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Israel First or
America First
By Patrick
Buchanan
December 30,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- Donald Trump has a new best friend.
"President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm
friendship and your clear-cut support of Israel," gushed
Bibi Netanyahu, after he berated John Kerry in a fashion
that would once have resulted in a rupture of diplomatic
relations.
Netanyahu
accused Kerry of "colluding" in and "orchestrating" an
anti-Israel, stab-in-the-back resolution in the Security
Council, then lying about it. He offered to provide
evidence of Kerry’s complicity and mendacity to
President Trump.
Bibi then
called in the U.S. ambassador and read him the riot act
for 40 minutes. Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. Ron
Dermer charged that not only did the U.S. not "stand up
to and oppose the gang-up" at the U.N., "the United
States was actually behind that gang-up."
When Ben Rhodes
of the National Security Council called the charges
false, Dermer dismissed President Obama’s man as a
"master of fiction."
Query: Why is
Dermer not on a plane back to Tel Aviv?
Some of us can
recall how Eisenhower ordered David Ben-Gurion to get
his army out of Sinai in 1957, or face sanctions.
Ben-Gurion did
as told. Had he and his ambassador castigated Secretary
of State John Foster Dulles, as the Israelis dissed John
Kerry, Ike would have called the U.S. ambassador home.
Indeed, Ike’s
threat of sanctions against Prime Minister Anthony
Eden’s government, which had also invaded Egypt, brought
Eden down.
But then Dwight
Eisenhower was not Barack Obama, and the America of 1956
was a more self-respecting nation.
Still, this
week of rancorous exchanges between two nations that
endlessly express their love for each other certainly
clears the air.
While Kerry has
been denounced for abstaining on the U.N. resolution
calling Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in East
Jerusalem illegal and an impediment to peace, this has
been U.S. policy for years.
And Kerry’s
warning in his Wednesday speech that at the end of this
road of continuous settlement-building lies an Israel
that is either a non-Jewish or a non-democratic state is
scarcely anti-Semitic.
Prime Minister
Ehud Barak, the most decorated soldier in Israel’s
history, has warned his countrymen, "As long as in this
territory west of the Jordan River there is only one
political entity called Israel, it is going to be either
non-Jewish, or non-Democratic."
"If the bloc of
millions of Palestinians cannot vote" added Barak, "this
will be an apartheid state." Of John Kerry’s speech,
Barak said, "Powerful, lucid … World & majority in
Israel think the same."
Defense
Secretary-designate Gen. James Mattis warned in 2013
that Israeli settlements were leading to an "apartheid"
state.
After Joe Biden
visited Israel in 2010, to learn that Netanyahu just
approved 1,600 new units in East Jerusalem, Gen. David
Petraeus warned: "Arab anger on the Palestine question
limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnership with
governments and people in the region."
Yet facts and
reality, however unpleasant, cannot be denied.
The two-state
solution is almost surely dead. Netanyahu is not going
to remove scores of thousands of Jewish settlers from
Judea and Samaria to cede the land to a Palestinian
state. After all, Bibi opposed Ariel Sharon’s removal of
8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza.
How will all
this impact the new Trump administration?
Having tweeted,
"Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching,"
and having named a militant Zionist as his ambassador,
Trump is certain to tilt U.S. policy heavily toward
Israel.
Politically,
this will bring rewards in the U.S. Jewish community.
The Republican
Party will become the "pro-Israel" party, while the
Democrats can be portrayed as divided and conflicted,
with a left wing that is pro-Palestine and sympathetic
to sanctions on Israel.
And the problem
for Trump in a full embrace of Bibi?
Britain and
France, which voted for the resolution where the U.S.
abstained, are going to go their separate way on the
Israeli-Palestinian issue, as is the world.
Egypt, Jordan
and the Gulf Arabs will be pressured by their peoples
and by the militant states of the region like Iran, to
distance themselves from the Americans or face internal
troubles.
And once U.S.
pressure ends and settlement building in the West Bank
proceeds, Netanyahu, his hawkish Cabinet, the Israeli
lobby, the neocons and the congressional Republicans
will start beating the drums for Trump to terminate what
he himself has called that "horrible Iran deal."
Calls are
already coming for the cancellation of the sale of 80
Boeing jets to Iran. Yet, any U.S. withdrawal from the
nuclear deal, or reimposition of sanctions on Iran, will
further split us off from our European allies. Not only
did Britain and France vote for the Security Council
resolution, both are party, as is Germany, to the Iran
deal.
Having America
publicly reassert herself as Israel’s best friend, with
"no daylight" between us, could have us ending up as
Israel’s only friend – and Israel as our only friend in
the Middle East.
Bibi’s Israel
First policy must one day collide with America First.
Patrick J.
Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest
Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create
the New Majority." To find out more about Patrick
Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and
cartoonists, visit the Creators website at
www.creators.com.
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CREATORS.COM
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