Bush likes to talk tough, but this crisis has shown him to be the exact opposite. In Texas, they'd say, 'big hat, no land.' --Eric Margolis

 http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_apr14.html

April 14, 2002

Why Bush dances to Sharon's tune

Israel's right-wing Likud party dominates U.S. Mideast policy through a powerful lobby in the American Congress

By ERIC MARGOLIS
Contributing Foreign Editor

WHO really is running America's Mideast policy? Last week, the astounded world saw the grotesque spectacle of President George W. Bush pleading in vain with Ariel Sharon, leader of a nation of only 6.3 million people which receives almost $5 billion in annual U.S. aid, to cease laying waste the Occupied West Bank.

Ignoring worldwide condemnation and demands from the UN Security Council, Sharon ordered his armour, much of it American-supplied, to accelerate shooting up and bulldozing Palestinian towns, refugee camps and all symbols of Palestinian identity or statehood. Twenty years ago, Sharon invaded Lebanon, "to crush Palestinian terrorism." His big guns and warplanes blasted Beirut for three weeks, killing 17,000 civilians. Today, he remains determined to hold Arab lands Israel conquered in 1967 and to destroy any hopes or vestiges of a viable Palestinian state.

President Bush and senior aides Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell were left looking weak, indecisive, and inept. Bush clearly is a political soulmate of ultra-hawk Sharon; they share a mutual detestation for Yasser Arafat and, it would seem, for Arabs in general.

Bush has been encouraging Sharon's attacks on Palestine for months. But Israel's invasion of the West Bank - reminiscent of Soviet tanks crushing Hungary in 1956 - gravely threatened America's Mideast client regimes, so Bush had to demand Sharon relent.

In an act of sheer farce, Powell was sent on a slow boat to Israel, via Madrid and Morocco. Before Powell even arrived, former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu summoned fawning U.S. senators and arrogantly informed them Powell's mission would fail.

While the rest of the world condemned Israel's invasion and destruction of the Palestinian ghettos, not a peep was heard from the White House, Congress or America's media about Israel's violation of U.S. law in using U.S.-supplied armour and warplanes against civilians. Nor about Israel's violation of the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. There were no protests when Israel's Shimon Peres described massacres of Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers.

Nor even a tut-tut when Sharon named to his cabinet a fanatical right-wing general who advocates ethnic cleansing of Palestinians - the same crime for which the U.S. pursued Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic.

To be sure, there is deep and justified sympathy in the U.S. for the frightful suffering Israel has endured at the hands of suicide bombers, and its need for self-defence.

Still, why was America alone in defending Israel's ruthless punishment of the Palestinians?

How could Bush, only a few weeks ago, still bathing in the bogus glory of a military "triumph" against a few thousand medieval tribesman in Afghanistan, be so suddenly made to look foolish and impotent by events in the Mideast?

Simply put, Sharon's right-wing Likud party has come to dominate U.S. Mideast policy through its powerful American lobby, which "guides" Congress.

Under pressure from the Israel lobby, 89 out of 100 senators and at least 280 congressmen recently demanded Bush give Sharon carte blanche to crush Palestine. As the Israeli writer Uri Avnery wryly noted, if the Israel lobby gave orders to repeal the Ten Commandments, Congress would vote in favour.

America's media is strongly pro-Israel and averse to dissenting views. A coterie of hawkish, Israel-first neo-conservatives dominates media opinion-making and the Pentagon, leading the charge for a war against Iraq, Iran, and Syria. One even helped to write Bush's foolish "axis of evil" speech.

Tight U.S. mid-term elections are approaching.

Bush does not want to anger American Jewish voters who believe Israel is in mortal danger.

Bush obviously recalls that when his father sought to pressure Israel to halt building illegal settlements, Bush Sr. was unfairly roasted by the media as an anti-Semite and forced to back down. No wonder Sharon can thumb his nose at the White House.

Bush likes to talk tough, but this crisis has shown him to be the exact opposite. In Texas, they'd say, "big hat, no land." Bush has so far failed to take any real action to halt America's Mideast interests being undermined by the bloodbath in Palestine and Israel.

The best way to protect Israelis from terror attacks is to withdraw their 200,000 illegal settlers and end their colonial rule over the West Bank, Gaza and Golan; divide East Jerusalem into Jewish, Muslim, and Christian sectors, have NATO troops police peace accords and either normalize relations with the Arabs, as the Saudis propose, or build a wall to isolate Israel from its neighbours. This cannot be done so long as settlements remain.

Sharon is dead set against this sensible idea. He needs to be pushed the way Dwight Eisenhower ordered Israel, in 1956, to get out of the Sinai, which it had invaded and occupied - or else. Had Bush Eisenhower's integrity or genuine patriotism, he would compel Sharon to accept the wise Saudi peace plan and forget dreams of recreating biblical Greater Israel. This would be a boon to Jews and Arabs alike.

But Bush junior is no Eisenhower. His dithering over the Mideast has made the United States appear both helpless and a tacit supporter of Israel's West Bank repression - and made America the potential target of more terrorist attacks from the enraged Arab world.

Eric can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] Letters to the editor should be sent to [email protected] or visit his home page

Dossier on the origins of anti-Semitism