Robert Parry: Israel's Looming Catastrophe

[seafan]

Robert Parry allows unlimited use of his articles at consortiumnews.



Israel's Looming Catastrophe

By Robert Parry
January 4, 2009

For the past three decades, Israel has charted a course that invites its own destruction by relying on two risky propositions: first, that it could extend its security perimeter beyond the reach of a devastating missile attack, and second, that it could permanently control the political debate inside its crucial ally, the United States.
Israel’s current assault on Gaza is only the latest manifestation of this dangerous strategy, but – whether or not Israel succeeds in its stated goal of stopping the launching of short-range Hamas rockets – the more troubling writing for Israel remains on the wall.

If Israel continues to engender hatred across the Muslim world – and thus feeds the growth of Islamic extremism – eventually some radical government or group will get hold of a missile or some other means of delivering a payload against Tel Aviv that would wreak mass devastation.
In that event, Israel would almost surely turn to its sophisticated nuclear arsenal and launch a massive retaliatory strike. But to what end? Whatever counter-devastation could be delivered, it would not solve the strategic dilemma facing Israel.

Indeed, retaliation would likely make matters worse by engendering even a stronger determination among Muslims to eliminate whatever would be left of Israel. The situation might even be beyond the military power of the United States to set right.

Yet, this Israeli conundrum is not discussed inside the United States, where – for the past three decades – American neocons have led a powerful propaganda apparatus that demonizes any public figure who dares question hard-line Israeli strategy.
Even Americans with strong affection for Israel are denounced as “anti-Semites” or “pro-terrorist” if they challenge the Israel-is-always-right conventional wisdom that dominates modern Washington, where Democrats and Republicans alike line up to pander to the annual American-Israel Public Affairs Committee conference.

Former President Jimmy Carter, for instance, has become almost a political pariah although he arguably did more than any U.S. official to advance Israel’s security by negotiating the Camp David accords in 1978.

However, it was that event – the agreement between Israel and Egypt, returning the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for a lasting peace commitment – that marked the strategic turning point for both Israel and the United States.

.....

Begin’s fear of Carter’s reelection – combined with alarm over Carter's perceived bungling in Iran where Islamic extremists took power in 1979 – set the stage for secret collaboration between Begin and the Republican presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, according to another Israeli intelligence official, Ari Ben-Menashe.
In his 1992 memoir, Profits of War, Ben-Menashe said the view of Begin and other Likud leaders was one of contempt for Carter.

“Begin loathed Carter for the peace agreement forced upon him at Camp David,” Ben-Menashe wrote.

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Ben-Menashe wrote that Begin authorized shipments to Iran of small arms and some spare parts, via South Africa, as early as September 1979. In November of that year, events in Iran took another troubling turn when Islamic radicals seized the U.S. Embassy and took 52 Americans hostage, prompting a U.S. trade embargo.

Carter Catches On

By April 1980, however, Carter had learned about the covert Israeli shipments, which included 300 tires for Iran’s U.S.-supplied jet fighters. That prompted an angry complaint from Carter to Begin. “There had been a rather tense discussion between President Carter and Prime Minister Begin in the spring of 1980 in which the President made clear that the Israelis had to stop that, and that we knew that they were doing it, and that we would not allow it to continue, at least not allow it to continue privately and without the knowledge of the American people,” Carter’s press secretary Jody Powell told me.

“And it stopped,” Powell said. At least, it stopped temporarily.

Questioned by congressional investigators a dozen years later, Carter said he felt that by April 1980, “Israel cast their lot with Reagan,” according to notes I found among the unpublished documents in the files of a congressional investigation in 1992.
Carter traced the Israeli opposition to his reelection to a “lingering concern Jewish leaders that I was too friendly with Arabs.”

Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski also recognized the Israeli hostility. Brzezinski said the Carter White House was well aware that the Begin government had “an obvious preference for a Reagan victory.”
Extensive evidence now exists, too, that Begin’s preference for a Reagan victory led Israelis to join in a covert operation with Republicans to contact Iranian leaders behind Carter’s back and delay release of the 52 American hostages until after Reagan defeated Carter in November 1980.

In his book and in sworn testimony about this so-called “October Surprise” controversy, Ben-Menashe asserted that then-vice presidential candidate George H.W. Bush personally participated in a key meeting in October 1980 in Paris. Bush denied that claim at two press conferences in 1992 but was never questioned under oath in any formal government investigation.

