As Israel's self-proclaimed protector, we in the United States get testy when our little protege misbehaves. "Israel could have no better or stronger friend than the United States," Ari Fleischer scolded last year, after Ariel Sharon failed to express sufficient gratitude over US pressure to go easy on genocidal lunatics. More recently, we angrily pressed the Israelis to allow 20 child killers, holed up with Yasser Arafat, to escape to murder another day.
In truth, Israel is as much our protector as the other way around. We provide that country with aid, to be sure, but it more than reciprocates in intelligence and sheer military muscle. Israel mans the front against some of our most vicious enemies - Iran, Iraq, Syria and their terrorist proxies the Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah (The latter, operating just beyond the northern border of Israel and in league with al-Qaeda and the PA, has murdered nearly 300 Americans - until 9/11 more than any other terrorist group in the world).
When "allies" like France and Germany denounce us for pursuing the removal of Saddam Hussein, Israel unwaveringly stands by our side. Even dovish Foreign Minister Shimon Peres recently described Israel as a "loyal soldier" for the US against Iraq. And, unlike in Britain, the majority of the Israeli public extends us its support as well.
Now and then, in passing, we actually express some gratitude. President Bush once said that the United States and Israel have a "special relationship." Dick Cheney added that the "two countries are full partners in the cause of defeating this threat to the civilized world." But if so, why is our "partner" never welcome to join us in battle? We'll fight alongside Canadians, Brits, Norwegians - just about anyone except Israelis (Is that what makes our relationship "special"?). In recent weeks, over 1,000 US Special Ops have been training in Jordan with troops from Jordan, Oman and Kuwait. Yet, as in Gulf War I and in Afghanistan, we intend in Gulf War II to make Israel a pariah. Even if they're attacked we don't want them involved in Iraq, for fear of offending the Arabs (Interestingly, we don't worry that involving the Arabs might lose us the support of Israel). This is a profound insult. As the Jerusalem Post wrote, "the only nation that does not have a right to defend itself is a state that has no right to exist."
Of course, if we were ready to forcefully acknowledge that right, we'd have our embassy in Israel's capital - as we do in all of the other countries with whom we have diplomatic relations. As a candidate for president, George W. Bush promised to, at long last, move our embassy from Tel Aviv pursuant to the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act. Once in office, though, he instead invoked successive waivers of the law just as Bill Clinton had done before him. When Congress recently passed another law, which requires the United States to at least identify Jerusalem as Israel's capital in our official documents, Bush made clear that he won't implement that one either.
Our official, unseemly propensity to accede to the world's characterization of Israel as barely legitimate filters down into our deepest thinking, even finding inadvertent expression by op-ed pundits and news writers who have no consciously hostile intent toward the Jewish state.
Regarding 9/11, for instance, Andrew Sullivan wrote that of all foreign leaders, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is "the one figure who seemed genuinely to understand the gravity of what had happened." Really? Ariel Sharon, unacquainted with terrorism, had no clue? That's undoubtedly not what Sullivan meant to imply. But how easily an ally we habitually treat as invisible can just slip our minds.
As when the Associated Press wrote that "British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been Bush's main ally on Iraq."
Or when the editors of the National Review Online listed US allies offering support against Iraq, naming Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Britain - but not Israel.
Armaud de Borchgrave, in the Washington Times, wrote that there "are only two countries in the Middle East" where Americans are popular among the masses - Iran and Iraq.
Maybe he meant only two Muslim countries. Or maybe, in a momentary lapse, he just imagined the Middle East sans a certain democratic state whose name, in a perverse deference to enemies, we tend to whisper discreetly.
This much is clear: If the moral beacon of the world can't resist posturing as if our best ally didn't exist, someday, maybe, it won't.
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Steven Zak is a writer and attorney in California.
In truth, Israel is as much our protector as the other way around. We provide that country with aid, to be sure, but it more than reciprocates in intelligence and sheer military muscle. Israel mans the front against some of our most vicious enemies - Iran, Iraq, Syria and their terrorist proxies the Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah (The latter, operating just beyond the northern border of Israel and in league with al-Qaeda and the PA, has murdered nearly 300 Americans - until 9/11 more than any other terrorist group in the world).
When "allies" like France and Germany denounce us for pursuing the removal of Saddam Hussein, Israel unwaveringly stands by our side. Even dovish Foreign Minister Shimon Peres recently described Israel as a "loyal soldier" for the US against Iraq. And, unlike in Britain, the majority of the Israeli public extends us its support as well.
Now and then, in passing, we actually express some gratitude. President Bush once said that the United States and Israel have a "special relationship." Dick Cheney added that the "two countries are full partners in the cause of defeating this threat to the civilized world." But if so, why is our "partner" never welcome to join us in battle? We'll fight alongside Canadians, Brits, Norwegians - just about anyone except Israelis (Is that what makes our relationship "special"?). In recent weeks, over 1,000 US Special Ops have been training in Jordan with troops from Jordan, Oman and Kuwait. Yet, as in Gulf War I and in Afghanistan, we intend in Gulf War II to make Israel a pariah. Even if they're attacked we don't want them involved in Iraq, for fear of offending the Arabs (Interestingly, we don't worry that involving the Arabs might lose us the support of Israel). This is a profound insult. As the Jerusalem Post wrote, "the only nation that does not have a right to defend itself is a state that has no right to exist."
Of course, if we were ready to forcefully acknowledge that right, we'd have our embassy in Israel's capital - as we do in all of the other countries with whom we have diplomatic relations. As a candidate for president, George W. Bush promised to, at long last, move our embassy from Tel Aviv pursuant to the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act. Once in office, though, he instead invoked successive waivers of the law just as Bill Clinton had done before him. When Congress recently passed another law, which requires the United States to at least identify Jerusalem as Israel's capital in our official documents, Bush made clear that he won't implement that one either.
Our official, unseemly propensity to accede to the world's characterization of Israel as barely legitimate filters down into our deepest thinking, even finding inadvertent expression by op-ed pundits and news writers who have no consciously hostile intent toward the Jewish state.
Regarding 9/11, for instance, Andrew Sullivan wrote that of all foreign leaders, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is "the one figure who seemed genuinely to understand the gravity of what had happened." Really? Ariel Sharon, unacquainted with terrorism, had no clue? That's undoubtedly not what Sullivan meant to imply. But how easily an ally we habitually treat as invisible can just slip our minds.
As when the Associated Press wrote that "British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been Bush's main ally on Iraq."
Or when the editors of the National Review Online listed US allies offering support against Iraq, naming Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Britain - but not Israel.
Armaud de Borchgrave, in the Washington Times, wrote that there "are only two countries in the Middle East" where Americans are popular among the masses - Iran and Iraq.
Maybe he meant only two Muslim countries. Or maybe, in a momentary lapse, he just imagined the Middle East sans a certain democratic state whose name, in a perverse deference to enemies, we tend to whisper discreetly.
This much is clear: If the moral beacon of the world can't resist posturing as if our best ally didn't exist, someday, maybe, it won't.
--------------------------------------------
Steven Zak is a writer and attorney in California.