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May 20, 2004 
Like most Americans, I sympathized entirely with the state of Israel for many years. Read Joe's columns the day he writes them.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.]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

Copyright © 2004 by the Griffin Internet Syndicate,
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