Tony Karon argues in Asia Times that Home truths call for tough love on Israel
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In fact, the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict suggests that the reverse is true. The origins of the peace process the Obama administration is now trying so desperately to resuscitate do not lie in the unconditional American support for Israel that has become a third rail in national politics over the past two decades. They lie in the national interest-based tough love of the administration of president George H W Bush.
During the Bush ‘43 years support for this proposition was building. First there was The Israel Lobby by Meirsheimer and Walt and supported by the NYT. Then there was the formation of J Street. The point they made was that Israel is a net liability rather than an asset. Time to throw Israel under the bus.
- Grounded in a realist reading of American national interests across the Middle East - at a moment when a military campaign to eject Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces from Kuwait had put hundreds of thousands of US troops on the ground there - the first Bush administration recognized the need to balance Israel’s reasonable interests with those of its Arab neighbors. That’s why, in 1991, it dragged Israel’s hawkish Likud government under prime minister Yitzhak Shamir to the Madrid conference, and so broke Israel’s “security” taboo on direct engagement with Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
I don’t think that this necessarily follows. The Gulf states needed the uS and were in no position to demand. They should have been thankful.
- The Bush administration also made it clear that there would be immediate and painful consequences for Israel if it continued building settlements on land conquered in the war of 1967, construction which the US was then willing to term not only “unhelpful” - the preferred euphemism of presidents Bill Clinton, George W Bush and now Obama - but illegal. Under the direction of Bush family consigliere and secretary of state Jim Baker, Washington threatened to withdraw $10 billion in loan guarantees if Israeli colonization of Palestinian territory continued. In the resulting political crisis, Israelis - mindful of their dependency on US support - voted Shamir out of office and chose Yitzhak Rabin as prime minister.
Rabin has been rightly lionized as a leader who took a courageous decision to change course in the face of bitter domestic opposition. To understand how Israel started down the path of peace, however, it’s necessary to clean the Vaseline off the lens of history and quiet the string section.
Only three years earlier, Rabin had ordered Israeli troops to use baseball bats to break the limbs of stone-throwing teenagers in hopes of stopping the Palestinian intifada or uprising. He certainly did not embrace the Oslo peace process with the PLO out of some moral epiphany. He changed course thanks to a cold-blooded assessment of Israel’s strategic position at the time.
The United States then had a growing stake in creating a regional Pax Americana that required Arab support. Given the end of the Cold War, Israel’s value as an ally was diminishing, while its expansionist policies, antagonizing Arab public opinion and making it more difficult for vulnerable regional governments to ally with Israel’s enabler, were increasingly a liability for Washington.
If there was no such peace, it would be the Arabs to suffer. They needed the presence of the US to hold things together. The expansionist policies didn’t affect those needs.
- Rabin had reason to believe that US support for Israel at the expense of its neighbors would prove neither unconditional nor eternal. At the same time, the PLO had been weakened by years of Israeli military attacks and by a disastrous diplomatic blunder - it had aligned itself with Saddam Hussein in the First Gulf War. It was a fortuitous moment, he concluded, to press for a political solution with the Palestinians on favorable terms, by trading the West Bank and Gaza for peace.
He had no intention of trading all the West Bank and Gaza for peace. Not was it clear that statehood was the end of the line.
- Where are the consequences?
Rabin acted because the consequences of maintaining the status quo seemed increasingly unpleasant, which takes nothing away from his courage in doing so.
I don’t understand this at all. Pre-Oslo was good times for Jews and Arabs.
- If US pressure and the specter of isolation and opprobrium pushed Israel onto the path of a two-state solution, the easing of that pressure and the creation of the “familial” notion of US-Israel ties have coincided with a steady movement away from completing the peace process. Even at the height of the Oslo era, coddled by Clinton, the Israelis kept on expanding the settlements that jeopardized geographic prospects for Palestinian statehood.
The Israeli opposition, led by Ariel Sharon and Netanyahu, sought to prove Rabin wrong. They were convinced that American support could be maintained without conceding Palestinian statehood - by making constant end runs around the Oval Office and appealing directly to Capitol Hill and US public opinion.
Sharon and Netanyahu were vindicated in spades when the suicide-terror strategy taken up by the second Palestinian intifada and the attacks of 9/11 led George W Bush’s administration to reconceptualize the world on the basis of its “global war on terror.” This, in turn, led Washington’s political class to accept Israel not as just another ally in that war, but as a model for how to conduct it.
In the Bush years, the peace process and the two-state solution became a hollow catechism that could be mouthed by Israeli leaders (and their supporters in Washington), while getting on with the task of smashing the Palestinian national movement and expanding settlements. In real terms, the peace process - the series of reciprocal moves designed to build confidence for concluding final status talks and implementing a two-state solution - died when Ariel Sharon came to power in February 2001.
