America really does have a blind spot towards Israel. In response to someone who even the neo-con Marty Peretz called a “neo-fascist” gaining the foreign minister position in the new Israeli coalition government, Matthew Yglesias says:
And of course beyond this battle of personalities, the question of Iran keeps looming in the background. One detects very little appetite in the United States for a bombing campaign against Iran, and rightly so. But there are a lot of indications that Israeli officials are very hot-to-trot to start bombing. The Obama administration presumably would not support any such endeavors. But how far would it go in declining to support an Israeli attack? Would there be actual consequences, or will this be like Israeli settlement-building where official U.S. policy is that it should stop, but it never does stop and Israel never stops receiving American support?
Sure, Lieberman (Israel’s foreign minister, not Connecticut’s Senator) is making the question of when might the U.S. actually cut off support for Israel more relevant, but to me it seems we have gone past the point where such an action would have been justified. It seems our relationship to Israel, fueled by a powerful lobby (AIPEC) that has politicians on both sides bending their rhetoric, is unconditional. We may not approve explicitly with them, but we will still fund them.
But foreign policy is not parenting. We should feel no obligation to love other countries no matter what they do. Nor should there be countries that we decide we loath no matter what (Cuba or Iran come to mind), where we let a general feeling about the country prevent us from taking a justifiably more moderate stance.
As a sovereign nation, Israel has the right to elect who they wish and espouse the views they prefer, but they have no right to our support, and I think it is about time we remind them of that by withdrawing our aid and reserving our UN Security Council veto. Maybe then they would lose the cocky overreach they have maintained in their attitude towards the Muslim world.
March 17, 2009 at 5:48 am |
Avigdor Lieberman might finally be the person able to test the limit of where the line goes for US support of Israel. So far it appears to me that Israeli atrocities have for the most part been accompanied by moderate language. I can’t really see Lieberman as the right person to dampen the anger of foreign dignitaries the next time Israel raises international outrage. And the Gaza invasion didn’t exactly put Israel in an advantageous position…