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israel and iraq

robert wolfe | 20.04.2004 16:03

in this article the writer analyses wether the common legend that the invasion of iraq was good for israel has any real foundation

Israel and Iraq
By Robert Wolfe

Nothing could be more ironic than the efforts of the anti-Semitic left to portray the impending US invasion of Iraq as motivated by a pro-Israeli bias of the Bush administration. It is just barely possible that such an invasion will work out well for the United States, but it is sure to work out badly for Israel.
For Bush, Iraq is essentially a target of opportunity. Unable or unwilling to attack the Iranian and Saudi regimes, who are between them mainly responsible for the rise of the terrorist Islamist movement, Bush sees in Iraq a regime that can be easily isolated due to its prior condemnation by the UN for the invasion of Kuwait. What does it matter if Iraq at this point has only a few missiles and perhaps also a few biological or chemical warheads, as compared with the thousands of missiles and huge stocks of biological and chemical weapons possessed by Iran, Syria, Egypt and Libya? The important point is that Saddam Hussein is a certified bad guy and the Iraqi army no longer considered much of a threat. A US invasion of Iraq is therefore likely to succeed, enabling Bush to claim to be making the Middle East safe for democracy and advancing the war on terror while at the same time gaining control of Iraq's enormous oil reserves.

Will the overthrow of Saddam Hussein actually advance the war on terror and promote the cause of democracy in the Middle East? Not very likely. As a secular fascist of the "Arab socialist" school, Saddam Hussein has never had more than a peripheral connection with the international Islamist terrorist network. By attacking him, the US will provide the Islamists with a new grievance to exploit for propaganda purposes while failing to actually inconvenience them to any great extent. As for the cause of democracy in the Middle East, hardly anyone expects a democratic government to be established in Iraq in the aftermath of an American victory. Much more probable is either the breakup of Iraq into its Kurdish, Sunni and Shi'ite components or else the creation of a puppet regime in Baghdad propped up by the American army. Either way the Shi'ites in the south of Iraq, and perhaps also the Kurds in the north, will naturally turn to Iran for protection and assistance, thus strengthening rather than weakening the Iranian Islamist regime which continues to hold "Death to America" rallies on a regular basis. > On the other hand there is the oil, so perhaps the benefits to the US of an invasion of Iraq might conceivably outweigh the disadvantages of further destabilizing an already unstable region. But for Israel the picture is quite different. It is true that Iraq is an active enemy of Israel and regularly contributes large sums of money to the families of suicide bombers who murder Israelis. However Israel is not threatened by Iraq to anywhere near the same degree as she is threatened by Iran and Syria, and potentially also Egypt. A US assault on Baghdad will not do much to alleviate the pressure on Israel from the Arab and Muslim world, and it will have a whole series of predictably negative consequences for Israel which can be summarized as follows:
(1) Whatever missiles Saddam Hussein still retains will probably be used to attack Israel in the event of a US assault. Iraqi use of chemical and/or biological warheads against Israel, while unlikely, cannot be ruled out.

(2) All those seeking revenge for a US attack on Iraq yet unable to strike directly at the United States will be tempted to strike at Israelis and Jews instead. They will rationalize this by blaming Israel for the US assault, as the anti-Semitic left and Saddam Hussein himself are already doing.

(3) Most important of all, the United States will most certainly try to appease Arab and Muslim public opinion in the wake of an assault on Iraq by pressuring Israel to make new concessions to the Palestinians. Bush has already more or less announced that this is his intention, following in the footsteps of Bush Senior, who did the same thing after the first Gulf War. Sharon is already running scared, trying to position himself as a centrist advocate of "painful compromises" and a Palestinian state so as to avoid the appearance of caving in to pressure from Bush.