Even his 2005 withdrawal of Jewish settlements from Gaza was never conceived in terms of a peace process; it wasn’t even negotiated or coordinated with the Palestinian Authority. Sharon, in fact, imagined his unilateral withdrawal as a substitute for a peace agreement. It was designed, as Sharon’s top aide Dov Weissglass so memorably explained, as a dose of “formaldehyde that’s necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians”.
Despite mounting Arab exasperation, the Bush administration put no pressure on Israel to bring the peace process to a conclusion, limiting itself to the Grand Guignol of the “Annapolis process”. With all external compulsion to conclude a peace agreement removed, domestic political pressure in Israel not surprisingly collapsed as well. The Palestinians were now largely locked behind the vast separation wall that winds through the West Bank and the siege lines of Gaza. Their plight is once again invisible to Israelis, only 40% of whom, when asked by pollsters, even express an interest in seeing the peace process restarted. Only around 20% believe that such a move would bring any results.
This is not true. Sharon was forced into accepting the Roadmap which was bad for Israel. It required an end to settlement construction and incorporated the Saudi Plan as a principal on par with Res 242. It also mandated that Palestine be contiguous and viable. Today Israel rues the day it accepted it.
- “Israel has no real intention of quitting the territories or allowing the Palestinian people to exercise their rights,” wrote Israeli political commentator Gideon Levy in Ha’aretz last week. “Israel does not truly intend to pursue peace, because life here seems to be good even without it. The continuation of the occupation doesn’t just endanger Israel’s future, it also poses the greatest risk to world peace, serving as a pretext for Israel’s most dangerous enemies. No change will come to pass in the complacent, belligerent and condescending Israel of today.”
The Obama administration can’t be under any illusions on this score. And they are being forced to confront it by another kind of pressure. The bills are coming due for Bush’s “war on terror” adventurism. Those responsible for maintaining the US imperium in the Muslim world are now raising warning flags that the price to be paid for continuing to indulge Israel in evading its obligation to offer a fair settlement to the Palestinians could be high - and, worse than that, unnecessary.
Why is Israel obligated to be fair. Israel had to fight the Arabs in many wars and lost many of its citizens to Arab terror. At a minimum Israel should be entitled to keep some of the territory as deemed necessary.
- Israel’s leaders, and its voters, have amply demonstrated that they will not voluntarily relinquish control of the Palestinian territories as long as there are no real consequences for maintaining the status quo. Sure, you can tell them that the status quo is untenable, but the whole history of Israel from the 1920s onward has been about transforming the impossible into the inevitable by changing the facts on the ground.
Building settlements on occupied territory in violation of international law after 1967 seemed untenable at the time; today, the US government says Israel will keep most of those major settlement blocs in any two-state solution. It is precisely in line with this sort of improvisational logic that Sharon calculated he could hold on to the settlements of the West Bank if he gave up the settlements of Gaza; the same logic allows Netanyahu to say the words “two states for two peoples” while always winking at his base that he has no intention of allowing it to happen.
First of all there are differing opinions as to whether they are illegal. Secondly, Netanyahu has no obligation to create a particular Palestinian state. All he agreed to was a state. There is no commitment to agree to ‘67 borders.
- A peace process that requires Israel and the Palestinians to reach a bilateral consensus on the distribution of land and power under the prodding of US matchmakers is a non-starter - and therefore unlikely to lead to a goal which is of increasing urgency in America’s national interest. Arguably, it’s increasingly important even for the Israelis, since the status quo has already eroded prospects for a two-state solution to the point where both sides may be consigned to an even longer and bitterer conflict.
Hence, the necessity of correcting Biden: progress in the Middle East will not come until the US changes Israel’s cost-benefit analysis for maintaining the status quo. The only Israeli leader capable of accepting the parameters of a two-state peace with the Palestinians, which are already widely known, is one who can convincingly demonstrate to his electorate that the alternatives are worse. Right now, without real pressure, without real cost, with nothing but words, there is simply no downside to the status quo for Israel. Until there is, things are unlikely to change, no matter the peril to US troops throughout the Middle East.
Thus he is saying that the US is changing the cost benefit to Israel. Israel can have its settlements or American support but not both.
Tony Karon is a senior editor at TIME.com where he analyzes the Middle East and other international conflicts. He also runs his own website, Rootless Cosmopolitan.
With Joe Klein and Tony Karon, Time has quite a stable of anti-”Zionists”.
The entire premise of Karon’s screed is invalid.
