How The Left Gets It Wrong

If the situation of the Palestinians seems hopeless, it is not simply because of what Israel does. It isalso because most pro-Palestinian activists, while complaining unceasingly about the American-Israelialliance, spare no effort to maintain it. They do so because they are wedded to conventional left-wingassumptions.

How does this show? Confronted with the fact that one of the most powerful countries in the world--I refer,of course, to Israel--is crushing the Palestinians, the left mistakes Israel for a little puppet, and the USmust then get drafted into the role of puppeteer. Since the puppeteer needs to have some motive for the puppetshow, Israel becomes a tool for advancing American interests. This is a fatal step, because it pretty wellimplies that any sane US government should support Israel. Shouldn't any sane government advance its country's interests?

Like all catastrophic strategies, this one is based on a truth. America's scandalous, extravagantinvolvement with Israel should of course be stopped immediately. But it is still Israel committing the crimes,not the US, and not at the instigation of the US. America is a sap, a duped accomplice, not a co-conspirator.The enormous, ignored fact of the Palestinian story is that America is not, as the left so loves to think,pursuing some vital interest in its alliance with Israel. On the contrary, America is acting against its vitalinterests. And by America I don't just mean the wonderful, real-as-dirt Americans of Denzel Washington flicks.I also mean corporate America and the American government.

Back when there were commies, the US had a paranoid but at least vaguely plausible reason for allyingitself with Israel. Israel was going to keep Arab commies from getting out of hand. The US badly wanted astrong military power in the region, because 'getting out of hand' might include supplying bases for the RedArmy. But the commies are long gone. Everyone cooperated to wipe them out: true nationalists like Nasser,entrenched political forces like the Syrian Ba'ath party, reactionaries like the rulers of the Gulf states,the Americans, Israel, and the Moslem fundamentalists they cultivated.

That was then, the age of Vietnam and the Yom Kippur war, a time when nothing was too evil if it foughtcommunism. The America of that age lives on in the frozen brains of the left. How many vile regimes did the USback in the 1970s? Israel was the best of them. There were the South Vietnamese, the Greek Junta, Pinochet anda host of scum all over Latin America, in Brazil, in Argentina, in Uruguay, in Paraguay, in Guatemala, in ElSalvador, in Panama, in the Dominican Republic. There were the South Africans, in their own country and inAngola, Namibia, Mozambique. There were the mass murderers of Indonesia, and there was the Shah of Iran. Nodoubt I've forgotten many others.

But we don't live in 1975 any more. I'm not sure America sponsors even one regime as bad as its clients ofyore. Sure, the US still does a roaring arms trade with all sorts of awful governments, and, as ever, makeslopsided economic agreements with them. But these governments, governments of states like Indonesia or Kuwaitor Argentina, are not American clients, any more than they are clients of France, or Britain, or any otherstates that do business with them. (And most of them aren't as bad as the clients of the old days.) To someonepreoccupied with condemning US sins, the change seems insignificant. But to anyone who really wants toinfluence the US government, it is not. When one examines the political objectives involved, there is a bigdifference between the sort of support America gives Israel and the sort it gave its client regimes in the1970s.

In 1975, America backed its despicable friends because it wanted what they wanted. It wanted thecommunists, dissidents and revolutionaries tortured and killed. It wanted that done at arm's length, and itactively conspired with the world's worst governments to do so. It no longer conspires with such people,mostly because it got what it wanted. But American support for Israel has always been very different.

America does not at all want what Israel wants, and it never did. America never had the slightest desire tokill Palestinians, take their land and homes, drive them to despair. America tolerated these outrages as a mobboss might tolerated the sadistic, deviant sexual tastes of an underling. But, also like the mob boss, it didnot share these tastes.

But if America doesn't share Israel's goals, what does it get out of supporting Israel? The left has becomea contortionist in its efforts to explain that. Oil politics, they say. This explanation assumes too muchabout the role of oil in American foreign policy, and would make little sense even if those assumptions wereaccepted.

The appeal to oil politics derives largely from overly serious attention to the US government's expressionsof concern for America's long-term oil supply. Naturally, US officials will express such concern from time totime. The oil companies like that, and the concern is genuine enough. But there's a big difference betweenhaving a concern and making it the driving force of your foreign policy. Witness the supposed oil politicsdriving American efforts in Central Asia. 

Much is made of the (not overly enthusiastic) involvement of Unocal in Khazakhstan, and the oil pipelineprojects connected with its efforts. (see, e.g., Ted Rall, "TheNew Great Game: Oil Politics in Central Asia") But Unocal is a second or third tier oil company, anine billion dollar enterprise dwarfed by Exxon's 270 billion dollar stature. Moreover, it is more or less apariah, currently standing trial in Los Angeles for human rights abuses. Would they--the great they of conspiracy analyses--allow this if these Unocal folks were really the darlings of a US governmenthell-bent on securing the Caspian oil?

Sure, the US government wants some Central Asian oil, and conducts an oil politics to get it. But this ishardly an obsession, and why should it be? We live in a world, for now, in which oil suppliers are falling allover themselves to sell as much as they can to the highest bidder. The business press regards the oil weaponas unusable. The US lack of interest in energy conservation and alternative energy supplies indicates that theAmerican government is not more far-sighted in its policies than the business press. This should come as nosurprise. The world's strongest military and economic power knows it can easily procure itself oil withoutanyone's help--especially not Israel's.

