Congress whose election campaigns have not been funded by AIPAC; several are funded quite heavily.[2] The power of the pro-Israel lobby in United States, however, does not start or end with AIPAC. The result of this massive power is a Congress packed with Israeli yes-men. No member of the Congress has dared to contradict Israeli interests and remained in office. Just last year, two members of Congress, Earl Hilliard and Cynthia McKenny, were defeated by pro-Israeli money because they had stepped out of line.
Consider some of the achievements of the pro-Israeli lobby over the years. First, an estimate of the cost of Israel to US taxpayers. Since 1985, without debate or demurral, the Congress has sheepishly voted an annual foreign aid package of $3 billion to Israel, nearly two thirds of this in outright grants, and constituting one-third of all US foreign assistance. When estimated in 2001 constant dollars, the total foreign aid to Israel since 1967 adds up to $143 billion.[3] That amounts to a transfer of $28,600 for every Jewish citizen of Israel.
The official aid is only a small part of the cost of Israel to the US economy. We need to account for loan guarantees and write-offs, bribes paid to Egypt and Jordan in support of our Israeli policy, subsidies to Israel's military R&D, boost in oil prices (attributed to US support for Israel in the 1967 war), losses due to trade sanctions imposed on Israel's enemies, etc. When Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington, added up all these costs, he concluded that since 1973 Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion.[4] In per capita terms, this amounts to $320,000 for every Jewish citizen of Israel.
The US record on vetoes cast in UN Security Council constitutes another major achievement of the pro-Israel lobby. The US has cast 73 vetoes out of the 248 cast by all permanent members of the Security Council. On 38 occasions, these vetoes were cast to shield Israel from any criticism directed against its violation of human rights of Palestinians or the territorial rights of its neighbors. On another 25 occasions, US abstained from such a vote.[5] This does not include the votes cast by United States--along with Israel, Tuvalu and Nauru--against UN General Assembly resolutions criticizing Israeli violations of human rights or Security Council resolutions. It would be difficult to maintain that the strategic interests of United States always demanded such a consistent voting record on Palestine.
I am aware that the notion of an Israeli proxy war against Iraq will be greeted with skepticism by not a few. I hope to have established that Israel possess in abundance both the motive and capability for such a war. There is some evidence that it has demonstrated this capability in the past also. In the words of Lloyd George, then Prime Minister of Britain, the Zionist leaders promised that if the Allies supported the creation of "a national home for the Jews in Palestine, they would do their best to rally Jewish sentiment and support throughout the world to the Allied Cause. They kept their word."[6] It is doubtful if Zionist influence now is weaker than it was in 1917.
This is not to argue that the pro-Israeli lobby is the only reason for the projected US war against Iraq. At present, there are several forces in United States that are pushing for this war. Prominent among these indigenous forces are the oil corporations, the arms manufacturers, the aerospace industry, and the right-wing Christian evangelists. However, it is doubtful if these indigenous groups, on their own, could have pushed United States so decisively towards the present catastrophic confrontation with the Islamic world. Certainly, the intellectual justifications for this hazardous confrontation have come almost entirely from the pro-Israeli lobby. And their intellectual input may have been vital.
Notes:
[1] http://www.sierratimes.com/03/02/07/arpubwc020703.htm
[2] http://www.wrmea.com/html/aipac.htm.
[3] http://www.counterpunch.org/rooij1116.html
[4] http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1209/p16s01-wmgn.html
[5] http://middleeastinfo.org/print.php?sid=63
[6] Lilienthal, Alfred M., What price Israel(Chicago:
Henry Regnery, 1953): 20-21.
M. Shahid Alam is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University. His last book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published by Palgrave in 2000. He may be reached at m.alam@neu.edu.
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Others say that wiping out Iraq must happen because Saddam can develop a nuclear weapons capability within a few years. The US revised the nuclear threat rationale for pre-emptive strikes when the news got out that North Korea has at least three atomic bombs. The new version has Iraq giving the technology to terrorists. The fact that Israel has been developing nuclear weapons for years goes un-remarked by most of the media and all of the US government.
