Responsibility for Israel’s apartheid regime in the occupied territories rests in part with successive administrations in Washington and the American people. Without generous financial aid, other types of help from America and its almost Pavlovian backing in international institutions, Israel wouldn’t have been able to create this regime, and it certainly couldn’t have maintained it for decades.
Israel, which was a Western enclave in the heart of the seething Middle East when it was established, needed international aid to survive its early years. It was surrounded by Arab countries and peoples that were rich in combatants. Without that aid, it’s doubtful it would have survived.
But that hasn’t been the case in recent decades. Ever since it signed a peace agreement with Egypt in 1979 (thanks to the U.S. administration’s mediation), Israel has no longer faced an existential threat. There are no hostile entities nearby that are capable of destroying it.
Despite this, the American taxpayer has kept funding and purchasing the most sophisticated arms for Israel, and has never stopped sending it ammunition, even during times of recession. And it’s an open secret that with regard to military power and military superiority, Israel is no longer the tiny David facing the giant Goliath. For several decades now, the roles have been reversed.
Nevertheless, not one U.S. president has made military aid to Israel or help in developing military technology conditional on such aid not being used in any way against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (The exception was President George H.W. Bush, who refused to sign off on a $10 billion loan guaranteethat Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s government wanted to help absorb the huge influx of immigrants from the Soviet Union, unless Israel committed to halting its activities in the territories.)
It’s nice that the current president, Joe Biden, is deemed an enthusiastic Zionist. At the same time, he seems unaware of Zionism’s new face.
In Israel, anyone who doesn’t support the settlements has long since been deemed non-Zionist. So has anyone who doesn’t applaud the Israeli army when it invades the homes of Palestinian civilians in the dead of night and terrifies them. Even the Israeli media have virtually ceased discussing the intolerable reality in the territories, because they’re afraid of being seen as non-Zionist.
If Americans are happy with the way the Israeli army sprays ammunition at the Palestinians, if they consider it normal in the 21st century for one people to be subject to another people’s rule under a system of laws that distinguishes between neighbors on the basis of their ethnic affiliation, then fine. Let them continue working a few extra hours a month to fund all these good things. But in that case, liberals and Democrats should not pretend that this is fine, because their money is enabling the continuation of a situation that doesn’t comply with their values, or at least with what they like to present as their values.
On the other hand, if the United States says what it means, or presumes to, the administration must inform the Israeli government (as a parent informs his now grown-up son) that the assistance will be reduced substantially in the coming decade, and that the new condition for receiving ammunition, money and weapons is that none of these things be used against the Palestinians or serve to strengthen and protect the settlements.
The U.S. assistance to Israel, which in the early days contributed to stability in the Middle East and to strengthening its most prominent democracy, has in recent decades caused a threat to stability and to the weakening of Israeli democracy. If U.S. presidents really love Israel and feel a special closeness to it, they must significantly cut the assistance to Israel, and present conditions. In the present generation, some people will of course be angry at this necessary step, but in future generations it will be the majority which understands that it was designed to save Israel from itself and from the messianic forces within it.