Israel Matzav

Israel is living lies

Caroline Glick discusses US support for the Lebanese Armed Forces and for the 'Palestinian' army being trained by US General Keith Dayton, and explains what Israel hoped to achieve by playing along with these policies, and why they have gone wrong.

Israel has gone along with these US programs for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it has been due to domestic politics. Sometimes it owed to Israel's desire to be a team player with the US government. But generally the Israeli rationale for not loudly and vociferously objecting to US assistance to enemy armies has been the same as Israel's rationale for embracing Yassir Arafat and the PLO in 1993 and for every other Israeli act of appeasement toward its enemies and allies alike.

Successive Israeli governments have claimed that by supporting actions that strengthen Israel's enemies, they gain leverage for Israel, or, at a minimum, they mitigate the opprobrium directed against Israel when it takes actions to defend itself. In Lebanon, for instance, Israel agreed to the US plan to support the Hizbullah-dominated Saniora government in the hopes that by agreeing to give the Lebanese government immunity from IDF attack, the US would support Israel's moves to defeat Hizbullah.

But this did not happen. Indeed, it could not happen. The pro-Western Lebanese government ministers are beholden to Hizbullah.

Whether they wish to or not, former prime minister Fuad Saniora and his successor Hariri both act as Hizbullah's defenders to the US.

And once the US committed itself to the falsehood that the Sanioras and Hariris of Lebanon are independent actors, it inevitably became Hizbullah's advocate against Israel as well. The logic of appeasement moves in one direction only - toward one's enemies.

The same holds for the Palestinians. Israel believed that once it capitulated to international pressure to recognize the PLO the US, the EU and the UN would hold the PLO to account if it turned out that Arafat and his minions had not changed their ways. But when Arafat ordered his lieutenants to wage a terror war against Israel rather than accept statehood, the US, the EU and the UN did not rally to Israel's side.

They had become so invested in their delusion of Palestinian peacefulness that they refused to abandon it. Instead, at most, they pinned the full blame on Arafat and demanded that Israel support their efforts to "strengthen the moderates."

And so, in this demented logic, it made sense for the US to build a Palestinian army after the Palestinians elected Hamas to lead them.

And so on and so forth. In every single instance, Israel's willingness to embrace lies about the nature of its enemies has come back to haunt it. Never has Israel gained any ground by turning a blind eye to the hostility of the likes of Salam Fayyad and Saad Hariri.

Indeed.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:04 AM