It's too early to learn all the possible lessons -- and there will be many -- from the current turmoil throughout the Middle East, but one important lesson is that there is only one democracy that the United States can always count on to remain a strong ally. That democracy is Israel. No one knows whether any or all of the Arab states that are currently in flux will pull an "Iran" on us -- turning from friend to foe in the blink of an Ayatollah.
The optimists are hoping for more of a Lebanon than an Iran, but even Lebanon -- with a better history of democracy than any other Arab country -- is now essentially in the hands of Hezbollah. The United States cannot count on the new Egypt remaining an ally, even with the carrot of massive aid.
Some of the blame for this uncertainty falls on us for supporting friendly dictators, from the Shah to Hosni Mubarak to King Abdullah, but the reality is that the United States simply cannot rely on the increasingly vocal Arab street to support our interests. That is precisely why we have, rightly or wrongly, felt the need to cozy up to Arab tyrants who falsely promise us stability in exchange for financial and military support.
Not so with Israel. But the pressing question remains: Will the United States reciprocate, or will we be a fair-weather friend to our stalwart ally?
So far, we've been principled enough to reciprocate. United States administrations may prefer some Israeli electoral outcomes to others. We may prefer certain Israeli leaders over others. But in the end, we recognize that Israel is a stable democracy that does not need propping up from the outside.
The military aid we give Israel is not designed to protect a regime against its own citizens, as it is with regard to the aid to Jordan and Egypt. Our assistance to Israel is calculated to protect it from external enemies like Iran, sworn to its destruction.
The people of Israel may not love a particular American President or administration, but they love America and what we stand for. And Israel helps America -- with intelligence gathering, development of military weapons, cybertechnology defense and in numerous other ways. The relationship is a model of symbiosis.
But recent events in the Mideast, particularly the haste with which we abandoned Mubarak, our most loyal Arab ally, has raised questions among some Israelis as to whether Israel can always count on the United States.
Skeptical Israelis wonder how this, or any other, American administration would react to a demand from the Arab street across the entire Middle East or the United States to abandon Israel. This demand could come even if Israel makes peace with the Palestinians and agrees to permanent borders, since Islamic radicals don't recognize Israel's right to exist within any borders. Israelis recall how quickly we abandoned the shah and how responsive our government has been to the demands of protesters in Tunisia and Egypt.
Israelis wants real democracy among its Arab neighbors, but they fear that elections alone -- particularly elections that put groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood in power -- will produce anything but real democracy. Hamas' violent takeover in Gaza provides the negative model that they fear will emerge from the Egyptian chaos.
While recognizing the enormous difference between democratic Israel and the tyrannical regimes against which the Arab street is now rising, these concerned Israelis are contemplating a worst case scenario. They fear that history has shown that a friend in desperate need is a friend often betrayed by superpowers.
This skepticism is not necessarily fueled by any criticism of the United States, but rather by a realistic recognition that America has its own national interests which it will always place over the interests of even its staunchest allies. The United States is, for better or worse, the world's most important superpower, and it must necessarily serve as a kind of policeman to the entire world.
Most Americans believe that it will always be in America's interests to support Israel because of its commitment to values akin to our own. But there are some Americans -- from those on the extreme right like Sen. Rand Paul, to so-called realists like Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, to those on the extreme left, like Noam Chomsky -- who would see no problem in abandoning Israel at the drop of a keffiyeh.
Accordingly, though most Israelis believe that America will always support its survival, many refuse to count on it. That's why they developed a long term strategy of self-reliance. The attitude of many Israelis can perhaps best be summed up by the important lesson Elie Wiesel has taught all Jews to learn from the Holocaust: "Always believe the threat of your enemies more than the promises of your friends."
The threats being made by the Muslim Brotherhood to destroy the Jewish state by force must be taken seriously. The promises by the United States to stand behind Israel, though I believe they will remain true, must necessarily be viewed skeptically by Israelis. Israel must always be prepared to defend itself.
Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School, is author of "Trials of Zion."
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In the middle east, we have two choices; secular liberalism, or islamic fundamentalism. If we do not support secular liberalism wherever it is found, then we will find ourselves in 20, 30 years being forced to deal with an islamic supremacist middle east that despises the left wing that enables it today even more than the right wing that currently works to keep it in check.
This implies, by Israel supporters at least, that even secularism isnt neccessary for democracy either. Your post has no basis.
And there can be secular states with official religions and based upon religion. The english crown is, for example, head of the church of england as well as being head of state. Does that mean england is not a secular country? Of course not. When I say "secular state" I don't mean "state where religion has no official role". I mean a state that is not ruled by religious decree.
Islam is not only a religion, the way christianity and judaism are. It is a way of life, with opinions on literally every facet of life and, more importantly, governance. And an islamic state cannot be a pluralistic liberal democracy. It goes against islam.
THE PROOF:
The full quote translated directly to English:
"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".
Word by word translation:
Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from). "
http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/10828
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/weekinreview/11bronner.html?ex=1307678400&en=efa2bd266224e880&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Whether or not one agrees in the logic of those connections isn't the point. (Some people who post here see the need for a Jewish state as outdated and anachronistic. Many more -myself included- don't appreciate the dogmatically-driven politics of American evangelicals.) The point is that even if we wake up tomorrow and the Middle East has turned into a mass of finely-run parliamentary democracies, our ties with Israel will remain for reasons outside of political necessity.