If America were so concerned about its oil supplies, why would it ally itself with the one power in theworld that drives its suppliers to distraction? Were it not for that alliance, the US would be able to applymuch more direct and finely tuned pressure on oil-rich governments. Israel is (a) best positioned to pressurestates which are not significant oil producers--Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt--(b) utterly superfluous for pressuring the veryfeeble Gulf states, and (c) politically unsuitable, as the Gulf War showed, for pressuring militarily strongproducers like Iraq and Iran.

The portrayal of Israel as America's stationary aircraft carrier is equally unconvincing in this context.Again, this made a certain paranoid sense when the enemy was communism, because the states bordering on Israelwere considered the most likely to go communist. But the US does not need or want Israel to strike throughJordan and Syria to Gulf oil fields. This 'solution' would be much more of a problem than simply occupying theoil fields with American troops. The US today would have no more difficulty securing or controlling MiddleEast oil supplies than the Allies did during World War I, long before Israel existed. The one thing that mightconceivably come in handy--lots of expendable ground troops--only friendly Arab governments, not Israel, couldprovide.

Occasionally one hears other accounts of America's interest in supporting Israel. It is said that Israel'spersecution of the Palestinians will 'teach the Arabs a lesson'? What lesson? Are they too stupid to seethey're weaker than the United States? And what are the Arabs to learn not to do? Resist Israeli occupation?The Arab states have little sympathy and less common interest with the Palestinians; they do not tremblebecause Israel persecutes a people they fear or despise.

Or is American support for Israel somehow connected with the war on terror? Yes, it certainly is. America'salliance with Israel stands squarely in the way of better relations with the Arab governments, the famed 'Arabstreet', and Pakistan. It is the main obstacle to a US attack on Iraq. It blocks either an attack on, orreconciliation with, Iran, the Sudan, or Libya. America's alliance with Israel does even more damage to itswar on terror than to its oil politics.

Why then does America support Israel? There is the pro-Israel lobby, I guess, and (a distinct factor) thesupport of ordinary American Jews for Israeli policies. More important may be the enormous prestige of Jewsand Jewish culture in American life. But most important of all is probably a force never to beunderestimated--plain old inertia. America supports Israel because it once had a reason to do so, or thoughtit did, and because it has done so in the past. Intellectuals may feel cheated by such banal explanations, butoffer no viable alternatives. Whatever the reasons for American support, US interests aren't among them.

This has large implications. The whole Palestinian strategy of the left is in urgent need of drasticchange. First, the left's demonization of the US is excessive and obsessive. America's current support forIsrael is a world away from its carefully contemplated, viciously evil support for its cold-war clientregimes. Today America is the puppet, not Israel.

America is not using Israel to fight against communism or for economic advantage. Israel is using Americato fight a race war, and America is too much of a dummy to understand. It fawns on Israel, mostly because itis befuddled, and partly because its politicians fear offending Jewish voters. But America is not the enemyhere; it is aiding the enemy. The left is so fixated on American sinfulness that it treats present US supportfor Israel like past US sponsorship of true proxy regimes like Pinochet's Chile, and all but lets the realculprit off the hook. American weapons inflict huge harm on the Palestinians, but it is not America that isinflicting the harm: 'it's the Israelis, stupid!' Even without American arms, plucky little Israel would stillmanage to oppress the Palestinians and intimidate their reluctant allies.

Though America is not the central villain of Israel's drama, a change in American policy is still essentialto helping the Palestinians. The left is far more interested in complaining about that policy than in changingit. Yet the basis for a real strategy can be found in the innocuous leftist belief that American policy isdetermined by America's strategic and economic interests. If leftists really wanted to restrain Israel ratherthan moralize about American complicity, they would make clear that US policymakers are more stupid than evil,because Israeli policies run entirely contrary to America's strategic and economic interests. A genuinelypro-Palestinian strategy would stress that backing Israel undermines not only to America's war on terror, butalso its oil politics. And a genuinely pro-Palestinian strategy would not be anti-American for the sheer joyof it. Instead it would emphasize that American foreign policy, however reprehensible, has improved since1975, and that America squanders the political benefits of this improvement with its robotic support forIsrael. This is not flag-waving or apologetics; it is a matter of making the appeal most likely to strike achord with the US government and public.

This strategy would do more than make even the most conservative Americans question the wisdom ofsupporting Israel. It would also force American Jews to reassess their involvement with Israel, which up tonow has in effect been certified impeccably pro-American by the left as well as the right. At the very least,it makes no sense for pro-Palestinian activists to pick up their marbles and go home when appeals to moralityprove ineffective. Anyone convinced of the immorality of the US government has all the more reason to appealto American self-interest.

If one insists on a moral judgement here, the obvious one would be that the anti-American hysterics of theleft are an inexcusable indulgence of prejudice, for which the Palestinians are paying a terrible price.According to CNN polls, as many as 43% of Americans have thought the US was too pro-Israel. It is not withoutingenuity that such a powerful undercurrent of opposition to American policy has been left untapped.

Michael Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent University inOntario, Canada.