Few
of us will ever forget where we were when we heard the news.
I was driving home from work, listening to National
Pinko Radio (Limbaugh was over), when the world as we knew
it changed forever. I rushed home to watch it on television,
and it was like Berlin '89 all over again. The image of those
Israeli tractors flattening illegal outposts, ending the occupation,
still sizzles in my mind.
At
first, the demolition looked routine. We're talking about the
West Bank, where the
IDF wrecks more homes than all the pills and infidelity
in Beverly Hills could ever hope to. But a closer look at the
tape revealed certain novelties. No shocked families milling
about, watching their
modest aspirations crumble. No missiles
slamming haphazardly into apartment buildings. No apologia
from star-spangled
Likudniks.
Strange,
unless you dug what was really happening: dummy settlements
were being sacrificed to Ariel Sharon's international credibility.
A Potemkin village in reverse, you might say. Some observers
dismissed the act as "theatrical
and insignificant," but what would politics be without
meaningless drama? Actually, the whole charade makes me think
of all
you libertarians who roll over on foreign policy in order to
win domestic leverage. Sharon gave the White House a soundbite,
but what have you gotten for whoring yourselves? Show me one
symbolic bone that has been thrown your way. Bush could at least
pull a Gingrich, in which one trims
the government's bangs while shoving butter down its gullet.
Better yet, the president could invite some of you to the Rose
Garden and issue posthumous pardons to, say, victims
of the drug war. Then the cokehead (as
Free Republic's founder dubbed candidate Bush) could get
back to poisoning
Colombian peasants and harassing
cancer patients.
Which
parallels what Sharon has done. Note to hardcore
Zionists: don't Yitzhak
Rabin the old fox just yet. He's still one of yours. Methinks
American
Maccabees doth protest the road map too much, but not without
reason. All this ranting against Israel's
mad "generosity" is a familiar setup for a tired
punch line. When Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians a Swiss
cheese state full of IDF bases, settlements, and caveats,
Israel Firsters held their laughter long enough to scream "treason!,"
thus convincing moderates that the deal was more than reasonable.
The mainstream press also did its part, failing to note the
dissonance between Barak's
talk of withdrawal and his habit of building new settlements.
Thus, when Arafat rejected all this generosity, Israel's amen
corner could say, "You
cannot please these people. Barak
offered them the clothes off his back, and then they demanded
his skin!"
Now
we're watching the rerun, though sped up considerably. One day
after making his empty gesture, Sharon
set about provoking the response that would excuse him from
the peace table. The series
of airstrikes that began on Tuesday were vintage Israeli
strategy. Ostensibly target terrorists, kill Palestinian civilians,
sit back and watch
the savages retaliate. Then blame the Palestinian Authority
for promoting terrorism and let the American
imagination do the rest. Americans are, of course, the only
outsiders whose opinions count in Israeli politics. After all,
that "blooming
desert" we hear so much about would be several shades
lighter minus U.S.
greenbacks.
Ironically,
all of that money has retarded the growth of a viable Jewish
state in the Middle East. By enabling Israeli leaders to act
like bullies, American aid prolongs Israel's painful adolescence
and creates the illusion that the country never has to grow
up. Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Benny
Elon live in a fantasy world where, thanks to U.S. favoritism,
Israel will never have to get along with its neighbors. Can
such a nation survive? If nothing else, demography
and economics
suggest otherwise.
But
there is something else – a river of blood flowing from the West
Bank to Gaza, with new effluents emerging each week in Jerusalem,
Tel Aviv, Haifa, and so on. Israeli citizens are dying for their
leaders' arrogance, and some
Israelis are beginning to say so in public. Sadly, few American
politicians have the guts to do the one thing that would temper
Sharon's recklessness: reduce the aid we send him, or (gasp!)
eliminate it altogether. We all know the latter will never happen,
but maybe a "theatrical and insignificant" show of
the former would send a message. Hey, Sharon removed some empty
trailers – can't Bush take some tweezers to the Israel budget?
