U.S. Must Avoid Being Drawn Into A Middle East War By Allan C.Brownfeld August 2, 2024
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There is a great danger at the present time that the U.S. will be drawn into a war in the Middle East. This should be avoided at all cost, but we have entered a strange era in which we provide massive aid to Israel but the Israeli government rejects our policy advice.
In recent days, Israel has been involved in assassinations in Lebanon and Iran. It has used massive U.S. military aid to kill at least 40,000 civilians in Gaza. The Biden administration has urged restraint. But the U.S. Congress loudly applauded the defiant words of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who rejected American calls for a cease fire.
Sadly, Mr. Netanyahu’s government will fall if he makes peace and he will go on trial for corruption. He has a personal incentive to keep the war going, and perhaps spread it to Lebanon and Iran. The families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas charge that Netanyahu is indifferent to their fate. If the war were to spread to Lebanon and Iran, Mr. Netanyahu evidently hopes to enlist the U.S. as an ally. The last thing Americans want is a full scale Middle East War.
In fact, there is a path to Middle East peace. The Abraham Accords, adopted during the Trump Administration, were a step forward. Both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recognized Israel’s sovereignty, as did Morocco. Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries have said that they are prepared to join these Accords as soon as Israel moves forward with the creation of a Palestinian state. The only thing preventing Middle East peace is the refusal of the Netanyahu government to move toward the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank, which Israel has illegally occupied for more than 50 years. In the West Bank, Jewish settlers have the full right of Israeli citizenship. Their Palestinian neighbors have almost no rights. The current system has been described by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, as “apartheid.”
U.S. policy, under both Republicans and Democrats, calls for a two state solution. The Netanyahu government declares that there will never be a Palestinian state. Members of the Netanyahu government say their goal is to annex the West Bank and expel its indigenous Palestinian population. Yet, massive U.S. military aid toIsrael continues—-and Benjamin Netanyahu is welcomed to the U.S. Congress despite his rejection of the path to genuine peace which Americans of both parties have advocated for many years.
Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank, many of whom have never been brought to trial, is increasingly brutal. As new Jewish settlements are built on land which The U.S. believes should constitute a Palestinian state, the number of resisting Palestinians who are incarcerated is growing. Physicians For Human Rights Israel (PHRI) recently reported about a number of examples of torture. One Palestinian inmate died with a ruptured spleen and broken ribs after being beaten by Israeli prison guards. Another met an excruciating end because a chronic condition went untreated. A third screamed for help for hours before dying. Rights groups say conditions in Israel’s jam packed prisons have deteriorated dangerously. “Violence is pervasive,” said Jessica Martell, executive director of the Israeli rights group HaMoked. “It’s very overcrowded. Every prisoner that we’ve met with has lost 30 pounds.”
The International Criminal Court is considering arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Conditions in the country’s jails could lead to more international legal action, Israeli intelligence chief Ronen Bar warned in a letter to prison authorities. He declared that, “Israel is having difficulty repelling claims against it, at least some of which are well founded.” The prison system, built for 14,500 inmates, was housing 21,000, the letter said.
Consider the words of Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister who oversees the prison system. He has been unapologetic about his “war” on Palestinian detainees. In a post on X in July, he boasted that he had “dramatically reduced” shower time and introduced a “minimal menu.” He declared, that the simplest solution to prison overcrowding would be capital punishment.
would be capital punishment.
Ben-Gvir has spoken of annexing the West Bank and expelling its Palestinian residents, many of whom have lived there for generations. His political hero is the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. Kahane was expelled from the Knesset as a racist and terrorist. When was in the Knesset, he proposed legislation to make marriage between Jews and non-Jews illegal. This,of course, was a key element of Hitler’s Nuremburg Laws. An indication of how much Israel has changed and the direction in which it is, unfortunately, moving can be seen in the fact that Kahane’s views were once unacceptable in Israel, but today, more and more,constitute government policy.
Although the U.S. does not have a formal military alliance with Israel, as it does, for example, with our NATO allies, Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since the end of World War 11———more than $160 billion in non-inflation adjusted aid. Right now it receives more than $3.8 billion annually. This aid includes numerous provisions that are not available to other recipients, according to the Congressional Research Service. These include providing aid as “all cash grant transfers, not designated for particular projects and transferred as a lump sum in the first month of the fiscal year, instead of installments. Israel is allowed to spend about a quarter of the military aid for the procurement in Israel of defense articles and services…rather than in the U.S. At the present time, Israel receives $3.8 billion annually in U.S.aid.
On the face of it, it makes little sense to provide a foreign country with billions of dollars when it rejects policies for peace—-such as the two-state solution—-which both Republicans and Democrats have supported for many years. The reason, of course, is the millions of dollars members of Congress—-and presidential candidates—-receive from AIPAC and other voices which call themselves “pro-Israel but which are, in fact, supporting policies that endanger Israel and now could embroil our own country in war.
The formula for peace in the region is clear. If Israel withdraws from the occupied West Bank—-and removes the settlements it has built in violation of international law—-and a Palestinian state is established, Saudi Arabia and almost all neighboring countries, other than Iran, will recognize Israel and establish diplomatic relations.
Thus, the only thing that stands in the way of peace is the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which is pledged to do its best to remove Palestinians from their homes, expand settlements and incorporate the West Bank into Israel.
Since the Netanyahu approach violates U.S. interests and American values, it is irrational for the U.S. to support and finance it. Now as Israel commits raids and assassinations in Lebanon and Iran—-which it would not do without implicit American support—-there is a growing danger that we could be embroiled in a Middle East war.
The Palestinians are, in reality, the final victims of the Holocaust. Hitler and the Nazis killed six million Jews. The Palestinians had nothing to do with it. But their land was taken from them. Why, many have asked, was not Bavaria or some other part of Germany selected for such an enterprise? Even in the boundaries selected in 1948 by the United Nations, Jews constituted a minority of the population. Now, the world has an opportunity to move toward a more just solution, and create a Palestinian state. American values should demand it, and American aid should only continue if Israel respects the rights of Palestine’s indigenous population. Any other U.S. policy, such as the one we are now pursuing, is likely to embroil us in a Middle East war.
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Allan C. Brownfeld is a nationally syndicated columnist and is editor of ISSUES, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism (
www.acjna.org).