I had to title it that because a college chum did walk up to the mike at my wedding reception and ask if my marriage was good for Israel. That's what happens to Brandeis graduates, folks.
The Atlantic Monthly has a really cool feature where they ask a couple poll questions of a group of experts. The cool part is that they publish the results and additional comments without telling who said what. That relative anonymity allows for a more honest response, I suspect. There is a great deal of hesitation to go "on the record" against the Israeli government, for fear that the Jewish Defense League will start picketing your house or worse. The way Atlantic Monthly sets this up, and even has a caveat that "not all respondents answered all questions," any of the foreign policy experts answering the Israel poll for November can just say, "That was Zbigniew Brzezinski. Zbig said that."
How would you describe U.S. support for Israel under the Bush administration?
Too Strong: 62%
About Right: 38%
And do the math, people. Of 39 highly respected foreign policy experts, how many of them think the Bush Administration is supporting Israel too much? That's right, zero! (No, they didn't ask Condi this time. I said respected foreign policy experts.)
The comments are even funnier, if they weren't so sad.
...sometimes, the U.S. needs to point out when the Israelis are making a mistake.
We have now become so closely identified with Israel, ...as the result of the Lebanon conflict and our step away from systematic negotiation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—that we may actually be hurting Israel’s longer-range interests.
Filed under, "duh":
The Bush Administration has chosen to treat Middle East diplomacy as a win/lose or zero-sum game in which Syrian, Iranian, Hezbollah, or Hamas gains are, by definition, American losses, and vice-versa. The result, of course, is the United States always loses, because if you insist that the population of the region choose between Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, on the one hand, or the United States and Israel on the other, they are going to chose the other side every time.
Yeah, tough Shiite, our duet will never win the Arabic Idol cell phone vote, either. But here's my personal favorite:
[We've been] too uncritical (as in Lebanon), which doesn’t help the U.S.-Israeli alliance at all — friends don’t let friends drive drunk.
That Zbig cracks me up!
The thing that tends to get overlooked is that Israel is not America's friend.
ReplyDeleteIt never was, either.
It used to be a socialist country, and hated America on grounds of ideology; now it competes for American investment (the big dream among kids after they're done with their military service? Having a start-up. Not starting up a business - finding (American) venture capitalists to finance them.) In both incarnations it wants to suck the life-blood out of America. Americans are (generally) disdained as foolish, childish - useful idiots.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why we're willing to put up with that.
Meanwhile, Israel continues its campaign to deny Americans of Palestinian descent permission to enter it, for fear they will return to their ancestral homes. It continues to yearn for an apartheid regime (check that out with Jimmy Carter). It continues to pile difficulties onto any organization that tries to send aid to the refugees in Palestine. And this morning, even Yoram Kanyuk (staunch supporter of Israel's right to do anything it wanted and among the founding generation) gave up and said that he lays a curse on himself because the state they founded was not a just one. (Link here, article in Hebrew.
As to your marriage - I venture to hope and pray that it was not good for Israel. Rather, that it was good for the whole human race, for justice and for truth.
I wonder how many Americans males would appreciate it if they had to go through compulsory military service.
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, Britain had compulsory service from WWII until the early 1960s or late 1950s.
I'm just saying.
That last part is good advice though...Friends don't let friends VOTE drunk. That's how we end up with those crapweasels to begin with.
ReplyDelete