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Unequal Partners
 Like most Americans, I
sympathized entirely with
the state of Israel for many years.  It
won our attention
as well as our hearts in 1967, when it fought a seemingly valiant war
against its Arab neighbors — a tiny, lone democracy struggling to
survive amid what we thought were bloodthirsty savages.
Israel had a wonderful image in
those days. Its ambassador to the United Nations, Abba Eban, made its case
to the world with moving eloquence. He seemed the perfect spokesman for
a nation that was both civilized and heroic. His speeches were as thrilling
as Churchill’s must have been in 1940.
Few Americans questioned that
favorable picture until 1982, when Israel’s prime minister,
Menachem Begin, departed from the script. He launched a devastating war
against Lebanon, featuring the wanton aerial bombing of Beirut, killing
thousands of innocent people without remorse; another thousand were
slaughtered in refugee camps under the eye of General Ariel Sharon.
Sharon denied responsibility, but
few believed him, and even fewer would believe him now. As prime
minister, he has shown an outright relish for bloodshed. Every day brings
new stories of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian men, women, and
children. There always seem to be lots of dead children. It’s no
longer plausible to think this is accidental.
The latest incident, as I write,
drew a rare complaint from the Bush administration, which has been
endlessly deferential to Sharon. President Bush calls him “a man of
peace,” which nobody has ever thought of calling him before. But
maybe this time there was one dead child too many.
Israel’s chief asset has
long been American support. Everything it does is calculated to preserve
that indispensable ace. When Sharon orders the assassinations of
Palestinian leaders, he is testing Bush’s will more than the
Palestinians’. It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world
thinks; the American reaction is the one that really counts. But nothing he
does moves Bush to anything stronger than a feeble scolding.
![[Breaker quote: Bush is no match for Sharon.]](2004breakers/040520.gif) A
few months ago, a French diplomat undiplomatically called Israel a
“shitty little country” at a private dinner in London. His
Jewish hostess, herself a journalist, caused an uproar by leaking the
conversation to the press. Apologies were demanded, but the Frenchman
refused to budge. He had only said what most of the world thinks.
Today Israel’s image could
hardly be shabbier. It gets worse by the day. The same is true of the United
States as the Iraq war continues. The two countries have lost the
international sympathy they once enjoyed and are now, in fact, linked in
infamy.
This is fine by Sharon, who
doesn’t care how brutal he looks and is glad to have the United
States pitted with his country against the world. Whatever is bad for
Arab-American relations is good for Sharon. The Iraq war is a godsend to
him, which he owes not only to his neoconservative apologists here but to
crazed fundamentalists eagerly awaiting the End Times.
Bush is attempting not just the
impossible, but the absurd, when he hopes to win Arab friendship by
killing Arabs while indulging Sharon in killing Arabs. In this curious
relationship, Sharon has Bush’s number. Bush — the most
powerful man in the world — is afraid of him. He is Bush’s
alpha male. So Sharon, prime minister of a small, faraway country, is
dealing from strength with our quavering president.
Sharon is a tough, fearless man
and a superb tactician. His modus operandi is to create, and exploit,
turmoil. So far he has usually come out on top. The sort of hubris that
destroys other men has only served him well. When he seems to be taking a
risk, he turns out to know just what he’s doing. He learned early on
that it’s perfectly safe for him to defy Bush’s wishes.
Bush is simply no match for him.
He watches helplessly as Sharon implicates the United States in
Israel’s crimes, making us more enemies than we already had. Does
he even realize that his “reliable ally” is outsmarting him
— and discrediting him — at every turn?
So two countries that once
prided themselves on being models for the world have now become the
terrors of the earth. It’s hard for an American of my age, raised in
patriotic pride, to get used to having his country viewed by foreigners as
not only dangerous, but profoundly disgusting.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2004 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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