The Arabs opposed the United States during World War II.
Pre-Israel.
The Muslim grievance is with infidels, not merely the evil diabolical contemptible greedy disgusting Jews for whom Karon has infinite contempt.
If Israel disappeared tomorrow, Muslims would have exactly the same complaints, and their apologists like Karon would have to find another scapegoat.
“Tough love” is the antonym of “True Love”.
More weasel words from anti-Semites who lack the common courtesy to dole out their Jew hatred candidly.
That deal has never been available, and this sophist Karon knows it.
The Palestinians have NEVER offered to trade peace for the West Bank and Gaza.
They have Gaza. Has that reclamation hastened forth peace? Or additional conflict?
The Palestinians say every day that the end game is the destruction of Israel.
I only wish their sycophants like Karon were as forthright.
This column is a crock of shit.
Israel has repeatedly offered complete withdrawal in exchange for peace.
The Palestinians have always said, “No, we prefer to kill Jews.”
To this , Karon responds, “Israel is intransigent, and therefore loving Israel dictates punishing Israel for not capitulating to people who explicitly vow to kill all the Jews.”
I hate Tony Karon.
He inhabits a morally inverted universe and actively promotes evil.
He is not just wrong.
He is lying.
Big difference.
He is a bad man.
He is a very bad man.
I hope that little twerp from the Twilight Zone sends Tony Karon to the cornfield.
Comment by ayn reagan — March 25, 2010 @ 2:21 pm
Time magazine has a long history of “anti-Zionism” going back to the bad old days of Henry Luce, when (goyische) American imperialism was seen as the natural course of history (”the American Century,” anyone?) but Israel was denounced for actions it took to ensure its survival. Time has always sought to counter charges of anti-Semitism by putting court Jews in positions of prominence, as when it made Henry Grunwald editor-in-chief in the 1970s (the post-Luce era). Grunwald, of course, was a Viennese emigre who prided himself, Bruno Kreisky-style (if not Walter Lippman-style) for his “secularism” and his highbrow, non-”clannish” interests and public persona. Yeccch.
Comment by mbrach — March 25, 2010 @ 2:40 pm
The most important part of Mr. Karon’s article appears in the very last line that notes the name of his blog: “Rootless Cosmopolitan” Thus, he has no basis for deciding issues. His argument against support for Israel would just as easily support the views of Chamberlain on Czechoslovakia and Hitler’s extermination of the Jews. The idea that Israel - with seven million people - is subject to pressure is something a six-year old child who lives in a family fully understands.
The real problem for adults is deciding what the interests of America and Europe are that would prevent them from selling out the Jews again. For that we need a twelve or thirteen year old child. Israel does indeed represent a bulwark against Islamic triumphalism. Islamism is the bully on the playground and Israel is the kid who stood up to the bully and will continue to do so. That in itself is valuable to the United States and critical to Europe. Mr. Karon transforms the victim into the oppressor - no problem for a rootless cosmopolitan.
Non sequitur: In order for Mr. Obama to continue the pressure on Israel, he is opening immigration to millions of Muslims. This is the same ploy used by Nixon in inviting populations of fascists into the country to counter liberal democratic voters.
The world stinks and Mr. Karon has no problem adding to the stench. He is the rootless cosmopolitan!
Comment by jerry — March 25, 2010 @ 2:45 pm
I meant to add that this is typical Anglo-Saxon, high-toned, and hypocritical anti-Semitism. These types would never be so vulgar as to profess White Aryan Nation-style anti-Semitism; they do it in an urbane manner. They denounce Jews’ “vulgarity,” and what they really hate is Jews who are physically tough, bear arms, and defend themselves. In America, they tend to be Anglophiles, and one should not be surprised that the “Pink ‘Un” (the actually-vomit-orange colored Financial Times of London, which for about two decades now has sought to compete on U.S. turf with the Wall Street Journal) denounces in strident and self-righteous terms every action by every Israeli government while defending any and all British claims to the Falkland Islands, and all defenses against Argentine incursions there. Hypocrisy, thy name is Time magazine and the FT.
Comment by mbrach — March 25, 2010 @ 2:46 pm
More from Karon:
http://atlanticfreepress.com/news/1-Opinion/2561-my-favorite-anti-semite.html
And more. Guess what? A self-hating Jew who made Masada’s SHIT List:
Ted, for the sake of balance you should post a column by someone who is less hostile to Jews.
Like David Duke.
So TIME collects kapos.
At least Jeremy Ben-Ami will have a place to work after he and Soros complete their task of ethnically cleansing Jews from the Holy Land.
