The U.S. Role in the Four Wars
Walzer, Michael & Rule, James B.
I APPRECIATE many of Michael Walzer's thoughts on current Israeli-Palestinian conflicts ("The Four Wars of Israel/Palestine," Fall 2002)—a topic on which he and I have often had trouble seeing...
...The first sign of a decent left on this issue would be an acknowledgment that there is strong opposition to settlement policy in Israel and strong support for a twostate solution...
...Israel remains dependent on American support for its survival, not (only) for its expansion, and any radical break in this alliance is more likely to provoke an Arab attack than to bring peace closer...
...2) Please don't write to ask whether we're interested in such and such an article—it makes for useless correspondence...
...Or take a chance and send us your article...
...Look at our last few issues to see if your idea fits in...
...It might, not incidentally, help reduce the worldwide outpourings of hatred now so widely directed at this country...
...But at the same time, Israel is utterly dependent on support from the United States...
...Reading it, one might almost conclude that Israel charts its strategy against the Palestinians strictly on its own, without external sponsorship...
...People who believe that the Elders of Zion control Wall Street and the U. S. government, and that Israel planned the attack on the Trade Towers, and that the CIA carried out the terrorist bombing in Bali won't be fooled by anything so simple...
...Our own responsibilities stand in proportion to the role of our own resources in underwriting Israeli actions...
...Dissent readers would certainly disagree on what any list of unacceptable Israeli policies should include...
...Yet the American government continues to condone these policies, greeting them publicly with "tuttuts" that convince no one...
...The best part of his message is his insistence that any decent solution of this tangled struggle requires both parties to renounce their fantasies of suppression or physical removal of "the wrong kind of people" on the other side...
...its military dominance, while substantial at this moment, is also precarious...
...Michael quite rightly warns those influencing the Palestinians— upholding, exhorting, berating, excusing, and bankrolling—to weigh their actions, lest they share the awful responsibility for Palestinian misdeeds...
...Unlike the case with Israel, we Americans aren't paying for the suicide bombings and other outrages from the Palestinian side...
...A unilateral end to U.S...
...We have to stop thinking of American support for Israel as an invariant fact of life and take a hard look at our own role in abetting it...
...I APPRECIATE many of Michael Walzer's thoughts on current Israeli-Palestinian conflicts ("The Four Wars of Israel/Palestine," Fall 2002)—a topic on which he and I have often had trouble seeing eye-to-eye...
...As we're not an academic journal, we prefer that they, wherever possible, be dropped altogether or worked into the text...
...But we have, as Jim also says, our own reasons for opposing Israeli settlements: the policy of settling the West Bank and Gaza is destructive to any peace process and wrong in itself...
...financial support for Israel, however, won't advance the peace process...
...We will not consider manuscripts submitted simultaneously to several publications...
...To Our Contributors A few suggestions: (1) Be sure to keep a copy of your manuscript...
...But what I want to share is more a reaction to what is missing in the essay than to anything asserted there...
...For us on the American left—indeed, for all fair-minded Americans—this country's sponsorship of Israel has to give great pause...
...The worst is what it says about Israelis' concept of themselves and their nation in relation to other people...
...Please use inclusive language so that we don't have to make adjustments during editing...
...Use of our tax dollars to bankroll actions bound to inflame this already intractable situation is as bad as this country's tacit support a few years ago for equally outrageous policies in El Salvador, Chile, or South Africa...
...None of the unconscionable Israeli policies that have exacerbated the recent chapters of this conflict would have been possible without the vast American military and financial support to that country—the latter alone now running to nearly two billion dollars annually...
...I AGREE WITH Jim Rule on the wrongness of Israeli settlement policy...
...What conclusions would we in Dissent draw about any other country in the world that was slowly, self-consciously extending its boundaries, occupying lands, and claiming the resources of neighboring peoples—and depicting that process as a matter of manifest national destiny...
...This outrageous encroachment of Israeli domination is simply, appallingly, absolutely wrong...
...5) We're usually quick in giving editorial decisions...
...I have disagreements, too, many of them predictable...
...And please remember that we can't consider articles unless they're accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...Americans should be insisting that their country suspend support for Israel as long as such unconscionable policies remain in place...
...If leftists here (and in Europe) really favor two states, and not just one, they should look for an alliance with the Israeli left—and also, if they can find it, with the Palestinian left...
...The Four Wars . . ." is properly explicit on this point...
...MICHAEL WALZER is co-editor of Dissent...
...Of course, we know the opposite—for both sides...
...It makes sense to call for American pressure on right-wing Israeli governments— and, specifically, for reductions in aid to match whatever amounts of money any Israeli government spends on settlements in the occupied territories...
...JAMES B. RULE'S latest book is Computing in Organizations: Myth and Experience...
...And it also requires a more subtle and nuanced American left than has been in evidence in recent antiwar demonstrations and in the campus campaign for divestment from companies doing business in Israel...
...A credible American threat to suspend support to Israel until it eliminates all civilian encroachments beyond the "Green Line" would DISSENT / Winter 2003 n 8 ARGUMENTS dramatically change perceptions of this country all around the world...
...The grave responsibility of Palestinians and their allies for intolerable actions on the other side should have no bearing on American support for Israel's colonial mission...
...If there's a delay, it's because a few editors are reading your article...
...Peacemaking requires a more subtle and nuanced American policy than Jim Rule advocates in his response to my piece...
...This, accordingly, is where we should apply our most urgent efforts...
...Check all your figures, dates, names, etc.—they're the author's responsibility...
...But Israel is a country with real enemies...
...But the two of us seem to agree that Israeli colonization of territory beyond the "Green Line" is one of them...
...DIE EDITORS 82 n DISSENT / Winter 2003...
...But the main reason why people like us should be insisting on such a stance is that the policy of encroachment, and the vision underlying it, are both destructive to peace prospects and profoundly wrong in themselves...
...apparently mine is not exactly the same as Michael Walzer's...
...I don't believe, as he suggests, that ending American support for that policy would reduce hatred for the United States in the Arab and Muslim worlds...
...3) Type your ms double-spaced, with wide margins...
...There is important nongovernmental work to be done, political and ideological work that could strengthen the cause of peace...
...and its enemies are not looking for a two-state solution...
...If you are submitting to Dissent electronically, our e-mail address is editors@dissentmagazine.org . (4) Notes and footnotes should also be typed double-spaced, on a separate sheet...
...Americans need to take the same critical stance toward our own involvement...
Vol. 50 • January 2003 • No. 1