Since then, additional evidence has emerged linking the senior Bush to the clandestine Republican contacts with Iran during the 1980 campaign. Chicago Tribune reporter John Maclean said he was informed by a well-placed Republican Party source in mid-October 1980 that Bush was heading to Paris for a meeting with Iranians about the hostage crisis.
David Andelman, a former New York Times correspondent who was assisting French intelligence chief Alexandre deMarenches on his memoir, said deMarenches described arranging meetings between Republicans and Iranians in Paris but insisted that be left out of the book for fear it would hurt his friend, George H.W. Bush.

After checking its intelligence files at the request of the U.S. Congress, the Russian government submitted an extraordinary report in January 1993 that identified the senior George Bush as one of several Republicans who negotiated with the Iranians in Paris during the 1980 campaign.
The congressional task force that requested the Russian report as part of its “October Surprise” investigation in 1992 never made the report public or even disclosed its existence.

I discovered the Russian document in a storage box left behind by the task force, which – by the time the Russian report arrived – had already decided to “debunk” the allegations of a Republican-Iranian hostage deal. The task force cleared Bush without ever questioning him.

In 1993, former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who followed Begin to power in Israel, became another voice endorsing the allegations of a Republican-Iranian “October Surprise” deal back in 1980.
When asked in an interview whether there had been a Republican “October Surprise” operation, Shamir responded, “Of course, it was.”
The 52 American hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981, just as Ronald Reagan was beginning his inaugural address.

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Rise of the Neoconservatives

The election of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in 1980 also coincided with the emergence of a political movement known as neoconservatism.
Many neoconservatives had been liberals or even leftists but broke with the Democratic Party in the 1970s to favor a more aggressive policy toward the Soviet Union. The neoconservatives also wanted a more staunchly pro-Israeli position in the Middle East.
The Reagan-Bush administration rewarded the neocons for their support in the 1980 campaign with their first taste of executive power, giving them credentials that would prove crucial more than two decades later in their ability to push through the Iraq War.

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These new facts-on-the-ground – both in the Middle East and in Washington – add to the imperative for the Israeli people to reassess the three-decade strategy of balking at reconciliation with their Arab neighbors and counting on the neocon dominance of the U.S. political debates.

Israeli leaders might want to do whatever they can to turn back the clock to the late 1970s when Jimmy Carter showed a possible route to long-term security for Israel – by making respectful peace deals with its Arab neighbors.
Rather than trying to bomb and kill their way to security, Israeli leaders might want to consider a new strategy that steps away from endless confrontation with Arab enemies and instead seeks to integrate Israel into the economic life of the Middle East, as a center of science, technology, industry and finance.

Surely, this approach would not be easy. Given the past three decades of tit-for-tat atrocities, there would be extremists on both sides who would commit additional outrages to derail any progress.

It would have been much easier if Menachem Begin and his successors had understood that some of their greatest American friends were those – like Jimmy Carter – who recognized legitimate interests on both sides of the conflict, rather than those – like George W. Bush – who embraced the most extreme neoconservative positions.

So, whatever the outcome of Israel’s Gaza offensive, it cannot disguise how untenable Israel’s long-term position has become.

Even if Hamas’s little short-range missiles can be silenced for the time-being, the hatreds will continue to fester. The Arab Street will turn, increasingly, against authoritarian Arab leaders in countries such as Egypt and Jordan who have taken the most moderate positions regarding Israel’s right to exist.
And beyond Israel’s immediate neighbors – assuming those mutual hatreds are not defused – Muslim extremists will eventually get hold of a weapon of mass destruction, possibly in Pakistan if its current fragile civilian government falls. At some point, someone will have a missile or some other means of delivering a powerful weapon against Israel.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Bush and his neocon advisers may have imagined themselves ensuring security for Israel by taking aggressive action against its regional adversaries but have instead worsened Israel’s predicament. Now, the neocons find themselves widely discredited inside the U.S. political process.


It is this combination of realities – Bush’s failed adventurism in the Middle East and the decline of the neocons at home – that could become the impetus for a new and serious peace initiative in the Middle East, as the best hope for Israel’s success and survival.

[peacebird]

1. "could become the impetus for a new and serious peace initiative" - good.

[WeDidIt]

2. There's no money or power to be had if peace was achieved

thus conflict will always be the way in the Middle East.

[PerfectSage]

3. Thank You Begin, For 8 years of failure of neo con ideology.

:rofl: Blowback's a bitch.

[wellst0nev0ter]

4. Didn't They Fund Hamas In The First Place

As a counterweight to Arafat? You're right, blowback is a bitch.