Comment by ayn reagan — March 25, 2010 @ 2:54 pm
I hope that little twerp from the twilight zone sends karon to the cornfield
Comment by yamit82 — March 25, 2010 @ 3:14 pm
It always reminds me of Time Magazine’s introduction to Menachem Begin, after he was elected prime minister. The Time article said:
Someone sent in a letter to the editor that reminded the magazine that its name rhymes with “crime, grime and slime.”
It’s only gotten worse since then.
Comment by Shy Guy — March 25, 2010 @ 3:23 pm
Instead of being thrown under the bus, it is time to crawl under and pick it up like Superman. Israel will be better off defying pressure from the US government and driving a wedge between the administration and the large part of the US population that will rally to the side of the Israelis. This strategy could turn into a major issue which would help both nations (Israel and US citizens). It would be a thorn in Obama’s side, even complicating implementation of his domestic policies.
Comment by RandyTexas — March 25, 2010 @ 3:31 pm
Karon, Tony This South African is now the Brooklyn, New York-based editor of Time.com. In a December 2001 article, he displayed an amazing degree of contradiction. First he pointed out, rightly so, that “it’s simply delusional to imagine that just removing Arafat and the Palestinian Authority right now will make Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even the Palestinian leader’s own increasingly mutinous Fatah organization any more inclined to desist from acts of violence against Israel.” And then after acknowledging that all those groups were unwilling to stop and desist from murdering Jews, he declared that Israel is to blame because of her “occupation of West Bank and Gaza!” Further, “A cursory survey of Palestinian public opinion polling confirms that a majority of Arafat’s own people approve of suicide bombings and oppose any new cease-fire.” What he failed to mention is that a majority of “Palestinians” also favor a continuation of the conflict until Israel is destroyed! Thus, land-for-peace becomes meaningless!
Mr. Karon declares himself to be a “rootless cosmopolitan” Jew. His demonstrable disregard for history and historical perspective makes him an eccentric self-hating Jew. The Arab Israeli conflict is not a manifestation of anti-imperialism, as stated by Karon, but of Islamic Jew-hatred which is rooted in the Qur’an where Jews are described as subhuman beings - descendents of apes and pigs. It is also rooted in and modeled after the atrocious assaults of Mohammad on Jewish tribes in the Arabian Peninsula. Mohammad succeeded to eradiate all the Jews of Arabia and this tradition is driving the current Arab assault on Israeli Jews.
Mr. Karon’s Self-Hating Israel-Threatening attitudes were shaped not only early on… perhaps after some black South Africans kick the matzoh right out of him. But perhaps too is the fact that Karan is firmly in the Israeli “peace camp” sphere of influence, quoting far leftists like Yossi Sarid and leftist losers like Shimon Peres!
One wonders if Karon has selective memory or if there is an underlying distaste for the mere concept of a Jewish Nation. What would one expect after hearing him accuse Israel of “a campaign of ethnic cleansing by Israeli military units in 1948″ and “Zionism has outlived its purpose: a Jew’s place is in the world!” One thing is for certain. When those Blacks, Muslims or other folks with Jew-murdering on their minds come looking for him, he’ll be the first on a boat to Israel claiming his Right of Return!
Karon’s challenge of the ethical conduct of Israeli Jews… It is hard to understand why active resistance to murderous assault should be considered unethical.
Comment by yamit82 — March 25, 2010 @ 3:55 pm
I posted the article because I think it did a good job of explaining the mentality of what we are up against.
Comment by Ted Belman — March 25, 2010 @ 3:56 pm
You are absolutely right, although “mentality” is not the word.
There is no intellectual content to Karon’s presentation.
It is a sick melange of half-truths, lies, and bigotry.
The supporters of the Palestinians are the most dishonorable people in the world.
They know that they have no case.
What they have are malevolent ulterior motives.
Comment by ayn reagan — March 25, 2010 @ 4:04 pm
“Adventurism”? That’s how he describes the fight against those who are waging war against us and have already murdered thousands of Americans? As if there was no justification to go to war, as if 9/11 never happened. And why the quote marks on war on terrorism? Because the left believes of course that the war on islamic terrorism is just a pretext. They don’t believe we are under threat from islam.
There has never been such a sovereign nation-state known as palestine. Therefore there is no “occupation”, these were never “palestinian” territories and these aren’t “settlements”.
With such utter dreck written in mainstream magazines and newspapers completely distorting history and international law and the nature of the Israel-Arab “conflict” (which is actually not a conflict but an arab-islamic war against the Jews), its a miracle that Israel has such high support in America.
Comment by Laura — March 25, 2010 @ 11:35 pm
Mental defects is another way of describing them.
Comment by Laura — March 25, 2010 @ 11:53 pm