The fear that Israel will be abandoned is unfounded. However, the fear that settlement activity and demographics will spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state is more real and more pressing. Mr. Dershowitz and other influential supporters of Israel should be looking to solve that issue instead of waxing philosophic about our relationship.
They grew up among Arabs, and others, in the US, and they also tend to be liberal.
Actually, U.S. military aid to Israel is primarily used to "protect" it from rebellion by several million stateless Palestinians that Israel has insisted on ruling over for 43 years. Israel controls whether these people are free to move around within their areas or internationally, whether they are free to engage in political expression, whether they are free to engage in business, whether they should be free or languishing in Israeli prisons, even whether these people live or die. Israel has severely curtailed the importation of civilian goods, including food, water, medicines, cooking fuel, children's toys to Gaza. Yet these people have no right to vote. So much for democracy. Perhaps when the occupation lasts 50, 75, or 100 years, people like Dershowitz will finally realize that democracy implies consent of the governed, and Israel does not qualify.
As for Iran, it clearly would like to see Israel replaced by a regime that provides full rights to all subjects, regardless of ethnicity or religion. Dershowitz likes to call that "destruction" of the Jewish State. But Iran has never threatened to use its military against Israel, despite innumerable threats in the opposite direction.
It does not take much imagination to see that Israel is governing the Palestinians. When Israel won the 1967 War (that it started, btw), it decided to hold on to the territories it conquered. It only gave up the Sinai after Egypt fought a war to reclaim it. It did not even contemplate giving up the West Bank until the early 90's, when it claimed for the first time to foresee a Palestinian state but continued to illegally settle its citizens on more and more of the West Bank. You have willfully pulled the wool over your own eyes.
The ongoing colonization effort makes a mockery of these claims, plain and simple.
I see a lot of ppl counter this with the statement that lot of arab allies are against the US; that ally isnt doing anything, so on and so forth; but these are not answers. What good has Israel brought US? This is the country US has been taking care of like a baby. I'm very interested.
As for what good US has brought Israel.. Just about everything should sum it up. As far as i know its a purely one-way gain in this relationship and moreover the most unwanted after-effect of having literally protected Israel (despite its long-standing oppression of palestinians) is extremism from the middle east at the US' doorstep..
How can anyone make a statement such as "The US can count on Israel, but can Israel count on the US?" This is very hard to digest. What part of all these decades of unwavering support from the US (economically and politically, despite all of its violations) seems non-supportive to Israel?
"A model of symbiosis"?! hmm...that just tops everything in this article..
That must explain why there was not a word about Israel from the "street" in Tunisia, and nary a word about Israel on the Egyptian "street".
After all, the Iraq war was pushed partially because of Israeli interests.
2) Israel is not part of the coalition for the same reason it was not part of the coalition in 1991. You can look that up too.
You can look that up.
The great majority of Americans reject the very idea of supporting totalitarian regimes. It follows then that abandoning "Mubarak, our most loyal Arab ally" is democracy in action.
This writer seems to prefer that the U.S. emulates Mubarak's model and pursues the interests of the few (who happen to share his loyalties) rather than the many who do not.
There is also a myriad of other evidence which shows that by supporting Israel while it builds these "settlements" we are radicalizing the citizens of the Middle East against us. Common sense would tell anybody that.
But by all means, go ahead and tell me why it's in America's interests to support a belligerent apartheid state which systemically steals the land of the native population of Palestine.
Nor has the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai nor the Golan.
One way to significantly decrease the threat of a new pan arab war to annihilate Israel is for the US to sponsor and fast track Israel into NATO.
If the arab regimes are facing a NATO ( meaning a serious US ) response for an attack, they may be inclined to avoid such a war....maybe.
You *never* know. :)
NATO head to make first official visit to Israel today
Feb. 8, 2011
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is to meet separately with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
Rasmussen is expected to present to his hosts NATO's plans for the next several years in the areas of counter-terrorism, missile defense and intervention in arenas beyond Europe. His discussion here will focus on the situation in Egypt and on Israel's relations with the alliance. ...
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/nato-head-to-make-first-official-visit-to-israel-today-1.341908
I think right now, Israel must do a couple of things.
1- Stop the settlements and focus on tightening our bond with the US.
2- Prepare for war, and take back the Sinai should the Muslim Brotherhood take over and not recognize the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.
3- Not worry about relying on the US, the Jews have to rely on themselves as they have been doing since 1948.
So they'll be telling the U.S. they don't need their vetoes, nonstop diplomatic interventions, and 3.5 billion a year plus loan guarantees plus extras (like 250 million for a "missile defense system" in 2010), eh? Or are they gonna keep their hands out while their government whines some more about being all on their own?
It's odd that there appear to be so many people that don't recognize that as very real threats escalate around them Israel will focus exclusively on getting ready for war, not peace. History has taught them what they have to do to survive. I've even heard the opinion that the more threatened Israel becomes the more likely they will be to make a deal with the Palestinians. I'm not sure what words I can use to describe this here without being cencored.