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"As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this."
It is a safe bet that Hillary Clinton's Likud-friendly lieutenants and their new junior partners in London are busy conferring with Tel Aviv right now about how to handle the P.R. challenge caused by the upstart leaders of Turkey and Brazil with the temerity to work out a deal with Tehran. (Never mind that Obama personally asked them to do it.)
How does one make into a bad thing Iran's agreement to ship half its uranium out of the country, even if additional steps might still be needed to assure the world that Iran is telling the truth when it says it isn't building a nuclear bomb?
More and more people around the globe are seeing Obama as subservient to the Likud Lobby, perhaps not as enthusiastically as Bush was, but still unwilling to put action behind his occasional words of dissatisfaction. Important players in the Middle East, as well as increasingly assertive countries like Turkey and Brazil, conclude that the policies and behavior of Tel Aviv and Washington are virtually identical.
And then there is the $3 billion or so that the United States gives Israel each year that enables the Israelis to arm themselves to the teeth. It is understandable, then, that many will blame Washington for what happened in the dark of night, on the eve of Memorial Day, on the high seas.
Hard Lessons
The likely results are three-fold:
1)--On Memorial Day next year, there may well be hundreds more "fallen heroes" to honor, killed by Muslim and other "militants" who make no distinction between what the U.S. has done in Iraq and Afghanistan and what Israel does in Gaza and the occupied West Bank -- and add Lebanon and Syria, for good measure.
As Gen. David Petraeus pointed out earlier this year, the unresolved Arab-Israeli "conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel" and thus puts U.S. troops at greater risk.
"Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the [region] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world," Petraeus said. "Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support."
2)--The linking of U.S. support with Israeli actions increases the incentive of terrorists to ply their dark arts in the United States.
While it is difficult to find a measure of objectivity in official U.S. government documents on this topic, every so often there is a slip between cup and lip. There was such a slip on Sept. 23, 2004, for example, when the Pentagon-sponsored U.S. Defense Science Board issued a formal report concluding:
"Muslims do not "hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights."
You will not be surprised to find out that the board's report was generally suppressed in the FCM, as were the following, more specific, examples:
"By his own account, KSM's [9/11 "mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's] animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experience there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." [9/11 Commission Report, July 22, 2004, page 147]
And what motivated Dr. Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, the 32-year-old Jordanian physician of Palestinian origin, who on Dec. 30, 2009, detonated a suicide bomb at a CIA site in eastern Afghanistan, killing seven American CIA operatives? According to his brother, al-Balawi "changed" during the three-week-long Israeli offensive in Gaza, which killed some 1,400 Gazans.
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