The US’s Strategic Alliance With Israel is a Disaster
Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain
It’s difficult to imagine a greater U.S. strategic mistake than to align itself in any fashion with Israel. The United States and Israel have different objectives and strategic goals in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. Israel is trying to “change the map of the Middle East.” It therefore is trying to create instability throughout the region in its effort to secure geopolitical domination.
The United States should be trying to extricate itself from a region that has become a briar patch. It therefore should be trying to encourage greater stability in the region to allow for such a withdrawal. Meanwhile, the U.S. mainstream media, which is biased in favor of Israel, says very little about the dangers of any U.S.-Israeli alliance.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an anti-American ideologue. Netanyahu himself has been branded as a war criminal for his genocidal campaign against the Palestinians, and he is giving every indication of pursuing a similar strategy in Israel’s current conflict with both Iran and Lebanon. U.S. media also pull their punches in discussing Netanyahu.
The long history of Israeli anti-Americanism is rarely discussed, although it is not a new development. In the 1950s, Israel agents bombed a U.S. Information Agency library in Egypt and tried to make it appear to be an Egyptian act of violence. Israel’s goal was to compromise U.S.-Egyptian relations in order to stop U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’ interest in funding the Aswan Dam in Egypt. Dulles eventually reneged on the funding, which provided the Soviet Union with an opening to strengthen relations with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
In the 1960s, the Israelis told the United States at the highest levels that they would not conduct a preemptive attack against the Arab states. But they did exactly that in starting the six-day war. In the war’s opening days, Israeli fighter planes bombed the USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors. The Israels claimed it was an “accident.” It wasn’t! The Liberty was collecting sensitive Israeli operational messages, and Israel wanted the ship out of range.
In the 1970s, the Israelis did their best to compromise a cease-fire that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had carefully orchestrated with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin. Israeli violations of the ceasefire led to Kissinger’s threats to intervene in the conflict if Israeli military forces did not cease their operations to destroy the Egyptian III Corps that had surrendered. Kissinger’s threats were successful in getting Israeli compliance.
In the 1980s, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and its war crimes against the Palestinian community led to the intervention of U.S. Marines who suffered terrible losses from the bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks and the U.S. embassy in Beirut. Israel never informed the White House that it would be invading Beirut.
The Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s offers the best window into the secret U.S.-Israeli relationship because it was Israel that enticed the United States to provide anti-missile weaponry to an Iran that was facing disaster in its war with Iraq. Israel convinced national security adviser Robert McFarland that there were moderates in Iran who would help to get the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon, including the CIA station chief in Beirut, William Buckley, who was tortured and eventually killed by Hezbollah. Israel ultimately sent 500 anti-tank missiles to Iran through an unscrupulous arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, who was an Iranian agent. CIA director Bill Casey mistakenly thought that Ghorbanifar was an Israeli agent. Israel was more than the minor middleman that it has always claimed to be.
Netanyahu has gone out of his way to embarrass virtually every American president over the past 25 years. A low point took place in 2015 when Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress to stop the ratification of the Iran nuclear agreement—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Instead of punishing the Israelis for this outrageous action, President Obama rewarded them with a ten-year $40 billion military assistance package. Will we ever learn?
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