Conceivably a Palestinian state might not be such a bad thing for Israel if Arafat could be removed, terrorism ended, a more democratic system installed and incitement to violence against Israelis banned from the Palestinian media and educational system. This is supposedly the position of both Bush and Sharon, but such a position is incompatible with any kind of rapid movement towards the establishment of a Palestinian state. So far there is no sign whatsoever of any of these things happening, nor is there any reason to believe that they will happen in the immediate future. Arafat will not disappear unless he is made to disappear, and instituting Palestinian democracy and banning Palestinian incitement and terrorism against Israel would require a lengthy process stretching over many years to achieve. Bush is not thinking in these terms; he is thinking in terms of a Palestinian state within one or two years, because that is what he believes he must achieve in order to appease Arab and Muslim public opinion. What Sharon is thinking no one really knows, but sooner or later he will either have to defy Bush openly or repudiate a whole series of positions which he has upheld for years.

A Palestinian state in all or most of the contested territories, headed de facto or de jure by Arafat and dominated by Fatah and Hamas will prove an unmitigated disaster for the state of Israel. It will appear as a reward for terrorism and will be in a position to acquire the means to conduct a far more deadly terrorist offensive against Israel in the future. Both Bush and Sharon deny that this is the Palestinian state they have in mind, but it is nonetheless the only Palestinian state that can possibly come into being based on their current policies. The more successful a US assault on Iraq, the more likely that this is precisely the Palestinian state which Bush will try to impose on Sharon. Yet far from opposing the US plan to invade Iraq, not only Sharon but the entire Israeli establishment has pledged its support and backing for this plan.

Can Israel have a foreign policy independent of the United States? Right now it seems as if the answer to this question is no. Yet without an independent foreign policy, Israel is being slowly driven in the direction of national suicide. There will come a time when this will be apparent for all to see. One way to prepare for this time would be for Israelis and Jews everywhere to disassociate ourselves from the impending US invasion of Iraq.

robert wolfe

Comments

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interesting

20.04.2004 16:42

Interesting article, slightly dodgy though. It is wrong to refer to the 'anti-semitic Left'. Criticising Israel (some of the left) is not anti-semitism, even if it is factually incorrect. Sympathising with the Palestinians and wanting a two-state solution is not anti-semitism either. These two positions are closer to the Israeli left. Even though they are totally wrong, they are not anti-semitism, and to call them that is a smear job. Supporting the Palestinians likewise is not neccessary anti-semitism. There are anti-semitic aspects to it - conspiracy theories, calling Israelis 'settlers' and 'occupiers' (refering to all Israelis in Israel), and so on, and it is often tinged with anti-semitism, but is not by itself neccessarily anti-semitism, just getting the facts wrong.

This article is kind of correct in that the Iraq war may be bad for Israel, because Saddam was a secular rather than Islamic fascist (compared to the others anyway, not compared to Western secularism). Iran also supported the war and helped the US invade. They wouldn't do this unless they thought it would be beneficial for them, unless they're taking a big risk or something.

yjtdgj


...

20.04.2004 18:45

When the Iraqis send the US forces packing, I don't think Israel is going to end up in a particularly happy position. Already, you can see the unrest spreading to Jordan ( see the car bombs found the other day by Jordanian police ). Only Jordan lies between the Palestinian West Bank and Iraq. Imagine a whole axis of resistance stretching through all these countries, maybe even to Saudi Arabia ( see how Saudi police officers have also been attacked recently ).
The Jews in Israel need to make peace with the Palestinians, and move away from the imperialistic agenda of the US. The only solution that is sustainable is one state for all peoples, whether Jewish or Arab or anything else. Putting the interests of one particular ethnic group above any others is inherently racist. The interests of all people need to be at heart.

The war was seen as something the elite politicians of both the US and Israel thought would serve their exclusive interests, but it is backfiring, and will continue to backfire, and the Israelis really need to take a long hard look at the role they are playing in this conflict, and take steps to deal with it, otherwise the blood will flow even faster.

Hermes


...

21.04.2004 07:52

Tell me, when the Blacks finally won their freedom against apartheid, did they kick the whites out of South Africa? And yet the rhetoric many of them employed was every bit as terrifying as that espoused by Palestinian groups. And the whites are a far smaller minority. It is not an exact comparison, but the point is the whites are far from powerless in that country, and moves to do to them what is being done in Zimbabwe, for example, would lead to a bloody civil war.

