Why should we pay for peace between Israel and Syria?
By Charley Reese
Orlando Sentinel, January 16, 2000
The Israelis have indicated that if they sign a peace deal
with Syria, they expect the U.S. taxpayers to ante up about
$17 billion.
Excuse me. What's in it for us? Frankly it's no skin off
our nose if the Israelis and Syrians don't make peace. Israel
invaded Syria and since 1967 has occupied Syrian territory
on the Golan Heights. For that reason, though a ceasefire
is in place, the two countries remain in a state of war. It
seems to me that it's entirely in the self-interest of the
two countries to make peace, but why should U.S. taxpayers
pay for it? American taxpayers paid for the Camp David peace
treaty and the Wye River Agreement. Altogether, Israel has
tapped American taxpayers for amounts approaching $100 billion
if you throw in the annual bribe to Egypt that was apparently
part of the deal for the Camp David peace treaty.
Now Israel has put the United States on notice that peace with
Syria will cost at least $17 billion, or more money than the
U.S. space program gets annually. Don't you think it's about
time for the American people to put their congressman and
senators on notice that they are not willing to pay for other
people's peace treaties. After all, at the end of all of
America's wars, no third country ever showed up and said, "Hey,
guys, if you make peace, we'll pay you umpty-ump billions."
As I recall we paid for our own wars, our own peace treaties
and most of the time ended up repairing the country we had
whipped. We paid for our own security measures.
I was under the impression that Israel was a sovereign,
independent country, but apparently it is a ward of the American
taxpayers. Or maybe it's us, the Americans, who are not
independent and are under the sovereignty of Israel. After
all, Israel seems to have far more influence in Washington
than the American people. Try squeezing $100 billion out of
the federal treasury for your state and see how far you get.
Neither Israel nor the rest of the Middle East has any
strategic value for the United States. We even import only
a small fraction of our oil imports from the Gulf States. The
plain fact is that Israel is a strategic liability. Israel
modifies and then sells arms and U.S. military technology in
competition with the United States, even selling technology
to America's potential enemies, such as China. It spies on
the U.S. government and, according to the Central Intelligence
Agency, commits industrial espionage against American businesses.
It blew up American diplomatic facilities in Cairo in a covert
scheme to queer U.S. and Egyptian relations. In 1967 it attacked
an American Navy ship in international waters, killing 34 and
wounding 171.
Yet, so powerful is the Israeli lobby's grip on the U.S. Congress
that for 33 years the pleas of the Navy survivors of that ship
for a congressional hearing have gone unheeded. In the meantime,
these loyal American servicemen have been attacked as "anti-
Semitic" simply because they have demanded a public hearing they
are entitled to. As columnist Joe Sobran recently wrote, in America
you are anti-Semitic not if you hate Jews but if Jews hate you.
But that's not all. The Arab world had no quarrel with the United
States until the United States began to one-sidedly support Israel
-- even when it was in the wrong. Every American who has died and
those who will die at the hands of a Middle East terrorist can
thank the Israeli lobby for it. I don't think that you will find
anywhere in world history where a great power has so surrendered
its foreign policy to the lobby of so small a country.
Some day, of course, the American people will wake up to the fact
that they have been played for suckers, but that's probably several
billions of dollars and several hundreds of American lives down
the road.