For the moment, forget about those who say there is not enough evidence to prove that Saddam has WMD capability. It is too easy to dismiss sceptics like Scott Ritter, who was deputy chief UN weapons inspector, or the CIA , which has lots of satellite photo coverage they are not offering as WMD revelations. Those that they have offered do not reveal anything like real evidence.
Momentarily ignore, also, the fact that the Iraqis have even yielded to demands that inspectors be allowed unfettered access to Saddam's palaces, in violation, it should be added, of all that America holds dear about rights to privacy. Along with this, overlook the fact that previous weapons inspectors fed intelligence information unrelated to WMDs to the CIA, which was later used to target presumed WMD sites.
A number of pundits around the world have used their crystal balls to envision oil as the reason for the US wish to rain death on Baghdad and take over Iraq. The speculation that America could get away with a stunt like that assumes that the rest of the world would look the other way as General Tommy Franks reigns over the Iraqi oil fields.
What then is the real, though undisclosed, rationale for decimating Iraq? Quite simply, Israel wants to rid Palestine of Palestinians. Before that can be accomplished, any potential for the use of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq must be eliminated.
There has been much pressure for establishing a Palestinian state. Israel does not want a Palestinian state to exist inside Palestine at all. It wants the Palestinians removed to Jordan or Saudi Arabia or Lebanon or Syria - anywhere but in Palestine. That line has been part of the Israeli national agenda since Israel was conceived. It was certainly in evidence when Menachem Begin and the Stern gang mass murdered Palestinians to provoke the rest to flee in fear.
It has been even more in evidence since Ariel Sharon, following up on his sponsorship of Palestinian extermination in Lebanon, unleashed his genocidal troops, with the latest military armaments, against rock throwers and suicide bombers, wiping out freedom fighting members of the Palestinian resistance with Hitlerian ferocity. The line has also been endorsed by US congressmen, like Representative Dick Armey.
Chris Matthews interviewed Armey (Republican, Texas), leader of the Republicans in the US House of Representatives (source: MSNBC, 1 May 2002). In the most blatant admission of this line, Armey said: "I am content to have Israel occupy that land that it now occupies and to have those people who have been aggressors against Israel retired to some other area, and I would be happy to have them make a home. I would be happy to have all of these Arab nations that have been so hell bent to drive Israel out of the Middle East to get together, find some land and make a home for the Palestinians. I think it can be done."
Could not this be done now? Why could not Sharon and Co. force the Palestinians out of Palestine now? As long as Israel perceives that Iraq may be developing weapons of mass destruction along with the capacity to deliver them, they would not dare remove the remaining Palestinians from their midst. They know that if Saddam lobbed a WMD to Israel that it would kill more Palestinians than Israelis.
But if/when the Palestinians have been expelled from their lands, that restraint could be removed from Saddam's mind set; and, assuming he has the weapons, all WMD hell could break loose over the land of Zion before the Israelis could prevent it or retaliate.
So what happens if Sharon and his American supporters - Perle, Wolfowitz, Cohen, Ruben, Rumsfeld, Fleisher, Armey and all of the rest of the US-Israel support troops prodding Bush and Cheney - get their way and finish Iraq?
The Palestinians will be forced again to flee their homeland and become refugees in another Arab country. If/when this happens, resulting in a Diaspora of Palestinians outside of the occupied lands called Israel, there will no longer be a radical like Saddam Hussein, with weapons of mass destruction, to threaten Israel's very existence.
The purpose of the whole Bush & Co. exercise in an Iraq wipe-out is thus clear: it opens the floodgates for Israel to rid Palestine of the Palestinians.
The reporters who accept the Bush administration's public line about regime change and (unproven) weapons of mass destruction have simply been repeating political nonsense. Those commentators who speculate that the Bush-Cheney oil connections have motivated them to seek control of Iraqi oil have merely been grasping at straws for a rationale for the war mongering by Washington hawks. In short, the pundits have it all wrong.
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*Paul Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for 34 years. For more information, see
http://www.writerfreelance.com and http://www.pballes.com.