Why do you believe living in the same country with another people is going to lead to the dispossession of the Jewish people? One state does not mean lay down all your weapons and throw yourself at the mercy of arab invaders. It means two strong parties coming together and trying to reach a just solution which acknowledges both the injustice perpetrated against the Palestinians, and the needs of the Jewish people to live somewhere without being persecuted.

Do you really believe the current situation is sustainable? Every country surrounding Israel is rising up in flames. It is only a matter of time before we see the problems in Iraq spread to Jordan and Saudi. The US are likely going to suffer a rather humiliating defeat in Iraq, and then where do you think the attention of the Arab world will lie? Perpetual war does not lead to safety for the Jewish people. In fact, it inevitably leads to utter destruction, because Israel only has to lose once. The way Israel treats its neighbours will be the way its neighbours will treat Israel should the shoe ever be on the other foot. 'Those who live by the sword die by the sword'. Israel is the most militarised country in the region. What fate awaits her if she carries on down this path?

I am sorry you won't understand this, because I see only ruin at the end of the path of zionism. It is built on the premise that Jews and non-Jews cannot live together without the Jews suffering terrible persecution, which I believe to be false, but it becomes a self-fulfilling ideology, because the neighbourhood has expanded from us trying to live together in one nation to us all trying to live together on the same planet. So if you believe Jews and non-Jews cannot live together, then where does it lead? We will all live on this planet in perpetual suspicion and hatred of each other. Zion is that promised land where we all live together in peace. It is not a world of xenophobic nation states constantly threatening to wipe each other out.

Please listen to what we're trying to say

Hermes


A land without people for a people without land?????

21.04.2004 09:22

Henry, true the majority of Palestinian diaspora refugees live in Jordan but your solution fails to take account of the 1 million Palestinian citizens of Israel and the 1 million Palestinians living ion the Gaza Strip [let alone those refugees living in Israel's other neighbour states of Lebannon and Syria], how do you suppose to annexe them to Jordan? Or should we just return to a pre-1967 order, Jordanian control of the West Bank and Egyptian control, of Gaza. And still the Palestinian's right to self-detrmination and their UN mandated state fails to appear. Tell me have you read Joan Peters?

Jewessagainsttheoccupation


gaza

21.04.2004 10:37

believe it or not, the milion jews in israel are allready citizens of israel. and the gaza strip should become part of an indipendent state together with the west bank. it could even join egypt

the voice of common sense


...

21.04.2004 12:24

Having Gaza and the West Bank as the Palestinian state only make sense if they are joined together by a strip of land, however, going along the south, which would have the resort city of Eilat becoming part of the Palestinian state, which I have to admit is kind of a comic arrangement if you've ever been there, unless of course you want to divide Israel into two parts. And then you have the issue of the giant settlements eating up the West Bank. Does anyone seriously think that a two state solution will give the Palestinians a viable state?!?!
The land should never have been divided in the first place. All people have a right to live wherever they choose, I really believe that, and I hope the Jews and the Arabs can live together in peace. But the reality is far harder and meaner than that, and I am worried, a) for the Palestinians being so terribly persecuted and b) for the Jews when the shoe is on the other foot.

Hermes


?????

21.04.2004 15:41

Voice of Common Sense: "The million Jews in Israel?" Actually there are 4.5 million Jews in Israel and 1 million Palestinians approximately 18-20% of the population. And yes the Palestinians are citizens of Israel [as are the Bedouin and the Druze], I never said they were not. However, they do not have equal rights with their fellow Jewish citizens.

There are approximately 7,000 Jewsih settlers in the Gaza Strip and 1 million Palestinians.

There are approximately 400,000 Jewish Settlers in the West Bank and 3 million Palestinians.

Jewessagainsttheoccupation


correction

22.04.2004 11:49

sorry i meant the million arabs in israel

the voice of common sense


"The Ministry of Truth"

22.04.2004 14:04

I suppose you realise that by calling yourself "The Voice of Common Sense" you simply come across as some kind of dystopian sci-fi fascist government propaganda department?

Of course I'm not suggesting for a minute that...

;-)

fred