Friday, January 8, 2010
I read Stephen Cohen's op-ed in today's Globe waiting for the punch-line. His point couldn't possibly be, at this late date and considering all the contrary evidence, that the US needs to put more pressure on Israel, including forcing the Israelis to discard their nuclear deterrent...could it? Yes, apparently it is: Take a tip from Eisenhower, Truman on the Mideast. Would someone tell Mr. Cohen that the Arabs are unwilling to even come to the negotiating table? Does he realize that Iran's nuclear program would go forward whether Israel had nukes or not? After lauding Eisenhower's pressuring of France, Britain and Israel to get out of the Sinai in 1957, he goes on to a sort of non sequitur that translates into...wait for it..."if only America would pressure Israel more, we'd have Middle East peace." Haven't we seen this tried before? Aren't we already in the third act of that play right now?
...Gurion's weakness vis-a-vis Eisenhower should be the magic key to Obama's success to bring about a different Israeli policy.
Israel is desperately concerned about Iran's development of a nuclear weapons capability Obama started to negotiate with Iran. He should take the Israeli-Palestinian negotiation out of its bilateral context and into a global one of nonproliferation, including linking it to talks with Iran.
Since nuclear nonproliferation is an Obama priority, he should make it clear to Israel that America's protection of Israel's "nuclear ambiguity'' will be difficult to maintain if Israel has not reached out to make peace on his watch. What is a higher priority for Israel's security: the proliferation of settlements or the perpetuation of Israel's nuclear ambiguity, under which it avoids enormous pressure from the international community to conform to the nonproliferation regime?
This is the kind of dramatic change in Obama's approach that is required. Like his predecessors, Obama has to think about Israel globally in order to give both the United States and Israel the opportunity to achieve peace. That would change the balance of power in the Middle East in the direction intended by Truman: the power coalition between the United States and Israel.
By the way, calling ben Gurion "Gurion," as one of the commenters points out, is like calling O'Malley, "Malley." Be that as it may, the point seems to be that what separates 1956 and the pressure that Eisenhower was "able" to place on the Israelis from today is Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons. How Israel's nukes prevent American diplomatic pressure is left unexplained, and I'll be honest, even giving Cohen a charitable and open-minded reading where I try to imagine what he's thinking still leaves me shrugging my shoulders. It just doesn't follow.
The fact is that the Obama Administration has demonstrated, once again, why pressure on the Israelis does nothing to advance peace. The Palestinians aren't even willing to sit and talk, but Cohen, in the typical knee-jerk fashion of those unable to adjust ideology to facts and evidence, keeps flogging that same dead horse.
It's just further proof that, outside of Jeff Jacoby's work, those reading The Boston Globe will find themselves ill-equipped to understand important issues, they will walk away with a head full of dangerously stupid ideas.
As a historical aside, the first commenter's post is worth noting:
Point of order! Mr. Cohen's thesis is based on Eisenhower's forcing Israel out of the Sinai in 1957.The U.S. pressure forced Israel to withdraw from Sinai without securing ironclad guarantees against Egyptian aggression and blockades. That failure led to Egyptian aggression that brought on the 1967 war. In October, 1965, American Jewish leader Max Fisher visited Eisenhower at his Gettysburg farm. Eisenhower admitted to him "... looking back at Suez, I regret what I did. I never should have pressed Israel to evacuate the Sinai.... If I'd had a Jewish advisor working for me, I doubt I would have handled the situation the same way. I would not have forced the Israelis back" (Peter Golden, "Quiet Diplomat, Max M. Fisher" pp.xviii - xix,Herzl Press 1992).
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Boston Globe: Key to Middle East Peace is Disarming Israel.
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Some people prefer simple explanations even if they don't work.
If the islamofascist regime of iran is permitted to acquire nukes, it's a virtual certainty that the chavez dictatorship of Venezuela will also come into possession of nukes.
How would the Obama administration react to a nuclear Venezuela? As against it as the JFK was to a nuclear Cuba? I doubt it.
Nip the islamofascist regime of iran danger in the bud.
I think that the Suez episode was a mistake as well. First of all, it shouldnt have happened in the first place. It also shamed the allies in the Cold War as imperialists, and hamstrung any response to the Hungarian Uprising in 1956 a week later.
But after the deed was done, the US should have supported the Israli/British/French acquistition of the Sinai and the Suez canal.
As has been pointed out the Israelis took it again in 1967, when the Egyptians along with their Arab allies presumed to destroy Israel. Then it was traded back for a weak peace....glued together by US dollars.
...in perpetuity.
FTR, this disarming Israel narrative as pathway to peace is standard Leftwingism. They also believe that US disarmament will lead to peace.
The Left is either stupid or they are anti Western. I think there resides a good amount of both on the Leftist spectrum, often within the same individual Leftist....being both stupid and anti Western, anti Euro Christian or anti Semitic in the case of Israel.
Jews may have invented the term self hating Jew, however I believe that we have a mass of self hating Euro Christians that make up a good portion of the Western Left.