In response to Leo Casey:
For the second time today, it's necessary to preface my response by stating that a pedantic, dismissive tone is simply no substitute for serious debate. Your suggestion that I am "a lazy person" or a "simple-minded person" is not only unfounded, but insulting. It can only function as a cover for avoiding a real, fraternal discussion.
Likewise, an abstract appeal to the complexity of a political question does not help your argument. I agree that one should go to the trouble to "make concrete analyses of particular situations." But where is your concrete analyses? Personal insults and an abstract, schoolmasterly appeal to "free(ing) the mind" can only block the kind of serious discourse that urgent political questions deserve.
The allegedly simplistic formulae that I offered for understanding Israel's strategic role for US domination in the Middle East are not my own. The "watchdog" formula actually first appeared after Mossadegh announced his intention to nationalize Iran's oil industries in 1952. During the Mossadegh crisis, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz made an offer to the West:
'The West is none too happy about its relations with states in the Middle East. The feudal regimes there have to make such concessions to the nationalist movements. . . that they become more and more reluctant to supply Britain and the United States with their natural resources and military bases . . .Therefore, strengthening Israel helps the Western powers maintain equilibrium and stability in the Middle East. Israel is to become the watchdog. There is no fear that Israel will undertake any aggressive policy towards the Arab states when this would explicitly contradict the wishes of the U.S. and Britain.But if for any reason the Western powers should sometimes prefer to close their eyes, Israel could be relied upon to punish one or several neighboring states whose discourtesy to the West went beyond the bounds of the permissible."
This is in fact precisely the role Israel has served for the western powers- and after the 1967 war, for the US in particular.
Of course, US support for Israel rests on a serious contradiction. Israel is supported by the US because it is the most stable and pro-western state in the Middle East.(Stable does not mean democratic, of course.) But because the 3 and half million Palestinian refugees in the region act as a destabilizing factor, one which threatens to upset the current balance of power and radicalize ordinary people across the region, the US has to seek partnerships with other Arab states. Occasionally, this means downplaying the relation with Israel (as happened during the Gulf War). What's behind the US's long, futile attempt to broker precisely the kind of accomodation you cite is not the power of Jewish swing voters in America, but the threat of social upheaval and revolution in the Arab world- a threat which has recurred time and again.
Now we are at the end of such attempts at accomodation. Israel appears, by all indications, to be hurtling toward another bloodbath. I hope it doesn't happen. But if it does, we should be clear that support for the "watchdog" state cannot further the cause of a just peace.
><< Should Zionism be "singled out" for critique by those who wish to build
>an
>anti-imperialist movement in the US? Absolutely, and for a simple reason:
>Israel is the single largest recipient of US military aid in the world, and
>has long played a central strategic role as the American state's "watchdog"
>in the Middle East. >>
> >
> >
>These formulae simplify the world and how to intervene in international
>politics, and free the mind from having to go through the trouble of making
>concrete analyses of particular situations. For that reason, they make a
>good
>lazy person's -- or simple minded person's -- guide to the world, just as
>the
>famous Maoist 'three worlds' theory did. All you need to know is what the
>US
>government supports, and then take the opposite side. Does the US
>government
>support the removal of the Haitian military, and the restoration of
>Aristide?
>Can't be a good idea, since it is, by definition, in the "objective
>interests" of American imperialism. Does the US government support an end
>to
>ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia? No, can't be: let's find a way
>to
>make a case that Middle East oil or a blow against nonexistent socialism is
>behind it all.
>
>The extent of American military support and fopreign aid for Israel runs
>counter to any sort of rational calculation of imperial interests in the
>Middle East. From the viewpoint of imperial interests, nothing would make
>more sense than to have Israel walk the plank, in order to come to
>accommodation with all of the Arab and Islamic regimes -- which, by the
>way,
>control the oil, for those who think that oil is the key to everything.
>Clearly, the extent of support for Israel is more a matter of domestic
>American politics -- the battle over the Jewish vote in key electoral
>college
>states such as New York, California and Florida, the need to support the
>most
>democratic of Middle Eastern states -- than of any international economic
>interests.
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