Professor Neumann’s article in Sunday’s SPME newsletter2 raises a very important question: Why is the USA so supportive of Israel, over the past 30 years? Unfortunately, his answer is both deeply misguided and tragically misleading.
The USA has, does, and should continue to support Israel because:
a) Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Democracies are an endangered species, so they support other democracies.
b) Most of the $ has not been gifts to Israel, but loan guarantees, which are not loans. Israel has never defaulted on a loan, so these guarantees have not cost the USA a single cent. The USA wishes that the same could be said of other countries to which loans have been provided.
c) Much of that $ has been used by Israel to purchase goods and services from the USA (military and civilian), so that money is recycled back into the USA economy.
d) And speaking of recycling, some of the USA money sent Israel is used for technological developments in many fields, and ends up coming back to the USA in the form of new profitable technology that contributes to the American economy.
e) Some of that $ has been payment to Israel for services provided to the USA, mostly in the field of military intelligence and field testing of new military equipment (some of which has saved USA lives in recent conflicts including the current Iraq war).
f) Some of that $ has been payment to Israel for Israel’
s agreement to forego income from sales to other countries which the USA felt were inimical to USA foreign policy priorities. This is reasonable re-imbursement for costs to, or losses accrued by, Israel in the process of being a staunch ally to the USA.
g) Some of that $ was payment to Israel for giving up the oil fields in the Sinai peninsula during the Camp David I accords (1979). Those fields were expected to make Israel energy-independent by 1998. The cost of oil purchases abroad, in the absence of those fields, was in part defrayed by US aid, which President Carter was happy to offer. Pretty good investment for the USA and for Israel…bought peace with Egypt for 25 years and counting.
h) Historically, despite many occasions when the USA has pressured Israel into taking steps that it did not feel were in its best interests, Israel has remained a staunch ally to the USA. The 7th Fleet can park its carriers in Haifa port any time it wants. The same cannot be said for Arab countries, many of which have received many billions of dollars of American aid.
1 Michael Neumann Three Years and Counting? (SPME Faculty Forum 9.26.04 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SPME/message/1924 and http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann09232004.html
i) Some of that $ includes money that was actually given to Jordan and
Egypt by the USA to induce them to not attack Israel. Billions went to Egypt
for this purpose during the Camp David I Accords.
And speaking of Arab countries, Professor Neumann apparently is unaware of:
1.) the hundreds of billions of dollars that Arab states (Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Libya, inter alia) have lavished upon world-wide terrorism since the mid60′
s, quite inimical to USA interests. 2.) the billions that have flowed from the same Arab states that support terrorism, into the Palestinian Authority since the Oslo Accords (1993).
3.) the hundreds of millions that have flowed into the Palestinian Authority from the EU. About 50% of ALL EU foreign aid goes to the Palestinian Authority; and the EU leadership has acknowledged in print that they know that much of this money is used to support terrorism.
4.) the hundreds of millions that Arafat and his kleptocracy have sucked from the Palestinians, Lebanese, and Jordanians through mafia-like extortions, monopoly on illegal drug and weapons trading, auto-theft, protection rackets, and the like.
5.) the billions that the USA has given to UNRWA over the last five decades, much of which has gone to support the growth and development of terrorist enclaves inside of the Palestinian refugee camps, in which we find representatives of almost every major Arab terrorist organization, plus some non-Arab ones that are benefiting from the excellent training they get there.
And how has the Palestinian Authority used this wealth? To line Arafat’
s pockets, to support localized terrorism against Israel, and to promote world-wide terrorism in partnership with el-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to name a few.
So the most obvious reason for the USA to support Israel is: the USA wisely considers its support of Israel to be a good investment because the USA gets substantial returns on that investment –not the least of which is Israel’
s role in fighting the same Islamofascist terrorism that brought down our World Trade Towers, blew up a large chunk of our Pentagon, killed more than 3,000 of our innocent citizens, and cost our economy as yet unascertained billions of dollars.
Sounds like a good investment to me.
David Meir-Levi
Menlo Park, CA 94025
A Brief Biographical summary to introduce David Meir-Levi
David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli currently living in Palo Alto, CA. He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University, and an MA in Near Eastern Studies from Brandeis University. He taught Archaeology and Near Eastern History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the University of Tel Aviv in the 60’s and 70’s, during which time he completed his service in the Israeli military. Upon returning to the USA, Mr. Meir-Levi has worked as a professional Jewish educator, most recently in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Since the outbreak of the second Intifada (9/29/00), he has lectured throughout northern California and abroad at synagogues, churches, universities, and service organizations on topics related to the history of the Arab-Israel conflict and the roots of terrorism in the Arab world. He has most recently taught a series of courses at Cal-Poly Institute, the Monterey Institute for International Studies, and for the Evangelical and Catholic communities in Guatemala, on the history of the Israel-Arab conflict.
He has a weekly radio show, “Mid-East Media Watch” at KZSU Stanford (90.1 fm, Tuesdays, 11:00-11:30 am); and a monthly column on Zionist history in the Jewish Community News (newspaper of the San Jose Jewish community). In his “day job” Mr. Meir-Levi is an insurance agent and investment professional, with offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco.
Mr. Meir-Levi is the Director of Research and Education at the Israel Peace Initiative (IPI), a grass-roots not-for-profit organization in the San Francisco Bay area working to educate the American public and its leaders in to the history of the Arab-Israel conflict and realistic options for resolution. For more information about IPI, check out its website: www.ipi-usa.org . He serves as an advisor for Speaking for Democracy, another grass-roots not-for-profit organization in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he also works with the Northwest Region’s Republican Jewish Coalition as Director of Educational Outreach.
Mr. Meir-Levi lectures and teaches in English, Hebrew, and Spanish. He can be reached at David_meirlevi@hotmail.com
