The National Review
February 4, 2002
Why Support Israel?
It would certainly be easier not to.
By Victor Davis Hanson
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson020402.shtml
The Muslim world is mystified why Americans support the existence of Israel.
Some critics in the Middle East excuse "the American people," while
castigating our government. In their eyes, our official policy could not
really reflect grassroots opinion. Others misinformed spin elaborate
conspiracy theories involving the power of joint Mossad-CIA plots, Old
Testament fundamentalists, international bankers, and Jewish control of
Hollywood, the media, and the U.S. Congress. But why does an overwhelming
majority of Americans (according to most polls, between 60 and 70% of the
electorate) support Israel - and more rather than less so after September
11?
The answer is found in values - not in brainwashing or because of innate
affinity for a particular race or creed. Israel is a democracy. Its
opponents are not. Much misinformation abounds on this issue. Libya, Syria,
and Iraq are dictatorships, far more brutal than even those in Egypt or
Pakistan. But even "parliaments" in Iran, Morocco, Jordan, and on the West
Bank are not truly and freely democratic. In all of them, candidates are
either screened, preselected, or under coercion. Daily television and
newspapers are subject to restrictions and censorship; "elected" leaders are
not open to public audit and censure. There is a reason, after all, why in
the last decade Americans have dealt with Mr. Netanyahu, Barak, and Sharon -
and no one other than Mr. Arafat, the Husseins in Jordan, the Assads in
Syria, Mr. Mubarak, and who knows what in Lebanon, Algeria, and Afghanistan.
Death, not voters, brings changes of rule in the Arab world.
The Arab street pronounces that it is the responsibility of the United
States - who gives money to Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Afghanistan and
others, has troops stationed in the Gulf, and buys oil from the Muslim
world - to use its influence to instill democracies. They forget that sadly
these days we rarely have such power to engineer sweeping constitutional
reform; that true freedom requires the blood and courage of native
patriots - a Washington, Jefferson, or Thomas Paine - not outside nations;
and that democracy demands some prior traditions of cultural tolerance,
widespread literacy, and free markets. Moreover, we give Israel billions as
well - but have little control whether they wish to elect a Rabin or a
Sharon.
Israel is also secular. The ultra-Orthodox do not run the government unless
they can garner a majority of voters. Americans have always harbored
suspicion of anyone who nods violently when reading Holy Scripture - whether
in madrassas, near the Wailing Wall, or in the local Church of the Redeemer
down the street. In Israel, however, Americans detect that free speech and
liberality of custom and religion are more ubiquitous than, say, in Saudi
Arabia, Iran, or Palestine - and so surmise that the Jewish state is more
the creation of European émigrés than of indigenous Middle-Eastern
fundamentalists.