THE HANDSTAND

FEBRUARY 2003


LETTER FROM AMERICA
A Prescription for Mideast Peace: Get Tough With Israel 

By Brigadier General (retired) James J. David
 

A just solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict can only be achieved if U.S. policy is based upon American moral principles and a strict adherence to international law, which run counter to the continued Israeli occupation of Arab territory and the denial of basic rights and freedoms to Palestinians under Israeli military rule.

No peace initiative will ever succeed if it denies the Palestinians the liberty to which all people are entitled.  Unfortunately, the U.S. has always been silent in the face of Israel's continuing occupation, obediently providing military, political and financial support which only strengthens Israel's belligerent posture towards its neighbors.

The confiscation of Arab land in order to build more Jewish settlements, the expulsion of Palestinians, their arrest and imprisonment, the systematic torture in the prisons, the assassination of political leaders, the total absence of due process, the demolition of homes, the uprooting of thousands of olive trees, the diversion to Israel of scarce water resources and the often indiscrimianst killing of men, women, and especially children are violations of international law and moral standards.  Americans have a special responsibility to put a stop to these abuses because these abuses are unjust and because they are being carried out with our resources and with the military and political support of our government.

The United States has a responsibility to intervene in order to prevent hostitilities from occuring anywhere around the world or whenever human rights are being violated.  But, it must do what is right based upon moral principles and not upon influences from special interest groups, political action committees or influential lobbyists.  No rational dialogue is possible when those who dare to speak out are subjected to such intimidation that they fear for their political or professional lives.

A major obstacle to the establishment of such an American policy is the political influence wielded by the Israeli lobby.  Supplementing the lobby's efficient pressure, pro-Israeli political action committees give more money to the campaigns of senators, congressmen and presidential candidates than any other single-issue lobby.  Aggregate contributions by pro-Israeli individuals are even greater.

U.S. policy in the Middle East has been a failure.   Its lopsided support of Israel is the main reason.  It is not good for Israel to live beyond its means and be immune from criticism because of American protection.   This unquestionable protection of Israel and our refusal to condemn this Jewish State no matter what violations of international law and human rights it commits only breeds terrorism.  We Americans now see this terrorism on our own soil.

---Israel receives over $5 billion dollars annually in both military and economic aid from the American taxpayer.  Israel is one of the richest countries in the world, with a per-capita income of $21,000, yet receives $1,200 per person from the United States with no strings attached.  America
needs the money for its own people and for the starving people of less fortunate Third World countries.  The $5 billion in annual foreign aid to Israel has got to stop.

---Israel continues to occupy lands that were seized from its neighbors in 1967.  Continuing the occupation with all its inhumanity and exacerbating it by expelling the original inhabitants and creating new settlements is immoral and illegal and in no one's interest.  This is particularly galling when the settlements are funded by the U.S. taxpayer, who was not asked if he approved of his money being used in this fashion.  It has got to stop.

---Israel has been given free access to U.S. technology, which it has been illegally re-exporting to the People's Republic of China, India, and others.  This technology is going into weapon systems that one day might be used against us.  This misuse of our military technology has got to stop.

---Israel has nuclear weapons that were developed with the technology and materials stolen from the United States.  According to federal law, aid to countries who build nuclear weapons is illegal.  Until Israel joins the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty to permit inspection of its facilities, all military aid or assistance from the United States should stop.

---Israel continues to spy on the United States to obtain civilian and military technology.  After China, itis the most active country spying against the United States, even though it calls itself an ally and a friend.  The espionage has got to stop.

---The Israeli lobby has effectively blocked American business relations with countries that Israel considers enemies, like Iran and Syria.  That has cost tens of thusands of American jobs.  This interference in our commercial affairs must stop.

---Whenever Israel invades one of its neighbors or kills innocent civilians, the United States is prompt to veto any United Nations resolutions that criticize Israel.  The U.S. could not even bring itself to condemn the Qana Lebanese refugee camp massacre in which over 100 civilians, including two American boys from Michigan, were killed.  Shielding Israel is an international embarrassment and places U.S. citizens in danger around the world, including our own soil, as we recently experienced with the Pentagon and the WTC attack.  Israel must begin taking responsibility for its actions, and erosion of our national prestige in order to protect Israel must stop.

---Israel discriminates against the Christians and Muslims who live within its borders in numerous ways, most notably by forbidding  them to buy, lease, or rent 92 percent of the land in the country, which is earmarked for "Jews only."  Israel must decide whether it wants to be a democracy, or a state in which only Jews have civil rights.  If it is to be the former, it must offer all citizens equally before the law.

---The influence of Israel's lobby and its political action committees has turned Congress and the White House into "yes men" for Israeli interests.  Israel should get out of our politics and stay out.  The promiscuous use of the label "anti-Semitic" to tar and feather any critic of Israel must also stop.

---All of Israel's vocal supporters and those who do its bidding in Congress and the White House should remember that when Stephen Decatur said "my country, right or wrong..." he was referring to the United States.  Israel is a foreign country which, rightly, has interests and concerns that are different from ours.  It should react to those concerns in light of its own national interests.  We should do likewise. 

The situation in the Middle East will not and cannot improve until American aid to Israel is either phased out or brought under control.  That is the key to peace.

