America
Is Not A Role Model
By Gideon Levy
- Those who
trample human rights in Israel are having a field
day: Look at the behavior of the Americans in
Iraq, they say. Every time troops open fire at a
checkpoint, every killing of a civilian, every
picture of siege and plight, leads to merriment
here. The United States, the cradle of democracy,
the leader of the free world, is behaving like
us.
- According to
one report, "IDF officers find it difficult
to stop smiling" when they hear the reports
of the war in Iraq. From now on, no one will be
able to criticize their conduct in the
territories. The New York Times reported that
Israel even hastened to suggest that the United
States learn from its experience in the use of
tanks, helicopters and bulldozers in the center
of cities and refugee camps.
- Similar delight
has also gripped those wishing to curb the media
in Israel: Look at how America is censoring the
images of the war in its media - no coffins and
no prisoners, how the media has volunteered
enthusiastically to enlist in the war effort. And
how they fired the courageous reporter Peter
Arnett, without so much as batting an eyelash,
for expressing his opinions on enemy television.
- This keeping in
line with the behavior of the United States is
another case of the collateral damage of this
base war. America is not an example for anything.
 Even before going to
war, there was no way it could serve as a role
model, and going to this unjustified war in Iraq
has deprived it completely of the right to serve
as a light unto the nations and the Jews in
upholding freedom, morality and human rights. 
- So let us not
be quick to conclude that what America is allowed
to do, we are allowed to do, too. Neither they
nor we have the right to kill needlessly, to harm
and humiliate civilians, deprive them of their
freedom, starve them, take away their livelihood
and trample on their sovereignty, or to recruit
the media for the war effort.
- America, which
is fighting an illegal war, is an occupier in
every respect.
- Long before the
first Iraqi civilian was shot at a checkpoint,
the United States was in no position to take
pride in all its deeds, either at home or
externally. Not all its citizens benefit from the
fact that it is a large democracy.
- For example, in
the past 29 years, 816 people have been executed
in the United States, as in the darkest of
regimes, with a clear bias against the blacks.
Studies show a black murderer is 11 times more
likely to be executed than a white person
convicted of the same crime. More than one-fifth
of the children in the country that is supposed
to be the leader of the free world live below the
poverty line, and 41 million Americans, among
them 8.5 million children, do not have any form
of medical insurance. Is that the definition of a
just society? Some 3.5 million Americans are
registered as homeless, though the real number is
estimated to be twice that many.
- A country that
launches a war at a cost of hundreds of billions
of dollars when it lacks the ability to care for
millions of homeless people and poor children
cannot consider itself enlightened or a
liberator.
- Outside its
borders, the United States cannot always serve as
a moral model, either. Hundreds of thousands of
people, including many civilians, have been
killed and murdered in the wars and military
campaigns it has launched since World War II -
such as in Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere - and
in the murderous regimes the United States has
brought to power or assisted.
- However, even
if the United States had been a beacon of
justice, its decision to go to war in Iraq and
turn its army into an occupying force deprives it
of the right to be considered a paragon. To the
remarks of journalist Thomas Friedman (in an
interview to Ari Shavit in Haaretz Magazine over
the weekend), to the effect that the American
democracy becomes aggressive when threatened, we
should add that democracies cease to be such when
they become occupiers. France, Belgium, Britain,
the United States and Israel, all of them
enlightened democracies, lost the justness of
their cause when they became occupying powers.
That is inevitable.
- As soon as the
United States starts to become mired in the
occupation, today's enlightened soldiers will
become tomorrow's inhuman troops.
 They will lose the remnants of their
moral image and will kill, destroy and abuse. The
children huggers will become the children
persecutors, the food distributors will turn into
agents of starvation, the wound healers will
block ambulances at checkpoints, the liberators
will become jailers. Humiliating the occupied and
stripping them of their rights will become the
norm. The liberated Iraqi people will pay in the
form of heavy losses, hunger and humiliation,
even if these are temporary. And they will not
forget. That is the impact of occupation, whether
in the narrow alleys of a Gaza Strip refugee camp
or in the sprawling city of Baghdad.
- If there is one
lesson Israel can impart to the Americans, it is
that every occupation is appalling, that it
tramples the occupied and corrupts the occupier.
If the Americans pause for a moment to see what
is going on in the Tul Karm refugee camp and in
the casbah of Nablus, they will see what they
will soon become. And if Israelis look at what is
happening in Iraq, perhaps they will understand
that it is not the Palestinians but, above all,
we who have created the present situation.
- An occupier is
an occupier, whether he comes from a democracy
that is two- and-a-quarter centuries old or from
"the only democracy in the Middle
East."
- ..http://www.haaretz.com/
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