JERUSALEM NEWS
NEWS AND INFORMATION
Events, happenings, and Opinions Concerning
Israel, Israelites, Judah, and Everyone Else
Jerusalem News-792
Jerusalem News-792
27 Tammuz 5768, 30 July 2008
Contents:
1. Book Review Shows US Influence on
Israeli Military Action and Lack of it
2. The Right of Return and the Forgotten Refugees By Peggy Shapiro
3. Palestinian Authority Libel: Prisoners are used for Nazi-like medical
experiments
================================================
1. Book Review Shows US Influence on
Israeli Military Action and Lack of it
Arms Transfers to Israel
The Strategic Logic behind American Military Assistance
by David Rodman
Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2007. 129 pp. $45
Reviewed by David Schenker
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1938
Rodman's study of U.S. arms transfers to Israel provides important insight into
this critical and oft-misunderstood element of the strategic relationship.
Relying on extensive U.S. archival research, the book details the evolution of
this relationship from Israel's early reliance on Western European equipment
through the start of U.S. arms sales during the Johnson era to the end of the
Reagan administration.
Rodman's thesis is that arms sales have provided Washington with critical
leverage over Israel, enabling the United States to "wring concessions out of
Israel in order to advance American national interests," particularly during
Middle East wars. For Israel's part, according to Rodman, weapons purchases from
the United States constitute an acceptable sacrifice of autonomy for security.
The slender volume is a quick and absorbing read and is full of well-footnoted
examples illustrating the complicated dynamics of U.S. and Israeli
decision-making related to weapons sales.
The argument is convincing. Rodman points out that U.S. efforts to influence
other Israeli policies via this lever, such as its pursuit of a nuclear weapons
program, have proved decidedly less effective except during Middle East wars,
when, as Rodman argues, U.S. influence on Israeli policy has been dramatic. In
1967, pressure from Washington forced Israeli restraint in the face of Egyptian
provocations, such as the closure of the Straits of Tiran. When the United
States recognized the futility of diplomacy, Rodman says, Washington gave the
Jewish state a tacit "green light" to embark on war. The same held true, Rodman
points out, during the 1969-70 War of Attrition when Israel was compelled to
stop its bombing raids against Egypt after Washington threatened to withhold the
military aid and diplomatic support necessary for the raids to continue.
In perhaps the most striking example, in 1973 U.S. pressure appears to have
dissuaded the government of Israel from taking preemptive military action
against Syria and Egypt. "Caught between the Israel Defense Forces General Staff
and the Nixon administration," Rodman says, "the Meir government chose to follow
the position of Israel's patron rather than the advice of its own military
experts." After the outbreak of hostilities, the Meir government accepted the
Nixon administration's cease-fire proposal because, Rodman writes, Israel had no
alternative but to "trade the postwar concessions desired by the United States
for continued American [military] support."
As Rodman deftly points out, Israel's conduct during the 1967-1973 period is
"not comprehensible unless it is examined in the context of the American-Israeli
patron-client relationship." Arms Transfers to Israel provides a comprehensive
picture of the origins and development of the U.S.-Israeli military assistance
relationship. In doing so, although not intentionally, Rodman's study goes a
long way toward dispelling the now fashionable myth that the strategic
relationship with Israel is driven primarily by domestic U.S. politics.
2. The Right of Return and the Forgotten
Refugees By Peggy Shapiro
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://
www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/
the_right_of_return_and_the_fo.html
Extracts:
Enter "Right of Return" on any search engine and you will get some
variation of the Palestinian claim that Palestinian Arabs who left Israel in
1948 and all of their descendants have the an "inalienable right" to return to
Israel. The estimate of the number of Arab refugees (when five Arab nations
attacked the new government of Israel in May, 1948) varies, but according to the
U.N.'s report in 1949, there were approximately 700,000 refugees. United Nations
Conciliation Commission, October 23, 1950 Today, Palestinians assert the "Right
of Return" for around 4.5 million people, most of whom have never set foot in
Israel. UNRWA rolls An influx of over four million Muslims into Israel would, of
course, destroy Israel as Jewish state.
On March 19, 2008, a group of Jewish representatives addressed the United
Nations Human Rights Council to present The Case for Rights and Redress on
behalf of refugees caused by the Arab-Israeli conflicts. These are not the ones
who hold the title of "refugees for the longest period of time in recorded
history" and who have been supported by UNRWA welfare in "refugee camps" for the
past sixty years. No, the U.N. address was for Justice for Jewish Refugees from
Arab Countries, the 850,000 Jews who were expelled from their homes in Arab
lands. The report refers to documents recently uncovered in UN archives that
"reveal a pattern of state-sanctioned oppression that precipitated the mass
exodus of Jews from 10 Arab countries."
According to official Arab statistics, 856,000 Jews leaving their homes in Arab
countries from 1948 until the early 1970s. The property they were forced to
leave behind is worth more than $300 billion today. The expelled Jews held deeds
to 100,000 square kilometers (more than four times the size of the State of
Israel). Before the United Nations became an agent of animus towards Israel, it
recognized the plight of all refugees. UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which
was passed on December 11, 1950, recommended that both Palestinian and Jewish
refugees should be permitted to return if they are willing to live in peace with
their neighbors.
Jews have been an indigenous people of the Middle East for over 2,500 years.
On the basis of race and religion, Arab regimes subjected Jews to arbitrary
arrest, confiscation of property and expulsions.
The UNHCR has ruled that Jews fleeing from Arab countries were "bona fide"
refugees, victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The Jewish Community Relations Council, as part of the initiative to secure
redress for Jewish refugees from Arab countries and educate the public about the
mass violation of human rights of Jews in Arab countries, is collecting
documents to catalogue the loss of extensive communal and individual assets.
If there is an "inalienable right of return," then the price tag for the Arabs
states will be hefty. I think Israel could be convinced to settle for a
five-fold increase in land and $300 billion restitution.
3. Palestinian Authority Libel:
Prisoners are used for Nazi-like medical experiments
By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, July 9, 2008
http://pmw.org.il/Bulletins_july2008.html#b080708
Israel Science and Technology Homepage -
www.science.co.il
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