Israel is a wealthy country, sixteenth among all countries in per-capita income.  Thanks to American support and protection, Israelis and their government have been living beyond their means and snubbing international law since recognition of Israel.  Massive American aid only encourages the right wing in Israel and spreads settlements on Arab Lands.

But just mention Israel's foreign aid program to your congressman and most likely you'll get the canned response. "Israel is our strategic asset in the Middle East."  You'll know that answer was bought and paid for.  As former Senator James Abzourek once pointed out, to call Israel a strategic asset in the Middle East is like thanking the arsonist for calling the fire department that put the fire out.

Donald Bergus, a former ambassador to Sudan and retired diplomat, has written:  "At the State Department we used to predict that if Israel's Prime Minister should announce that the world is flat, within 24 hours Congress would pass a resolution congratulating him on the discovery."  Is it any wonder he would write such a thing?

James J. David is a retired Brigadier General and a graduate of the U.S.
Army's Command and General Staff College, and the National Security Course,
National Defense University, Washington DC. He served as a Company Commander
with the 101st Airborne Division in the Republic of Vietnam in 1969 and 1970
and also served nearly 3 years of Army active duty in and around the Middle
East from 1967-1969.

Santa Cruz Sentinal
January 4, 2003
The War Racket Lives On

"The capitalists are so hungry for profits that they will sell us the rope to hang them with."
--V. Lenin

Buried within Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration that was presented earlier this month to the UN is information that the Bush administration found so embarrassing, it edited out 8,000 pages before it presented the report to the 10 non-permanent members of the UN Security Council. What is the Bush Cartel trying to hide? Perhaps it is the list of U.S. companies that helped to arm Iraq.

The German newspaper Die Tageszeitung recently published a list of 24 major U.S. companies named in the Iraqi report that illegally aided that nation's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs in the 1980s. Some of the familiar names on the list include Hewlett Packard, Honeywell, Du Pont, Rockwell,
Eastman Kodak, Bechtel and Unisys. Only Germany (which had 80 firms aiding Iraq, some as recently as last year), had more business ties to Iraq than the U.S. In
addition, Die Tageszeitung reported that the U.S. government itself offered plenty of assistance to Saddam Hussein's weapons programs. The Departments of
Energy, Defense, Commerce and Agriculture all covertly assisted Iraq's weapons programs in the 1980s. Even the Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia nuclear weapons laboratories pitched in by training Iraqi nuclear scientists and giving them non-fissile material for construction of a nuclear bomb.

To see the Bush administration accuse Iraq of deception in the UN dossier while censoring the same report to protect U.S. corporations and the government
itself from scrutiny in arming Iraq is merely the latest example of President Bush's brazen hypocrisy in trying to ram a phony war down our throats.

Seeing U.S. companies arming potential enemies for fun and profit is nothing new. In the years leading up to World War II, several major corporations aided the fascist cause up to and, in some cases, well after Pearl Harbor.

Henry Ford supported Adolf Hitler and lent the Nazis money from the early 1920s until the start of the war. The House of Morgan fronted Italian dictator Benito Mussolini $100 million to keep his government from going bankrupt and many other American banks lent money to Hitler and Mussolini.

Standard Oil (Esso then, Exxon now) and Texaco both sold gasoline and other petroleum products to Francisco Franco's army in Spain and to the German and Italian military forces up to and after Pearl Harbor. Esso was a member of the same industrial cartel as I.G. Farben and shared patents with the Germans for making high octane aviation fuel and synthetic rubber.

Other corporations that were members of Nazi cartels included Alcoa, General Electric, General Motors and Du Pont. GM's Opel subsidiary in Germany built the planes and tanks for the Panzer divisions all the while GM dragged its heels at home, building equipment for the U.S. military.

Pratt & Whitney, Curtiss-Wright and Douglas Aircraft all sold aircraft parts to Hitler. Curtiss-Wright salesmen demonstrated the then-secret technique of dive bombing to the Germans in order sell its planes.

The histories of the "Good War" tend to gloss over this stuff, but all of this was documented by the late muckraking journalist George Seldes in his 1943 book,
"Facts and Fascism." And, if the revelations in the UN dossier are true, nothing much has changed in the decades since World War II. Given the track record of American capitalism, there's no reason not to doubt otherwise.

Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler laid it out back in 1935 when he wrote that "war is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." It was only after he retired from the Marines that Butler said he realized that he had spent the bulk of his 33 years in the Corps as "a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers" as "a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism" in carrying out military operations on their behalf in China, the hilippines, Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Haiti.

In looking back on his experience as a "gangster for capitalism," Butler said in a 1933 speech that he "could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three districts. We operated on three continents."

And the racket continues. Vice President Cheney's old company Haliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, has picked up billions of dollars in contracts
building military bases around the world for U.S. forces in the "War on Terror." George H.W. Bush sits on the board of the Carlyle Group, the investment firm which also owns several defense contracting firms.

The oil companies are salivating over the chance to control the sizable oil reserves in Iraq. And the defense contractors have been raking in the dough since the Sept. 11 attacks and will be making even more money when Persian Gulf War II begins as expected sometime in late January.

Butler, who died in 1940, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor twice and had a far better knowledge of the true costs of war than any current member of the Bush administration. He once said that "there are only two things we should fight
for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket."

Nearly 70 years after Butler said those words, war remains a racket and corporations still have no problems cutting deals with dictators if there's a
buck to be made. Remember this as the propaganda campaign for Persian Gulf War II starts revving up.

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