Before I begin to discuss Tom Friedman’s latest, I invite you to take a look at two articles that I wrote about Kissinger’s despicable statements as revealed recently. The first of the articles is about Kissinger’s comment that gassing the Jews in the USSR would not be an American concern. The second of the articles is perhaps more important and concerns Kissinger’s wrongheaded strategy for peace in the Middle East. Both are posted on the We Are For Israel Blog. I think you will find them enlightening, especially when addressing Thomas Friedman’s recent piece.
Thomas Friedman has previously written about “friends not letting friends drive drunk” and yesterday about not continuing to be the “crack dealer.” He’s now calling for the US to abandon aid to Israel because peace has not come about. Israel is not doing what the US wants, no “settlement” halt. Punish Israel. Take it off “crack”, off American aid. Friedman doesn’t even mention that it wasn’t Israel who rejected the deal with the US, but the Palestinians who rejected it, just as they have rejected numerous previous attempts to get them to negotiate.
It is not Israel who has refused to make peace. The Palestinians have repeatedly refused to make peace. Israel has offered peace multiple times now. President Clinton concluded a peace agreement in 2000 that the Palestinians rejected. Israel did not reject it. This alone is indicative of the fact that it is not Israel which is impeding peace. The Palestinians are holding out for more. This is another reason you need to read my article on Kissinger’s failed peace strategy. I explain why they are continually holding out for more.
Were the US to state unequivocally that it will never press the Israel to give up a united Jerusalem (granted one accessible to Palestinians at least as much as it is today) and that it would be willing to let the Palestinians rot in a state of subjugation eternally if they don’t agree to reasonable peace terms, I bet they would be more than willing to make peace. Sure, it would piss off the UN’s Israel haters, aka America Haters, but that is exactly what is necessary. It is precisely the fact that the United States will not stand up for Israel that is delaying peace indefinitely.
Israel has said that it is willing to remove some settlements and trade land for others. But it cannot trade secure access to the Old City. It is easy to envision what Jerusalem would look like under US security control which would already be vastly better than under any international regime. The situation would look like a much more chaotic and explosive version of Baghdad 2010. Would large groups of tourists journey to Baghdad today much less into a situation with danger amplified immeasurably?
No more of this “Friends don’t let friends…” nonsense. Take a look at what Kissinger said, as quoted in the article that I suggested that you read above) about empowering Egypt by delaying a US airlift to Israel so that Egypt would feel more confident in making peace with Israel. With friends who would readily sacrifice Israel’s security in order to appear more “even-handed” in the peace process or to empower Israel’s enemies so that they feel more able to make peace because they can threaten Israel more effectively, Israel is better off staying at the wheel, even drunk. Her blind, deaf, and delusional friends certainly won’t help her get to her destination more safely.
There will not be peace there until there is peace in the rest of the world. When the hands of a person are engaged in making weapons their heart will never be at rest.
Meryl:
I agree with your post.
But I’m rather sure that Kissinger later realized that
Nixon was right and he was wrong on this call.
I’m not 100% sure. I read his memoirs a long time ago.
I have problems with many of his calls and this is one of them.
But I’m pretty sure, he thinks this was one of his mistakes.
I’m a neocon. So I believe in strongly supporting pro-Western allies
rather than pushing them into making concessions to anti-Western adversaries.
The neocon view on foreign policy is largely a reaction to Kissinger.
He pushed many allies (South Vietnam, Taiwan, as well as Israel) to
make perilous concessions to their adversaries.
One reason that Assad made for not making concessions to Israel after his crushing
defeat in 1973 was his view that, sooner or later, the US would abandon Israel, like they
did with South Vietnam or would go over their heads like Kissinger did with Taiwan
regarding the PRC.
In fact Assad offered to turn pro-Western if the US would supply him with the arms required
to crush Israel.
I agree with you on this. Kissinger (and almost all non-neocons)
have bad tendencies in this area. But I think Kissinger regrets his
Yom Kippur War decision and even he thinks he went too far on that one.
To put some perspective on this, almost everyone to the left of Kissinger
on foreign policy (which is essentially everyone but neocons and the Christian right)
are even worse about pressuring Israel and other allies to make precarious concessions.
More to the point of your post:
Friedman is an idiot.
I expect this sort of drivel from him.
I don’t know why anyone would read him.
(Back to the earlier Kissinger tangent. This
isn’t recently revealed. It’s old news. He discusses it in the
first volume of his memoirs and admits he favored
delaying the first airlift largely for the reasons you cite.)
Once again a person of previous Jewish heritage winds up trying too hard to look balanced when dealing with Israel, or, the Jewish people, that he invariably bends over backwards so far that he winds up sticking his head up his arse!
IMHO, I have come to the conclusion that people of Jewish background in power should simply excuse themselves from getting involved in these matters, just as a judge sometimes has to recluse themselves from presiding on certain cases due to a previous history, and possible bias.
I eagerly await calls from Friedman and the like for the US to put pressure…any pressure…on the Palestinians or the Arabs generally. I await the time he will suggest the US should push the Arabs or in fact do anything other than let the Arabs know that all they need to do is sit and wait and the US will force Israeli concessions and when those don’t work…more concessions. Not holding my breath, though.