By Jules Rabin, Times Argus 4/7/2010
Like many other American Jews, I'm troubled by the uncritical support of Israel that successive administrations in Washington have provided; the Obama administration, too, though it has begun to display signs of uneasiness about our country's habitual complaisance towards Israel. Our government's unique identification with Israel, which has carried with it toleration of Israel slicing up into ever smaller pieces what's left of Palestine and walling in its predictably incensed inhabitants, arouses increasing enmity in the Muslim world towards us as Israel's most energetic supporter.I believe that it's perilous for the U.S. to bind itself to Israel, a country that believes in and practices preemptive warfare (Lebanon recently, and Iran prospectively), and that has routinely violated international law as embodied in the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as in the more than 60 United Nations resolutions that have criticized Israel for, among other things, settling hundreds of thousands of Israelis on territories that are internationally recognized to be Palestinian.As chief enabler of Israel's willful stumble into the condition of a pariah state, the U.S. flouts the commonplace idea that friends don't let friends drive drunk. The tactlessness Israel displayed just recently on the occasion of Vice President Biden's visit there is evidence of how Israel has come to regard the U.S. as a compliant partner in its conduct of world affairs.For our own sake, and Israel's, we need to develop and follow through on our own independent judgment concerning Israel's never-ending encroachments on Palestinian lands, and how to relieve and restore normalcy to the millions of Palestinians who live under Israel's iron siege of their communities.Friends don't let friends drive drunk. Or, failing that, they refuse to ride in the same car with them.
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