Hey,Israel and U.K. - there is NO special relationship

Israel and the US: What Special Relationship? by Ami Isseroff
http://tinyurl.com/mdgk7k
The "special relationship," under various names such as "strategic alliance" and "unbreakable bond", between Israel and the United States, is very much in the news these days. Yoram Ettinger and Shlomo Ben-Ami think it is very hard to break this relationship. Caroline Glick thinks it is already broken.(##see below) In his Cairo speech, Barack Obama himself said:
America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.****Obama went on to link Israel's establishment to the (European) Holocaust, thus pleasing his Arab friends by ignoring the historic link of Jews to the land over more than three millennia. This link was acknowledged by the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations before Hitler was ever heard of. ****
... The facts tell a different story. U.S. President Wilson was moved...to favor a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine after World War I. Anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic pressure, however, moved him to appoint the King Crane commission, led by unsympathetic politicians who returned an unfavorable report. In the critical period of World War II, the United States did almost nothing to facilitate rescue of European Jews, or to reverse the British White Paper policy that prevented Jewish immigration to Palestine. On the contrary, there is evidence that the OSS gave the British information about the Jewish underground. President Franklyn Delano Roosevelt assured King Saud that the United States would never favor an independent Jewish state. President Harry S Truman reversed this policy against the opposition of the US State Department, which was, and remained, anti-Zionist and not particularly favorable to persons of the Jewish persuasion. Despite granting recognition to the new Jewish state, the Truman administration imposed an arms embargo that primarily affected Israel during the Israel War of Independence. The United States later prosecuted Americans who had circumvented the embargo and smuggled aircraft to Israel. America did exert diplomatic pressure to prevent the United Nations from lopping off the Negev and giving it to the Arabs as favored by the Bernadotte Plan, but the US pressured Israel to accept Arab "peace" offers which included return of 500,000 Palestinian Arab refugees and territorial concessions....During the Eisenhower administration, American policy toward Israel can only be described as antagonistic. The United States and Britain pressured Israel to concede a chunk of territory in the Negev to Egypt. The CIA installed an adviser in Cairo who encouraged Gamal Abdul Nasser to camouflage his Soviet arms deal as a Czech arms deal, so it would appear less threatening. The Eisenhower administration, like all those following it, participated in UN condemnations of Israel for "violations" of the mythical international status of Jerusalem, and like all other US administrations until 1967, the Eisenhower administration did nothing about flagrant Jordanian violations of the cease fire agreement as well as the international status in Jerusalem. American financiers paid for a hotel built over part of the Jewish cemetery on Mt Olives. Eisenhower forced Israel to withdraw from Sinai and Gaza after the 1956 Suez campaign, in return for a memorandum about freedom of navigation that proved to be worthless, and Eisenhower entertained the slave owning King Saud of Saudi Arabia, his wives, sheep and chickens, in conspicuous luxury and with pomp and ceremony appropriate to a close, trusted and admired ally. ...Under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Israel-US relations became less frosty. Israel got some minor military aid. Still, prior to the Six Day War, US aid to Israel was mostly symbolic and often in the form of loans that had to be repaid (See a complete history of US Aid to Israel) It never reached $100, million in loans or grants in any year after 1949. Israel did have a special relationship with France. The IDF was equipped with French arms, purchased with Israeli tax money and contributions from Jews abroad. President Johnson's professed love of Israel did not extend to helping equip the Israel army or to fulfilling US obligations to maintain Israel's freedom of navigation. ***LBJ's failure to honor a specific pledge to break the Egyptian blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba ( a casus belli ) was a major precipitating factor in the Six Day War.**** The Six Day War brought a change in US - Israel relationships. This change was not based on any emotional tie of the American people to Jews or to Israeli democracy, but rather on some hard strategic facts. Yitzhak Rabin, who was Ambassador to the United States in that period, warned that US relations to Israel would always be based on strategic considerations rather than sentiment, and he has been proven consistently correct. The considerations were:
1. Cold War - Israel was "fortunate" enough to have the USSR as an enemy. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The United States could not let the USSR and its allies score a victory over Israel, so Israel got Phantom interceptors and massive aid during the Yom Kippur war.
2. Aid means control - US policymakers were appalled by the fact that Israel was able to win the war without US arms, and was not dependent on the United States, because that meant that Israel was not subordinate to US interests. The Fulbright committee considered taxing US charitable donations to Israel in order to choke Israel's financing of arms. The senators were convinced that Israel used the money to buy Mirage jets rather than to build Hadassah hospital and the Hebrew University and plant trees. However, it was decided that this measure was impractical, since the senators believed that the Jews control congress. Such is the nature of the "special" relationship of the US with Israel. Supplying the arms to Israel was a more effective approach. If you want a say, you have to pay.
3. Leverage - With the US controlling Israel, and Israel holding Arab territories, Israeli concessions could be used as leverage to bring the United States into the Arab Middle East. That is precisely what Henry Kissinger and Jimmy Carter did regarding Egypt.
