Jackson Lears wrote in Harper’s Magazine that George Washington cautioned the new republic to avoid both passionate attachment and habitual hatred in engagement with other countries. Our country has strayed from this admonition in its present foreign relationships.
The examples that Lears offers are a full-throated, uncritical United States alliance with Israel and an ardent conviction of a persistent threat from Russia. Considering the former, the U.S. relationship with Israel has led to the tendency “to excuse Israel’s wars of conquest as retaliation against their supposedly hostile Arab neighbors.”
The U.S. was the first country to recognize the state of Israel in 1948. Since then, the U.S. has accepted that nothing Israel might do would offend the Americans to the point of reprisal. Continued U.S. military aid is an example of the country’s untrammeled complicity and tolerance for Israel’s wars with Iran and with Palestinians living in Gaza and in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank.
A further example of the unexamined emotional alliance with Israel is the House-drafted National Defense Authorization Act for 2027 that would integrate the Israeli Defense Force into the Pentagon’s most sensitive research, development, testing, evaluation and data-sharing efforts. Lears interprets this move will result in “immunity from congressional oversight as (Israel) drags the United States into its wars of conquest while weapons contractors acquire further access to American taxpayers’ dollars. … It would be an unprecedented surrender of American independence to a foreign power.”
To break away from this unexamined emotional commitment to Israel, it is important to suspend the can-do-no-wrong relationship long enough to become informed about the realities of Israel’s conduct. According to news outlet Israel-Palestine News, “In the past three years, Israeli soldiers and settlers have violently attacked Palestinians (in the West Bank) on a daily basis, killing over 1,200 — with near-total impunity. Israel has also demolished over 3,400 homes and structures in the West Bank, leaving thousands without shelter. Israeli settlers and soldiers have destroyed 286,000 olive trees, dealing a massive blow to the Palestinian economy.”
Recently, in response to a Palestinian killing two Israeli soldiers, Israeli forces have sealed off all entrances to Hebron city, its refugee camps, towns and villages, while pursuing residents and their vehicles through the streets. This is an example of unjust collective punishment.
It is not only the Israeli military that must be called to account. Steve Hendrix of the Washington Post has reported, “Dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villagers trying to gather their autumn olive harvest on Friday (Oct. 23), setting groves on fire and slinging rocks in a coordinated assault…” They also knocked to the ground Heidi Levine, a Washington Post photographer. She was kicked repeatedly, resulting in hospitalization and treatment for lacerations, a broken rib and four broken vertebrae.
Walid Habbas, a researcher at the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies (MADAR), has noted there are “three interconnected developments that have accelerated under the outgoing (Israeli) government, affecting how residents navigate their daily lives.” The first is economic. Palestinians have lost jobs inside Israel. Palestinian taxes are being withheld by Israel. And checkpoints and road closures have made it increasingly difficult to move goods between cities, undermining businesses and livelihoods as well as fragmenting Palestinian families and relationships. The second development is the intensification and spread of settler violence. The third, and perhaps the most consequential, is the growing fear of forced displacement which is increasingly part of everyday conversations in the West Bank.
These are the everyday events in the life of Palestinians under unquestioned Israeli military rule. It is time for U.S. leadership to face the facts. Israel is violating international law and the ethics of good relationships with its neighbors, the Palestinians, as well as with Arab nations such as Iran. This conduct cannot readily be excused under the guise of friendship.
To do so is for the U.S. to accept the role of being complicit with Israel’s military aggression. If the U.S. really wants to be Israel’s good neighbor, it must be clear-eyed and willing to call out Israel’s unjust actions and implement reprisals such as withholding military aid. Also, regardless of Israel’s response, Congress must reject the part of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2027 that would integrate Pentagon data with the Israeli Defense Forces.
George Washington and our founders would approve of refraining from the unexamined passionate relationship with Israel or with any other nation. A free republic depends upon it.
John Buttrick writes from his Vermont Folk Rocker in his Concord home, Minds Crossing.