Israel celebrated its sixtieth anniversary, as well as its Memorial Day, on May 8th 2008 – a celebration that not everyone believed would come to pass. Israelis flocked to Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, while many others attended fireworks, plays, concerts, sports, and Holocaust memorials. At 11:00 a.m. Israeli time, sirens rang out and life came to a halt as citizens stood silently for two minutes to remember the 22,437 Jews who have died in conflicts and attacks within the country since Jewish re-settlement first began outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem in 1860. Commenting on the ceremonies held throughout the country, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated that, “This special day wipes away our divisions. The feeling of unity and shared destiny is stronger than ever. Memorial Day is a sad day, but free of any disagreements and very Israeli.”
The celebration being “free of any disagreements” is open to question. In the first place, there have been numerous rumours connecting Olmert to corruption and fraud. Though a publication ban has been lowered concerning these rumours, Peter Armstrong of the CBC reported from Jerusalem on May 7th that, “Those events involving the prime minister and his political future are very much overshadowing all of these events. Olmert has survived these kinds of investigations and scandals before.” Furthermore, not all Jews respect the Day of Remembrance; some Ultra-Orthodox Jews oppose the Jewish state on religious grounds, and Palestinian inhabitants of Jerusalem ignore Memorial Day altogether.
Palestinians do have a remembrance day, however. May 15th is the Palestinian ‘Naqba,’ the ‘catastrophe’, or ‘day of disaster.’ This day marks the 1948 defeat of Arab forces and the displacement of the Palestinians from Israel into what is now known as the Gaza Strip. This uprooting not only threatened the existence of a thriving Palestinian culture and society, it also became the root cause of the violence and hatred that plagues the area today. It is not the purpose of this article to say who is right and who is wrong, but to point out the, perhaps obvious fact, that in continuing to fight, both Hamas and Israel are losing the war.
In the first place, the Palestinian population is growing. Ali Abunimah, in an article entitled ‘Palestine: Remembering 1948 and Looking to the Future,” states that there are 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with another 1.5 million who are Israeli citizens. These “Israeli Arabs” feel that they are second class citizens, and are agitating for equality in a state where many feel they are a security risk. Birth rate projections forecast that this population will exceed the Jewish population in Israel by two million in 2025, something that the Israeli government must take into account, especially given Olmert’s tenuous political position.
The second factor to consider is the role the U.S. plays in the region. The United States was the first nation to recognize Israel, just several minutes after it declared independence in 1948, but for twenty years afterward the U.S. did not supply Israel with any military aid. It was not until the Soviet Union began to arm Arab states during the Cold War that American military aid started to arrive in Israel, and today the country is the largest recipient of American foreign aid. Peter Goodspeed, in an article by written for the ‘National Post’ in January, 2008, claimed that U.S. aid for Israel is budgeted at $2.42 billion dollars for this year. Of that amount, $2.38 billion is slated for military aid, while $39.6 million is going towards assisting the resettlement of refugees. Since 1973 Israel has received $140 billion in American aid. Over the decades, loans have become grants to the point that, according to Peter Goodspeed, Israel receives most of its foreign assistance from Washington in a lump sum early each year.
The actions of pro-Israel lobby groups, as well as the continuing need for a secure source of oil, dictate many of the choices taken by American decision makers. American policy makers became interested in the Middle East in the 1930’s when Standard Oil of California and Texaco won concessions to explore for oil in Saudi Arabia. By the beginning of World War II, oil had been discovered in many nations in the region and the Middle East was a prime focus of American foreign policy.
After World War II, nationalism grew in the Arab countries and American access to oil reserves became more problematic. The U.S. started to court pro-Western Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan in order to keep the region in “friendly” hands. After the Suez Crisis, which gave Arab nationalism a greater focus in the leadership of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, American concern began to grow that pro-Soviet influence in the area would spread, and that the potential for Arab-Israeli conflict would increase. Over the decades, American decision makers have come to look upon Israel not only as their “friend” in the Middle East, but also as an extension of their military policy in the area. If there was any doubt as to the truth of this fact, Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State, laid it to rest when she declared at a September 19, 2007 news conference during the Israeli-Palestinian war over the Gaza Strip that the United States will not turn its back on civilians in Gaza. And that Hamas “is a hostile entity to the United States as well.”
Israeli and American policies in the Middle East have become so interdependent that critics are springing up in both countries. Yuval Levin, of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies in Jerusalem has stated that the economic growth of Israel has been slowed by U.S. aid which has increased government spending. He fears that, with 70% of Israeli GDP coming from government spending, and one-third of the Israeli workforce paid by the government, the population is living beyond its means.
A different, but supporting argument has been put forth in the U.S. by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, political scientists at the University of Chicago and Harvard, respectively. They argue that the United States has weakened its own security by its constant support of Israel. They feel that this unswerving support has done nothing more than anger Arab and Muslim opinion, resulting in greater tensions between Washington and the Arabic world.
They are certainly correct that America’s view of the Israel/Palestinian question needs a very close and unbiased examination. However, that examination is unlikely to take place very soon. Jimmy Carter, past President of the U.S. stated the problem very clearly: “For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices.”
“It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians.” Isn’t it time to cut the reins and let Israel have a real anniversary?
