Nathan Scandella (personal)

Time to Cut Israel Loose

With the most recent set of events in Gaza, it's completely clear to me that it's way past time for the US to stop propping up the nation of Israel. These are amongst the most savage, ruthless people on earth, and it's wrong for us to continue to support their bloodthirsty military strategies in the region.

I am in favor of the US providing any diplomatic assistance needed to help mediate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, but that is as far it should go. Supporting their military with our tax dollars, and also the sale of our weapons technology, should be considered state-sponsored terrorism.

While I'm certainly not one to support the actions of many Palestinian groups, the American public has long held Israel to be "in the right" with respect to this conflict. However, I think there isn't a virtuous party amongst these two groups. They both want what the other side has, and each one knows of only one way to get it: violence.

I'm not naive enough to think that war is always avoidable. Sometimes, it's inevitable, and the stronger army has to decide who wins. But, for us to tilt the playing field towards the Israeli end zone is not the right thing to do. Neither side deserves our support. In addition, our support for decades has not even allowed the conflict to be resolved in favor of Israel. This war will likely rage for as long as we live, and if we can't keep that from happening, then we need to get out of the mix and let the two children fight it out on their own.

Supporting Israel has not promoted stability in the region, as pro-Israel Americans would have us believe. This is categorically the most unstable part of the world. If Israel had helped spread stability to the region, we might not be in the midst of a six-year war with no end in sight.

It's tempting to let the American fondness for the underdog root for the Israelis. Of course, the Jews have only this one nation to themselves. But, the Australian Aborigenes don't have a country of their own, and you don't see us arming them to fight the Aussies. The Jews do only have this one tiny nation. But, it happens to be on a miserable plot of land that billions of people think is really important. And as for the underdogs, nobody who's backed by the US government can really be considered the underdog in any conflict.

Our support of Israel has ruined our relationship with the Islamic world. Whether the Islamic point of view is right or wrong, there is a pragmatic concern that mandates some attention be paid to this point. Our support of Israel is support of tyranny and violence, it hasn't promoted Mid-East stability, and it's caused us to have a whole new race of enemies. It wasn't so long ago that we helped the Afghans stave off the Russians, and win the favor of many Muslims. But, we've now thrown away all that good will, and are in desperate need of a foreign policy makeover.

This is all about religion. We are a Christian nation. We (on the whole) think the Jews are closer to us than the Muslims are. For some Christians (e.g. Pentecostals), they even believe that Israel plays an important role in this fantasy end of days scenario. We can't let the Muslims eradicate Israel now, because the Apocalyptic prophecies all revolve around Israel.

This is why it's so dangerous to tolerate organized superstition. Despite the intent of some of our founding fathers to separate church and state, there are many ways that religion seeps into government affairs, including foreign policy. Some probably think there's nothing wrong with this ... we are one nation under God, they would say. I say we're one nation under false pretenses. If we open our eyes, we'd see that Israel is not worth fighting for.

Posted at 01:30AM Jan 06, 2009 by Nathan in Politics  |  Comments[0]