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April 16, 2002
Dave Marsh
Hymns: How I Got Through
Last Week
April 15, 2002
Susi Abeles
A
Field Trip to Jenin
Breyten Breytenbach
A Letter to Ariel Sharon:
"You Won't Break Them"
Gregory
Wilpert
CounterCoup
in Venezuela
Kristen Schurr
Amid the Rubble of Nablus
Jordy
Cummings
An
Open Letter to Abe Foxman
Christopher Reilly
The Media, the CIA
and the Chavez Coup
James
T. Phillips
"Homicide"
Bombers
April 14, 2002
William Blum
The CIA and Venezuela
David
Vest
A
Good Old-Fashion "Incursion"
Ralph Nader
General Motors:
Stuck in Reverse
M. Junaid
Alam
From
the Ashes: Palestinian Struggle for Freedom
Sam Bahour
Palestinians and Americans
April 13, 2002
Beth Daoud
Life
in the Ruins of Nablus
Patrick Cockburn
Bulldozing History:
The End Nears for Stalin's
Most Monstrous Hotel
Gregory
Wilpert
The
Coup in Venezuela:
an Eye-Witness Account
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Thoughts on Our War
Against Terrorism
Anne Winkler-Morey
Why
I Didn't Organize
a Passover Seder This Year
April 12, 2002
Nancy Stohlman
Live from East Jerusalem:
International Nonviolence
Brian
J. Foley
Defeating
Evil
Olivier Audeoud
Did the US Break
the Laws of War?
Rep. Ron
Paul
The
Middle East Quagmire
Michael Colby
Republican Porn:
Oiling Up the Caribou
John Chuckman
Tom
Friedman's Fabrications
April 11, 2002
Patrick Cockburn
Battle of St. Petersburg Zoo
Jeff Halper
After
the Invasion:
Now What?
Falk / Krieger
Taming the Nuclear Monster
Steve
Perry
The
Good Life of
Nellie Stone Johnson
Nick Ring
Efficiency and Occupation:
Terrorism vs. Taylorism
Alexander
Cockburn
From
the West Bank to BBQ
to Old Sparky, And Beyond
April 10, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
Blaming the Victims:
Hating the Palestinians
George
Monbiot
World
Bank to West Bank
Fran Schor
US-Sponsored State Terror
David
Vest
Political
Color Schemes
Jack McCarthy
Florida State Radicals:
The Berkeley of the South
Rises Again
Doreen
Miller
A
Tale of Two Warring Tribes
Michael Neumann
Israelis and Indians
April 9, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
Colin
Powell's Table Talk
Matt Vidal
Thomas Friedman,
Another Wasted Pulitzer
Ron Jacobs
Buyer
Beware
Robert Jensen
I Helped Kill a Palestinian
Vijay
Prashad
Memories
of Barbarity:
Sharonism and September
Wayne Madsen
Anthrax and the Agency:
Thinking the Unthinkable
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Five
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Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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by Cockburn
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April 16,
2002
The U.S. Should End Aid to Israel
By Todd May
Philosophers are often renown for two things:
their ability to think logically and their irrelevance to public
discussion and debate. I am hoping to buck the trend a bit here
by using my training in thought to offer a practical solution
to a complex issue before the public. The issue is that of how
to respond to the unfolding crisis in Israel and Palestine. The
solution is this: end all aid to Israel. Not just military aid.
All aid. Not just all aid until Israel ends its military occupation....All
aid. Period.
There are several simple, but compelling
reasons, for Americans to support such a proposal. First and
foremost, by squandering the aid we have given Israel over the
years (nearly five billion dollars a year, including incidentals)
in the massive violation of the human rights, autonomy, and dignity
of another people, Israel has forfeited any claim it might have
to that aid. Regardless of the individual acts of desperation
and terrorism that some Palestinians commit, the overwhelming
destructiveness that Israel has performed on the Palestinian
people for the last thirty-five years demonstrates that its goal
has always been, and remains, the dominance of another people.
The U.S. should not be aiding Israel no more than it should have
been aiding South Africa under apartheid, Iran under the Shah,
Iraq's Saddam during his war with Iran, Cambodia under Pol Pot,
or Indonesia during its campaign against the East Timorese.
Second, there are plenty of better ways
to use this aid than that to which it has been put by Israel.
We are still in a recession where money for education, health
care, homelessness, and other necessities is lacking. Putting
our money there is far better than wasting it on a country that
chooses to spend it on the oppression of another people. If we
are to spend the aid overseas, then let us spend it fighting
AIDS in Africa or offering grants for infrastructure in Latin
America.
Finally, aid to Israel is against any
conception of U.S. interests that one would want to hold, whether
one is conservative or liberal. It subverts the conservatives'
attempts to build a far-reaching international campaign against
terrorism. It subverts the liberals' desire to direct U.S. policy
toward upholding general human rights standards. By introducing
tension with European and Arab countries, isolating the U.S.
in the United Nations, and diminishing the perception (and reality)
of the U.S. as an honest world broker, aid to Israel runs counter
to U.S. goals and short- and long term interests.
In offering arguments for a position,
philosophers are often beholden to consider objections one might
raise to their views. After all, as my students often remind
me, there is always another side to every issue. Let me look
at the other side, then, by offering the following common objections
and then replying to them.
First objection: Why not withhold or
reduce aid to Israel until it leaves the Palestine and then reinstate
it? Isn't that more fair than just cutting aid off completely?
Reply: A state that seeks U.S. aid should
show a legal need for it and definitely not be acting to threaten
U.S. interests. Israel, as I have argued, does not contribute
to U.S. interests. And if Israel leaves Palestine and then believes
it needs aid, it can request it and have it considered. Given
what Israel does with U.S. aid, it obviously doesn't need any
now.
Second objection: The proposal is too
radical. Americans won't want to go that far in criticizing Israel.
Reply: The reason Americans have not
displayed more outrage has less to do with any deep ties to Israel
than with the one-sided view of the Middle East they have been
presented with. Americans have shown, in the cases of Somalia
and Kosovo recently, and Ethiopia before that, a surprising ability
to act on conscience and to empathize with those who suffer needlessly.
What is required here, then, is a more balanced coverage of the
Middle East, not a watered down proposal for what to do about
it. If the U.S. media begins to pay due attention to what Israel
has done in Jenin, that would go a long way toward remedying
the problem.
Third objection: Israel needs the aid.
Withdrawing such a large sum all at once without promise of reinstatement
would place an immediate and undue hardship on Israel.
Reply: Israel has had thirty-five years
to consider their actions; that seems to me plenty long enough.
The longer a criminal uses my support to commit crimes, the more
urgent it becomes that I stop supplying that support.
Fourth Objection: The proposal, because
of its sweeping character, will generate anti-Semitism.
Reply: First, there are always anti-Semites;
anything critical of Israel will attract them. The proposal itself
is not anti-Semitic, regardless of what supporters of Israel
might say about it. Instead it is the kind of proposal that ought
to be applied to any nation that acts as Israel does. We ought
to judge Israel not by the fact that it is thought to be a Jewish
state (misleadingly so, considering that it is 20% non-Jewish).
To treat Israel this way is either anti-Semitism or its opposite.
We ought to judge Israel the way we ought to judge all nations
that are candidates for foreign aid: by how it acts.
Given that aid to Israel supports a policy
that runs afoul of basic human rights, wastes billions of dollars
a year in taxpayer money, and is inimical to U.S. interests,
we ought to end it. It is, as philosophers like to say, the reasonable
thing to do.
Todd May
is a Professor of Philosophy at Clemson University.
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