An inevitable path for America the time has come to stop supporting Israel.
“Today, decades of brutal Israeli control have eroded the same moral justification for unconditional US support,” writes Stephen Walt. Israeli governments from various factions have expanded Jewish settlements, deprived Palestinians of their legitimate political rights, and treated them as second-class citizens even within Israel itself. The same routine ended: a ceasefire that left the Palestinians in dire straits and the main issues remained unresolved. The war also provided further evidence that the United States should no longer lend its unconditional economic, military, and political support to Israel. The achievements of this policy are zero and its costs are heavy and increasing. The United States and Israel need a normal relationship instead of a special relationship.
There was a time when there might have been moral reasons for a special relationship: the creation of a Jewish state was an appropriate response to centuries of anti-Semitic violence in the Christian West that culminated in the Holocaust, though not limited to this one. Of course, this moral justification was convincing if we ignored the consequences of establishing such a state for the Arabs who have lived in Palestine for centuries, especially if one believes that Israel is a country that shares basic values with the United States.
Here, too, we are faced with a difficult picture. Israel may be “the only democracy in the Middle East,” but it is not a liberal democracy like the United States, where all religions and races are supposed to have equal rights (although this goal is not fully met). In line with the central goals of Zionism, Israel is a country in which the Jews, by deliberate design, dominate others.
But today, decades of brutal Israeli control have eroded the same moral justification for unconditional US support. Israeli governments from various factions have expanded ghetto settlements, deprived Palestinians of their legitimate political rights, treated them as second-class citizens even within Israel and secured Israel’s superior military power with complete immunity. , Have been used to kill and terrorize the people of Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon.
It is not in vain that Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem recently published well-documented and convincing reports describing various Israeli policies as a system of apartheid. The right-wing orientation of Israel’s domestic politics and the growing role of extremist parties in its politics has further damaged Israel’s image, even among American Jews.
In the past, it was also possible to say that Israel is a valuable strategic asset to the United States, although the value of this asset has always been magnified. During the Cold War, for example, supporting Israel was an effective approach to controlling the Soviet Union in the Middle East because the Israeli army was much more powerful than Soviet puppet states such as Egypt and Syria. Israel also provides useful information in some cases.
Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, unconditional support for Israel poses more problems for Washington than it solves. Israel could not provide any assistance to the United States in the two US wars with Iraq; In fact, the United States was forced to send Patriot missiles to Israel in the first Gulf War to protect it from Iraqi Scud missiles.
At the same time, the costs of a special relationship with Israel continue to rise. Critics of US support for Israel often cite $ 3 billion in annual US military and economic aid, while Israel is now a wealthy country with the 19th largest per capita income in the world. Undoubtedly, there are better ways to spend this money, although for the United States, with its $ 21 trillion economy, it is a drop in the ocean. The main costs of this special relationship are political costs.
