U.S. and Israel

If the President wants to improve the political and material condition of our nation he must do the one essential thing. He must instruct our representative sitting on the U.N. Security Council to take a vote against Israel. I realize some may accuse me of anti-Semitism. I expect it. It is the first refuge of scoundrels whose preferred line of attack is to equiponderate criticism of Israel and racism. But I believe my solution would lift a heavy burden of hypocrisy from the shoulders of U.S. diplomats.

As a case in point, the recent incident of the Israeli assault upon the “Freedom Flotilla” in international waters, which was roundly and immediately condemned by the other fourteen members of the Council, and which could certainly be legally construed as “piracy”, required an embarrassing palter from the American in order to cast the lone dissenting vote. Are we to assume all the other nations received radically different or flawed accounts of the event? Nations with long and storied histories, vast experience in worldly affairs, sophisticated communications, and with no special animosity towards Israel, made a prima facie condemnation of the Israeli action based on the norms of international law. But as usual the U.S. pled non possumus, citing insufficient evidence, and effectively handcuffed the Security Council’s ability to take meaningful corrective action against Israel.

It is not my intention, at this time, to postulate on reforms that could or should be made to the U.N. Charter, but to query, by way of normal and conventional curiosity, why only the U.S. refuses to reproach Israel for anything –ever! We’ve concurred on matters with our announced antagonist, the U.S.S.R., and disagreed on occasion with older, more powerful and particularly indispensable allies, but consistently refuse to indict Israel even for misdemeanors, when all outward appearances seem to suggest it would not only be just and equitable, but more importantly, advantageous to our own aims and diplomatic standing to do so. I am not so Pollyannaish that I would deny that in the world of international politics and business there is flourishing and profitable hypocrisy, but nonetheless it is difficult for me to distinguish any especially beneficial real politik quid quo pro to justify the constant unusualness of American behavior vis-à-vis Israel.

My speculation is that America, still a young nation when accelerated from chosen isolation to primacy by cataclysmic events, views Israel by way of the Disney-ized Jewish myth. Unlike the older European nations with the perspectives of the various Crusades in their histories, many Americans see furry little Moses’ living delightful lives in Yahweh’s briar patch, rather than the modern military state blockading and starving Palestinians in Gaza. If the situation on the ground was reversed, I’m sure Gaza would be under siege as at Masada or the Alamo, in American minds. Our media encourages such conceptualizations, and apparently our government is not immune. But one vote in the Security Council might break the spell, to the benefit of both Jews and Palestinians.

Lest We Forget

On Memorial Day we are always presented with a bill. It is usually entered in our national accounting as, “the price of freedom”. But the C.P.A of conscience cannot find one credit of freedom purchased with the last 70,000 American military lives or two trillion dollars of lucre. There is not one new liberty that has been purchased by the sword, or any unalienable right that has been credibly threatened by any foreign state or potentate to justify the debit of death and destruction supposedly necessary to secure our “freedom”. But by now we pay the $800,000,000,000 per annum in a daze of patriotic rote, with the additional tender of our innocent youth, to make the waste “honorable”.

We are conditioned to genuflect to waving flags, polished brass, and precision marching called to a halt at freshly turned graves, and have become habituated to the caravan of the Reaper bringing product traded in distant lands to fill the holes. "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”, is duly compensated with white marble headstones.

When we are encouraged to imbibe in “memorial” at the expense of “memory” it is easy to forget we haven’t yet been advised of our lawful justification for invading Iraq. It is easy to overlook that we are in a bloody decade-long Fabian stalemate with a substitute adversary in Afghanistan. And it is becoming increasingly more difficult to remember to ask, “Why?”

Our celebration of Memorial Day has become the antonym of what it is supposed to be- “Lest we Forget”.