Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Candidates’ Unconditional Support Isn’t Right for Jewish State

Candidates’ Unconditional Support Isn’t Right for Jewish State
by John J. Mearsheimer
Once again, as the presidential campaign season heats up, the leading
candidates are going to enormous lengths to demonstrate their devotion to
the state of Israel and their steadfast commitment to its “special
relationship” with the United States.
Each of the main contenders emphatically favors giving Israel
extraordinary material and diplomatic support — continuing the more than
$3 billion in foreign aid each year to a country whose per capita income
is now 29th in the world. They also believe that this aid should be given
unconditionally. None of them criticizes Israel’s conduct, even when its
actions threaten U.S. interests, are at odds with American values or even
when they are harmful to Israel itself. In short, the candidates believe
that the U.S. should support Israel no matter what it does.
Such pandering is hardly surprising, because contenders for high office
routinely court special interest groups, and Israel’s staunchest
supporters — the Israel lobby, as we have termed it — expect it.
Politicians do not want to offend Jewish Americans or “Christian
Zionists,” two groups that are deeply engaged in the political process.
Candidates fear, with some justification, that even well-intentioned
criticism of Israel’s policies may lead these groups to back their
opponents instead.
If this happened, trouble would arise on many fronts. Israel’s friends in
the media would take aim at the candidate, and campaign contributions from
pro-Israel individuals and political action committees would go elsewhere.
Moreover, most Jewish voters live in states with many electoral votes,
which increases their weight in close elections (remember Florida in
2000?), and a candidate seen as insufficiently committed to Israel would
lose some of their support. And no Republican would want to alienate the
pro-Israel subset of the Christian evangelical movement, which is a
significant part of the GOP base.
Indeed, even suggesting that the U.S. adopt a more impartial stance toward
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can get a candidate into serious trouble.
These candidates, however, are no friends of Israel. They are facilitating
its pursuit of self-destructive policies that no true friend would favor.
The key issue here is the future of Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel
conquered in 1967 and still controls. Israel faces a stark choice
regarding these territories, which are home to roughly 3.8 million
Palestinians. It can opt for a two-state solution, turning over almost all
of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians and allowing them to create
a viable state on those lands in return for a comprehensive peace
agreement designed to allow Israel to live securely within its pre-1967
borders (with some minor modifications). Or it can retain control of the
territories it occupies or surrounds, building more settlements and bypass
roads and confining the Palestinians to a handful of impoverished enclaves
in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel would control the borders around those
enclaves and the air above them, thus severely restricting the
Palestinians’ freedom of movement.
But if Israel chooses this second option, it will lead to an apartheid
state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said as much when he recently proclaimed
that if “the two-state solution collapses,” Israel will “face a South
African-style struggle.” He went so far as to argue that “as soon as that
happens, the state of Israel is finished.” Other Israelis, as well as
Jimmy Carter and Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have warned that
continuing the occupation will turn Israel into an apartheid state.
Nevertheless, Israel continues to expand its settlements on the West Bank
while the plight of the Palestinians worsens.
Given this grim situation, one would expect the presidential candidates,
who claim to care deeply about Israel, to be sounding the alarm and
energetically championing a two-state solution. One would expect them to
have encouraged President Bush to put significant pressure on both the
Israelis and the Palestinians at the recent Annapolis conference and to
keep the pressure on during last week’s visit to the region.
Hillary Clinton could be expected to be leading the charge here. After
all, she wisely and bravely called for establishing a Palestinian state
“that is on the same footing as other states” in 1998, when it was still
politically incorrect to use the words “Palestinian state” openly.
Moreover, her husband not only championed a two-state solution as
president but in December 2000 he laid out the famous “Clinton
parameters,” which outline the only realistic deal for ending the conflict.
But what is Hillary Clinton saying now that she is a candidate? She said
hardly anything about pushing the peace process forward at Annapolis. More
important, both she and GOP aspirant Rudy Giuliani recently proclaimed
that Jerusalem must remain undivided, a position that is at odds with the
Clinton parameters and virtually guarantees that there will be no
Palestinian state.
Sen. Clinton’s behavior is hardly unusual among the candidates for
president. Barack Obama, who expressed some sympathy for the Palestinians
before he set his sights on the White House, now has little to say about
their plight, and he, too, said little about what should have been done at
Annapolis to facilitate peace. The other major contenders are ardent in
their declarations of support for Israel.
As Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. national security adviser and now a
senior adviser to Obama, noted, “The presidential candidates don’t see any
payoff in addressing the Israel-Palestinian issue.” But they do see a
significant political payoff in backing Israel to the hilt, even when it
is pursuing a policy — colonizing the West Bank — that is morally and
strategically bankrupt.
In short, the presidential candidates are no friends of Israel. They are
like most U.S. politicians, who reflexively mouth pro-Israel platitudes
while continuing to endorse and subsidize policies that are in fact
harmful to the Jewish state. A genuine friend would tell Israel that it
was acting foolishly and would do whatever possible to get Israel to
change its misguided behavior. And that will require challenging the
special interest groups whose hard-line views have been obstacles to peace
for many years.
As former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami argued in 2006, the
American presidents who have made the greatest contribution to peace —
Carter and George H.W. Bush — succeeded because they were “ready to
confront Israel head on and overlook the sensibilities of her friends in
America.” If the Democratic and Republican contenders were true friends of
Israel, they would be warning it about the danger of becoming an apartheid
state, just as Carter did.
Moreover, they would be calling for an end to the occupation and the
creation of a viable Palestinian state. And they would be calling for the
United States to act as an honest broker between Israel and the
Palestinians so that Washington could pressure both sides to accept a
solution based on the Clinton parameters.
But Israel’s false friends cannot say any of these things, or even discuss
the issue honestly. Why? Because they fear that speaking the truth would
incur the wrath of the hard-liners who dominate the main organizations in
the Israel lobby. So Israel will end up controlling Gaza and the West Bank
for the foreseeable future, turning itself into an apartheid state in the
process. And all of this will be done with the backing of its so-called
friends, including the current presidential candidates.
With friends like them, who needs enemies?
John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University
of Chicago. Stephen M. Walt is a professor of international affairs at
Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. They are the authors of “The
Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” published last year by Farrar,
Straus and Giroux.
©2008 The Oregonian
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 relationship" with the United States.
mi pare di no...c'è il candidato dei nazi che di Israele non vuole
saperne più, a parte dichiarare, 'sto fottuto nazista, che se gli USA
fossero veramente amici di Israele dovrebbero smettere di armare i
suoi vicini che non la riconoscono....
ma questa è un'opinione antisemita, eh...
"Why do we arm the Arab nations and they're the enemies of Israel? But
we continue to do that. So why don't we trade with everybody and talk
with them, and there's a greater incentive to work these problems out.
I think Israel would be a lot safer.
So if you care about Israel, you should be against all the weapons
that go to the Arab nations." (Adolf Paul)