NOV 30, 2005

In the first three years of statehood, the US gave Israel a massive amount in foreign aid to help stabilize the infant economy. During Israel’s wars, America was often there, in 1949, 1967 and 1973 working side-by-side with Israel’s foreign ministry to ensure that Israel secured ceasefire agreements that would not favor the Arab aggressors. America airlifted a large amount of weaponry to Israel to help turn the tide during the Yom Kippur War, down the years kept Israel supplied with arms that would secure the Jews a qualitative edge over the Arab states, and during the first and second Gulf Wars, stationed Patriot anti-missile batteries in Israel as a line of defense against Iraqi SCUDS.

Most of these and many other positive American contributions to Israel’s growth and security are well known.

One man who as much as any other helped lay the foundations for the Israel-US relationship was Abba Eban – Israel’s first ambassador to America and to the United Nations and then his country’s foreign minister under Labor Party prime ministers Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir.

In his autobiography, Eban described this friendship that had been forged between the two countries as “the strong chain which, at the middle of the 20th century, drew the strongest and smallest democracies together with imperishable links.”

Years later, recalling those heady early days during which Israel was finding its feet in the world of international diplomacy, and shortly after his country lost favor with the USSR, Eban noted how vital it was for Israel to remain close and cuddly with America.

“No country except the United States has been and still is able to redress the adverse balance [vis-à-vis Israel] arising from the geopolitical predominance of the Arabs and their alliance with the Soviet power.”

This reality “was and is a central truth of Israel’s foreign policy.” From Eban’s point of view, Israel had no choice but to be dependent on the United States. In fact, he saw cultivating America’s friendship as a priority – its achievement as a gift to Israel. It is likely that most Israeli Jews back in the first years of statehood probably recognized this as such.

While Eban does not harp on America’s Judeo-Christian basis as one of the reasons for the close affinity, he does acknowledge that it was due to their exposure to the Bible that various presidents and secretaries of state were inclined to be more positive in their attitude toward Israel.

Today, although the Soviet Union is no more, and despite a number of rocky periods down the decades, those ties – and that dependency – are as strong as ever.

From America’s side, the ties remain strongly influenced by acquaintance with  – if not always belief in – the Bible.

Nonetheless, as Eban recounts the ebb and flow of this relationship, the mid-fifties, said Eban, was a period “during which America could be justly accused of having left Israel alone to the winds and storms.”

For example, according to Eban, "President Gerald Ford tried to blackmail Israel into withdrawing to the 1967 borders, “reassessing” US-Israel relations and denying delivery of the F-15 fighter plane to Israel when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin played hardball. President Jimmy Carter declared a “new Middle East policy” and ignored Egyptian violations of its peace treaty with Israel. After the first Gulf War, during which Israel agreed to American requests that it stay out of the conflict and not retaliate against Saddam’s SCUDs, President George Bush Sr. and Secretary of State James Baker again used blackmail, threatening to withhold $10 billion in loan guarantees unless Israel agreed to stop settlement construction. This at a time when hundreds of thousands of Jews were flooding in from the collapsed Soviet Union and Israel needed the guarantees to help absorb them.:

This brings us to the present administration, the JNW editorial continues referring to President George W. Bush’s “personal commitment” to a two-state “solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict,

Criticizing Bush, the JNW editorial says (Bush) is a self-professing Born Again Christian. He has made war on terrorism his legacy, taking the battle to the Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, turning up the heat on Syria, and drawing red lines in the sand, declaring a clear division between those states that oppose terrorism and those that support it.

"On October 28 Bush told his troops that if the US caved on the war against terrorism, Israel could be destroyed. The American leader has repeatedly assured Israel of his commitment to the right of the Jewish state to exist in secure and recognized borders,' the editorial continues.

"The historical record speaks for itself. But for the United States, Israel may never have been reborn as a Jewish homeland. But for the United States, Israel may not have survived through what, this year, was its 57th anniversary.

And but for the United States, Israel would not have compromised its security to the extent that it has, allowing the establishment of a Palestinian Authority in Israel’s heartland, handing over historical Jewish lands to the Arabs, agreeing to the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state, sowing deep division among its own people and, last month, expelling thousands of Jews from their homes in order to surrender parts of Israel’s patrimony to its Muslim foes.

It is precisely the high premium Israel places on its friendship with America that has made all this possible. The USA is Israel’s friend, yes. But as everyone knows, friends can be far more influential than enemies.

Given this shameful litany, one could perhaps be forgiven for concluding that, with a possible exception or two, America’s friendship has been carefully extended only to that point where the US will not prejudice its own “greater” interests.

There have been in the past instances where American presidents have been prepared to let Israel bleed, and even to abandon her, for the sake of personal political and financial benefit. There is no reason to believe that there will not be more such instances in the future

Is this the friend and ally God intended America to be to Israel?

By using the leverage of its “friendship” to push Israel into compromising its security in the face of the ever-growing threat to Israel’s existence that is proliferating throughout the Middle East, the world’s leading Christian nation is dangerously close to betraying its Jewish “older brother” ... with a kiss." (END of JNW Editorial)


My two cents: Having read all that...I thought to myself, If I were India I would rather switch places with Israel, sit back and eat free "donuts" than sell Drones all over. Why the greed?