US Must Reevaluate Its Relationship With Israel

Scott Ritter has written an article that is published on Anti-War.Com concerning America's relationship with Israel that is bound to ruffle few feathers.

He calls for the US to reevaluate it's relationship with Israel completely and compares the present Israeli government to a drunk in charge of a car "holding a pistol to our head, demanding that we stop interfering with the vehicle's operation and preventing us from getting out of the car".

Objective criticism of Israeli policies is almost unheard of in American politics, where Democrats and Republicans regularly fall over themselves to spout the current Israeli political line. Ritter is putting his neck on the line and will, no doubt, be accused of Antisemitism and all the other stock in trade insults for daring to question the US's relationship with it's Middle Eastern ally.

He is primarily concerned with recent comments from the Israeli's concerning the NIE report which stated that Iran had stopped seeking a nuclear bomb around 2003. Avi Dichter has famously stated that this NIE report may well lead to a war, a claim which I notice Ehud Olmert has been doing his best to dampen down.

Ritter states:

In threatening the world with war because America opted for once to embrace fact instead of fiction, Israel, sadly, has become like a cornered beast, lashing out at any and all it perceives to threaten its security interests. The current Israeli definition of what constitutes its security interests is so broad as to preclude any difference of opinion.

Israel at present can have no friends, because Israel does not know how to be a friend. Driven by xenophobic paranoia and historical grievances, Israel is embarked on a path that can only lead to death and destruction. This is a path the United States should not tread. I have always taken the position that Israel is a friend of the United States, and that friends should always stand up for one another, even in difficult times. I have also noted that, to quote a phrase well known in America, friends don't let friends drive drunk, and that for some time now Israel has been drunk on arrogance and power. As a friend, I have believed the best course of action for the United States to take would be that which helped remove the keys from the ignition of the policy vehicle Israel is steering toward the edge of the abyss. Now it seems our old friend is holding a pistol to our head, demanding that we stop interfering with the vehicle's operation and preventing us from getting out of the car. This is not the action of a friend, and it can no longer be tolerated.

He then calls for a reevaluation of the US policy of aid to Israel and asks that it should be "linked to Israeli behavior modification" stating that, "like a child too long spoiled by an inattentive parent, Israel has grown accustomed to American largess".

He states that this is "a relationship that has destroyed our credibility around the world and drags us dangerously down the path toward another irresponsible military misadventure in the Middle East".

He is a brave man to point out how ridiculously biased towards Israel are both American politicians and the political coverage of the Middle East in the US.

Witness the pro-Israel bias displayed when discussing the situation in southern Lebanon, the air strike in Syria, or the Iranian situation, and the retarding of any effort toward a responsible discussion of anything dealing with Israel becomes apparent.

He then points out how the neo-cons surrounding Bush are totally playing along with this Israeli dominated view of Middle Eastern politics, as if Israeli interests and those of the US are somehow interchangeable.

It must be understood that the government of Ehud Olmert is acting in a post-9/11 environment, with considerable facilitators in the administration of President Bush, including the vice president. These two factors combine to create a cycle of enablement that allows a purely Israeli point of view to dominate American policy. If the Israeli point of view were built on logic, compassion, and the rule of law, then this tilt would not constitute a problem. But the Israeli point of view is increasingly constructed on a foundation of intolerance and irresponsible unilateralism that divorces the country from global norms. In this day and age of nuclear nonproliferation, the undeclared nuclear arsenal of Israel stands as perhaps the most egregious example of how an Israel-only standard destabilizes the Middle East. It is the Israeli nuclear weapons program, including its strategic delivery systems, that is the core of instability for this very volatile region.

And, as always - highlighting Western hypocrisy - lies the undeclared nuclear arsenal of our ally; the elephant in the room that the West agree not to talk about as it chides Iran and others for daring to chase nuclear technology.

They'll come out of the woodwork to attack Ritter for daring to raise the subject, but his article is well worth reading.

You can do so by clicking the title.