USAs_støtte_til_israel_og__jødisk_lobby

From: Knut Rognes (knrognes@online.no)
Date: Tue Oct 24 2000 - 23:01:16 MET DST

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    KK-Forum,

    det er vanlig på venstresiden å forklare USAs støtte til Israel som
    resultatet av en meget sterk jødisk lobby. Den siste som forfektet dette
    syn var vel Fritz Nilsen i KK (mulig jeg husker feil og at det var en annen
    kjent person). Dette syn må ikke få spre seg. Det er en oppdatert versjon
    av Sion Vises Protokoller, om de allmektige jøder.

    En viktig og tankevekkende artikkel om dette er å finne på ZNet
    http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/mar95zunes.htm.

    Anti-Semitism in U.S. Middle East Policy
    By Stephen Zunes

    her er noen utdrag:

    *********
    The fact is that U.S. support for the Israeli government and opposition to
    Palestinian rights are based not on an all-powerful lobby, but by the same
    elite interests that lead the U.S. to support any militarized pro-Western
    government and oppose any Third World nationalist movement. The U.S.
    “supports” Israel for what that country has done for U.S. interests.

    Israel has successfully prevented victories by radical nationalist
    movements in Lebanon, Jordan, and Yemen, as well as in Palestine. They have
    kept Syria, for many years an ally of the Soviet Union, in check. Their air
    force is predominant throughout the region. Israel's frequent wars have
    provided battlefield testing for American arms, often against Soviet
    weapons. They have been a conduit for U.S. arms to regimes and movements
    too unpopular in the United States for openly granting direct military
    assistance, such as South Africa, Iran, Guatemala, and the Nicaraguan
    Contras. Israeli military advisors have assisted the Contras, the
    Salvadoran junta, and foreign occupation forces in Namibia and Western
    Sahara. Their secret service has assisted the U.S. in intelligence
    gathering and covert operations. Israel has missiles capable of reaching
    the former Soviet Union and has cooperated with the U.S. military
    industrial complex with research and development for new jet fighters,
    anti-missile defense systems, and even the Strategic Defense Initiative.

    As a result, the United States has been encouraging some of the more
    chauvinistic and militaristic elements in the Israeli government,
    undermining the last vestiges of Labor Zionism's commitment to socialism,
    non-alignment, and cooperation with the Third World. As former Secretary of
    State Henry Kissinger put it, “Israel's obstinacy. . . serves the purposes
    of both our countries best.” As Israeli military strength and repression of
    the Palestinians has increased, so has U.S. aid, contradicting the
    widespread belief that U.S. aid is to defend a threatened and democratic
    Israel.

    ....

    One of the more unsettling aspects of U.S. policy is how closely it
    corresponds with historic anti-Semitism. Throughout Europe in past
    centuries, the ruling class of a given country would, in return for
    granting limited religious and cultural autonomy, set up certain
    individuals in the Jewish community to become the visible agents of the
    oppressive social order, such as tax collectors and money lenders. When the
    population would threaten to rise up against the ruling class, the rulers
    could then blame the Jews, sending the wrath of an exploited people against
    convenient scape-goats, resulting in the pogroms and other notorious waves
    of repression which have taken place throughout the Jewish Diaspora.

    ...

    The idea behind Zionism was to break this cycle through the creation of a
    Jewish nation-state, where Jews would no longer be dependent on the ruling
    class of a given country. The tragic irony is that, as a result of Israel's
    inability or unwillingness to make peace with its Arab neighbors, the
    creation of Israel has perpetuated this cycle on a global scale, with
    Israel being used by Western imperialist powers -- initially Great Britain
    and France and more recently the United States -- to maintain their
    interests in the Middle East. Therefore, one finds autocratic Arab
    governments and other Third World regimes blaming “Zionism” for their
    problems rather than the broader exploitative global economic system and
    their own elites who benefit from and help perpetuate such a system.

    ...

    Historically, any country which has pursued the policies that Israel has
    followed -- extraordinarily high levels of militarization, territorial
    conquest, suppression of minorities, flaunting of international law, and
    gross and systematic human rights violation -- has had to pay the
    consequences. The inevitable repercussions are self-defeating: such
    policies eventually result in economic collapse, military defeat,
    debilitating international sanctions, or internal rebellion.

    However, the Israeli leadership has been able to maintain its otherwise
    self-destructive direction because it has been backed diplomatically,
    financially, and militarily by the world's dominant superpower. The need to
    compromise by allowing for Palestinian national rights has not yet become
    apparent to the majority of Israelis and Jews elsewhere, knowing they have
    an American umbrella under which to hide from the consequences of their
    actions.

    Therefore, those who attack Zionism as inherently racist, expansionist, or
    militaristic are once again falling into the trap of blaming the Jews
    instead of those who are, in fact, responsible. Any nationalist movement
    based in a hostile region which has received the kind of backing Israel has
    would likely behave no differently.

    *****************

    Den ultraortodokse teolog Yeshayahu Leibowitz, var en av de første som
    snakket om nazisme i Israel. Han mente Israels politikere og andre "har
    glemt - eller forsøker å se bort fra - at styrken i Israels knyttneve
    skyldes at den er ikledd en slåsshanske av amerikansk stål foret med
    dollar. Hva med Israels sikkerhet den dagen amerikanerne finner det for
    godt å trekke tilbake hansken og foret?"

    Knut Rognes



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