Our Sharon-a? Israel’s PM has all but told the U.S, ‘We don’t need you’…and he’s right. There is a fantastic article about Ariel Sharon in Salon today. As Colin Powell leaves the Mid-East region this week, having failed to negotiate even so much as a cease-fire between the Israeli’s and Palestinians, Americans may want to rethink our relationship with Israel. Sure, there's the realpolitik strategy of keeping a toehold in the Land of Oil, but as they say, 'with friends like these...'. Much of the world condemns the U.S for being wildly biased towards Israel. And we are. We pay Egypt 60 million dollars a year just so they won't go to war with the country. We have helped make the Israeli army one of the best in the world. It is not a timid little land trapped among cutthroat Arabs, but a 900 pound gorilla armed to the teeth that in the past few weeks has all but dared the Arab world to attack it so that it could oblitearate and annex the whole region. Perhaps Americans fear criticizing Israel for fear of looking anti-Semetic. I have no quarrel with the Jewish people. To do so would be ridiculous, never mind racist. I can, and do, however have serious problems with the administration of Israel. The two are not the same and while the pro-Israel lobby routinely talks of the current conflict in near Biblical terms, it can not hide what is essentially a super power beating up on a loose, though commited , group of people, who, let's face have a pretty good claim to the land they've been living on for the past thousand years or so. We've allowed Sharon to co-opt September 11th as an excuse to finally wipe out what the Palestinians. He is not targetting just the suicide bombers in his mass arrests and shootings, but the people of Palestine. For him, the only solution to the Palestinian problem is to dismantle the PLO and make it powerless and he's succeeding. When Sharon has finally destroyed all the Palestinian infrustructure, he will be able to easily take control of the whole region, 'for it's own protection' no doubt. Certainly the attacks can have no other desired outcome for Israel. For, if they leave even a fragment of Palestinian authority in Palestine, the seething hatred kindled by carnage wrought by Sharon's war machine will spur on more attacks from Palestine. As long as Israel convinces the U.S that Palestine is the instigator, despite Sharon's goading and inciteful trip to the Dome of the Rock last year and despite the escalating and disproportionate attacks on Palestine, it can act with impunity. Sharon believes that the U.S will sit silently by- and he's been right. I don’t condone Palestinian terrorism. Suicide bombing is wrong, but so is arresting 5,000 civilians and killing hundreds more Why does the Arab world hate the U.S. so much? A large part of it has to do with our unwavering support with Israel. Israel is seen as the 51st state of the Union and so Israel's actions become our own. In the past, we have stood by and taken a few punches for the country, but should we continue? Is Sharon's fight our own and at the end of the day, does the U.S want the blood of refugees on its hands?

posted by Japhy at 4/17/2002 11:22:00 PM || #