COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
Let's End the Israeli
Tie-That-Binds
" ... there is
absolutely no national interest that compels Washington to do anything for
Israel.
_______________________
Response to a long
comment which lists major enterprises doing business in Israel and says it is
time to boycott:
Your list effectively shows us why the Israel Lobby is so
powerful in the United States that it is able to influence policy, even in an
irrational direction, irrational when you consider the total interests of the
United States.
Owing to native talent and hard work, Jewish Americans have
been extremely successful in business and professions, giving them the
financial weight and connections to get many things done which other groups
would not be able to do.
Good parts of your list also reflect the fact that the
American and Israeli governments have worked very actively for many years to
integrate Israel into mainline Western business and political affairs.
America constantly pushes for new privileges and advantages
with Europe and others for Israel, hoping eventually that it becomes identified
and accepted as virtually a European nation.
The Neocons in Washington have always pushed a whole package
of American-Israeli ties including Western integration as part of their efforts
to closely bind Israel's interests with America's, something seen as giving
this originally poorly-conceived state a strong foundation for the future.
I say “poorly-conceived” because modern Israel has always
been pushed and justified by weak ideas like Judaism being considered an
ethnicity, which it certainly is not, and a separate state being an absolutely
necessary defense against any repeat of what happened in Germany 75 years ago,
that also being a demonstrably incorrect idea.
But even if Judaism were properly considered an ethnicity,
it is a long-abandoned concept in the advanced world (one which took force
originally in the early Nineteenth Century as states like modern Italy or
Germany emerged from old empires) that national states are composed of a single
ethnicity, either primarily or exclusively.
All European states are gradually becoming populations based
on migration just as America long has been. For many reasons which really
cannot be changed - from low birth rates in advanced societies, including
Israel, to the movement of populations in a globalized world economy - there is
no alternative future for anyone, including Israel.
So, the vast effort to keep Israel somehow pure so far as
Jewish identity works completely against some of the most powerful tides in
advanced human society. You cannot really order the waves or the wind to cease
and whatever barriers you erect can endure only for a time.
Effectively what is happening is that Israel is emerging as
America's Mideast colony, a major colony much like, say, Algeria was for
France, and a colony that in many matters verges on being a fifty-first state,
again as the Mediterranean part of Algeria was once considered part of
Metropolitan France itself.
Although it is always important to keep in mind that Israel
can never really become that since its founding principles exclude any
possibility of ever being under laws like America’s Bill of Rights.
Also, nothing of this nature endures long-term, just as
Algeria and France parted ways and did so in great violence and hostility. The
important major interests of the United States and Israel are not at all the
same, and they cannot indefinitely artificially be maintained to be the same,
as they are being maintained now.
There is a great irony in all of this because modern
Israelis, indeed, largely have European origins. The Ashkenazim are a Germanic
people whose native language, Yiddish, is derived from German. Even the foods
the Ashkenazi eat virtually all originate in Germany and Eastern Europe, all
the typical fare of delicatessens.
Despite sharing the religion of the ancient Hebrews, the Ashkenazim
are not their descendants. But the re-creation of Israel with a European
population and a Western agenda has been a terribly costly and mostly
unsuccessful enterprise. Israel, it is simply a fact, remains the most
subsidized entity on earth.
The vast subsidy rightly needs to count all the private
movements of capital, all the unique privileges granted - everything from
special free-trade deals to recognizing dual citizenship which allows constant
movement back-and-forth with America.
It needs to account for America’s defense and security
establishments sharing all kinds of technologies and proprietary concepts,
things it does not share with others. It needs to account for unprecedented
access to high American officials of every description with all the shared
information that entails.
It also needs to account for the bribes the American
government pays to a number of neighboring Arab governments – as Egypt or
Jordan - and for the important dedication of a portion of America's extremely costly
military to Israeli matters.
And there is the special selection of Israeli companies in
being given some immense American government contracts in everything from
communications to security. So, America’s nearly $4 billion a year in direct
assistance, by far the greatest amount given any other country, is only the
beginning of the subsidies keeping Israel afloat.
