Historic and horrific events are unfolding in Gaza. The world is witnessing the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people – half of them are children – to refugee camps and an uncertain future, and the anticipated military action that will literally reduce their homes to rubble. For millions of people all over the planet, including many who may not have understood the events that led to this outrage, this event will establish the Israeli government as a rogue state and perpetrator of genocide against the Palestinian people.
Atrocities are carried out by human beings. It is logical and necessary to identify the Israeli leaders who can be deemed responsible for the harrowing of Gaza. But here in the US we can not simply blame the Israeli government and be done with it. It is well established under international law that collective punishment of the kind we are now witnessing is a war crime. But if the Israeli military is the knife that makes the cut, the US government is the hand that holds the knife and must also be condemned.
From the Kennedy administration to the present, the US government has maintained that it is responsible for providing Israel with a Quantitative Military Edge over its adversaries. While the Truman and Eisenhower administrations had embargoed military aid to Israel, President Kennedy ended that policy, selling Israel the Hawk antiaircraft missile system in 1962. Over the next sixty years, US aid – especially military aid – has risen from millions to billions of dollars.
Of course, there is a quid pro quo for this military aid. Currently, the US gives Israel $3 billion in aid each year through Foreign Military Financing. That program requires Israel to spend at least 74% of the acquisition of weapons and training from US military contractors. In other words, not only does the US bankroll the Israeli military, but it uses that bankroll as a subsidy to weapons manufacturers here in the US.
Although the US is by far the world’s largest arms dealer, sending military aid to 160 nations (and lining the pockets of US weapons makers in the process), US military aid to Israel is twice that of the next six largest recipients. It is this massive, ongoing funding of the Israeli military that ensures the US policy of ensuring Israel’s Quantitative Military Edge.
Viewing the relationship between the US and Israel in this light, Israel is like the NATO nations of Western Europe. Israel extends the reach of US foreign policy. While policy decisions by the Israeli government in the years since the Kennedy administration have not always tracked US tactical goals in the region, it is a consistent strategic partner.
People in the US who are in solidarity with Palestine justifiably join in the international condemnation of Israel’s genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people. But just as the US calls its connection with Israel a “special relationship,” the movement for peace and social justice in the US has a special responsibility to hold our own government accountable for Israel’s actions.
For years, US liberals and progressives have debated the “right” solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict. That is a topic better left to the Palestinian people to work out. Far more critical for us is to shed the belief that the US wants to bring peace to the region, when it funds Israel precisely to maintain US hegemony in the region.
The greatest role we can play in solidarity with Palestine is to end military aid to Israel. That role must be part of an overall effort to dismantle the US military industrial complex that strangles us and permits the US government to maintain its stranglehold on the world.
Republished with revisions from the author’s blog, Tell No Lies. Claim No Easy Victories… We thank the author for his kind open-ended offer of republication.