All three of the above considerations are clear from the public statements and memoirs of officials. They are only ignored at election time and occasions that call for speechifying. The largest increase in US aid to Israel was approved under the Carter administration***It had to in order to start a massive aid program to Egypt that continues to this day.*** Nobody would argue that Jimmy Carter has a special love for Israel and the Jewish people, but that was the price that Carter was willing to pay in order to buy a peace settlement with Egypt and win Egypt as a US client. There is no need to expand on the state of US-Israel relations during the administration of George Bush Sr. and James ("F--- the Jews, they didn't vote for us") Baker. The Clinton administration was effusive with sentiments, but it took over the Israeli-initiated Oslo process and forced continued concessions from Israel even when it was obvious that the Palestinians had no intention of keeping to agreements. The US-Israel strategic partnership was just that. It was based on common needs in intelligence and other coordination, not on any love of the US intelligence or military community for Israel.The administration of George Bush Jr. was cold to Israel prior to the 9-11 attacks, and had reportedly held up spare parts for the Israeli military because it disapproved of Israeli actions during the Second Intifada. The entire history of Israel-US relations has been based on considerations of state. The "special relationship" exists only as a part of an election campaign ritual,... courting Jewish support says they will move the US embassy to Jerusalem, announces support for United Jerusalem and invokes the "special relationship." ...The basis of US-Israel relations must be seen and evaluated realistically. The consequences do not necessarily support one or another policy choice. If the US feels that its diplomatic goals are frustrated by Israel's unwillingness to make concessions to Arabs, the "special" relationship and the "deep historic ties" will undergo "reevaluation." We all know what that means. Do not have any illusions that the US congress can prevent US pressure on Israel. Arms shipments can and will dry up, as has happened in the past. Congress has no control over these administrative decisions. Diplomatic support will vanish. Congress cannot make foreign policy. Those who advocate taking unrealistic stands in defiance of the US should have no illusions about the price.
On the other hand, the cold war is over. Once the US has forced Israel to return all the territories conquered in the Six Day War, it really hasn't got much to offer the Arab and Muslim states that would give it any leverage, so Israel could become completely dispensable. ****This is rather a strong argument AGAINST capitulating to peremptory demands of Obama/Hillary.****
##The End of America’s Strategic Alliance with Israel? [Caroline Glick]
From an Israeli perspective,... Obama’s speech...in Cairo was deeply disturbing.. speech was a renunciation of America’s strategic alliance with Israel.....Obama’s sugar coated the pathologies of the Islamic world — from the tyranny that characterizes its regimes, to the misogyny, xenophobia, Jew hatred, and general intolerance that characterizes its societies. In so doing he made clear that his idea of pressing the restart button with the Islamic world involves erasing the moral distinctions between the Islamic world and the free world.
In contrast, Obama’s perverse characterization of Israel — of the sources of its legitimacy and of its behavior — made clear that he shares the Arab world’s view that there is something basically illegitimate about the Jewish state.
In 1922 the League of Nations mandated Great Britain to facilitate the reconstitution of the Jewish commonwealth in the Land of Israel on both sides of the Jordan River. The international community’s decision to work towards the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in Israel owed to its recognition of the Jewish people’s legal, historic, and moral rights to our homeland.
Arab propaganda finds this basic and fundamental truth inconvenient. So for the past 60 years, the Arabs have been advancing the fiction that Israel’s existence owes solely to European guilt over the Holocaust. As far as the Arabs are concerned, the Jews have no legal, historic, or moral right to what the Arabs see as Islamic land.
In his address, while Obama admonished the Arabs for their pervasive Jew hatred and Holocaust denial, he effectively accepted and legitimized their view that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust when he said, “the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied,” and then went on to talk about the Holocaust. Just as abominably, Obama compared Israel to Southern slave owners and Palestinians to black slaves in the antebellum south. He used the Arab euphemism “resistance” to discuss Palestinian terrorism, and generally ignored the fact that every Palestinian political faction is also a terrorist organization.
In addition to his morally outrageous characterization of Israel and factually inaccurate account of its foundations, Obama struck out at the Jewish state through the two policies he outlined in his address. His first policy involves coercing Israel into barring all Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria (otherwise known as the West Bank), and Jerusalem.... Abbas made clear in his Washington Post interview last week, Obama’s trenchant campaign against Jewish construction in these areas has convinced the Palestinians they have no reason to be flexible in their positions towards Israel. Indeed, Obama’s assault on Israeli construction and his unsubstantiated, bigoted claim that the presence of Jews in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem impedes progress towards peace ensures that there will be no agreement whatsoever between Israel and the Palestinians.After all, why would the Palestinians make a deal with Israel when they know that Obama will blame Israel for the absence of a peace agreement?
Even more strategically devastating than his castigation of Israel as the villain in the Arab-Israel conflict is Obama’s stated policy towards Iran. In Cairo, Obama offered Iran nuclear energy in exchange for its nuclear-weapons program. This offer has been on the table since 2003 and has been repeatedly rejected by the Iranians. Indeed, they rejected it yet again last week.
... the only rational explanation for his decision to adopt a policy he knows will fail is that he is comfortable with the idea of Iran becoming a nuclear power. And this is something that Israel cannot abide by. ... Obama has overplayed his hand. Far from bending to his will, a large majority of Israelis perceives Obama as a hostile force and has rallied in support of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu against the administration. This public support gives Netanyahu the maneuver room he needs to take the actions that Israel needs to take to defend against the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran and to assert its national rights and to defend itself against Palestinian terrorists and other Arab and non-Arab anti-Semites who wish it ill.