LETTER: Examining the U.S.-Israel Relationship

To the editors:

One can only hope that the Crimson staff’s Apr. 1 editorial on U.S.-Israel relations (“Stepping Back”) was an elaborate, if poorly executed, April fool’s joke. Among the sillier contentions made in the article are that Israel’s victories in 1967 and 1973 “demonstrated conclusively” that Israel can defend itself without foreign assistance. This argument gets it backwards. Israeli success was at least partially attributable to foreign assistance and thus reveals the necessity, rather than the irrelevance, of aid from its allies in facing the more numerous forces of its belligerent neighbors. Moreover, the more recent military conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza display Israel’s inability to stem attacks on its civilian population when restrained by its allies and world opinion from taking steps necessary to dismantle the terrorist infrastructures of Hamas and Hezbollah. The Crimson staff also incorrectly suggests that the U.S. has, over the decades, uncritically given Israel carte blanche to pursue its military objectives. However, it is in part thanks to U.S. efforts that Israel did not oust the radical nationalist Nasser regime in 1956, or march on Damascus in 1973, or eliminate Yassir Arafat and the PLO in 1982.

Yet perhaps even worse than its distortion of history is the Crimson staff’s use of vague generalizations where specifics are needed for reasoned debate. Which of the dictatorships and monarchies surrounding Israel does the Crimson staff believe the U.S. must grow closer to? Which Israeli actions does the Crimson staff consider “atrocities” rather than legitimate self-defense? Rather than answer such questions and provide concrete policy prescriptions, the Crimson falls back on the trope—popular among totalitarian regimes during the Cold War—that Israeli actions are imperialist and racist. The Crimson appears to place unilateral blame for the failure of the peace process on Israel, making no mention of the rejectionism or eliminationist ideology of Israel’s enemies. Nowhere does the Crimson recognize the multiple times Israel has shown itself ready to give up land—whether in Sinai, Lebanon, or Gaza—only to be met with further terror and aggression.

It is disheartening to think that the Crimson’s position reflects the analysis and discourse about complex foreign policy questions occurring on our college campuses. Sensible policy makers should regard such articles as evidence of the need to better educate young adults rather than as advice on how to run foreign affairs.

MICHAEL N. JACOBSOHN ’00

New York, N.Y.

Apr. 5, 2010

Michael N. Jacobsohn ’00, HLS ’05, was a Slavic Languages and Literatures concentrator in Cabot House.