Moral bankruptcy: Hertzberg - slash funds to Israel, mum on right to self
defense

[IMRA: Arthur Hertzberg, as many other Jewish "intellectuals" enjoyed the
ride for the last decade on the backs of Israeli security as they basked in
Israeli concessions and essentially remained silent on Palestinian
noncompliance and continuing terror.

"the United States cannot replace Israel in the day-to-day battle with the
enemies of peace" writes Hetzberg, but instead of then writing that the US
should not stand in the way of Israel's "day-to-day battle", he talks
about money.

If the United States wasn't continually pressing Israel not to defend itself
this nightmare would have ended long ago and the money Israel would have
saved would dwarf the American funding Hertzberg suggests be cut off from
the Jewish State.

Hertzberg should know better. Hertzberg is not a child of the 60's - he has
lived through a long chunk of world history in which evil had to be defeated
rather than appeased.

If Israel's survival is a necessary condition for any proposal, a sovereign
Palestinian state is a nonstarter. Hertzberg should have the intellectual
capacity to consider the autonomy option without dismissing it by
simplisitic references to apartheid.]

Arthur Hertzberg : The Price of Not Keeping the Peace
The New York Times August 27, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/27/opinion/27HERT.html?pagewanted=2

The cycle of violence that is once again gripping the Middle East presents
the United States with another setback in its role as regional peace broker.
Never has it become more clear that diplomacy alone cannot secure a workable
truce between the Israelis and Palestinians. No resolution of the conflict
is possible unless the United States pressures the two parties to make
concessions that they have refused for decades to make. But what tools can
Washington use? What if angry combatants on both sides decide that it is in
their interests to continue to fight?

The United States does have the means to impose its will, but we must put
limits on what we should and should not do. Our government should not put
troops on the ground to hound those who send suicide bombers into Israel, or
to dismantle Jewish settlements in the West Bank. We would be playing the
unsuccessful role of the British in the 1930's and 1940's as the conflict
between the Jews and the Palestinians became ever bloodier. Yet, peace
plans, of which President Bush's road map is the latest example, can only
work if the power of the United States is behind them; otherwise they are
merely part of the ongoing theater of the peace process.

The most effective way to force a reduction of the violence on both sides is
to take punitive economic measures. The United States finances about $4
billion a year, on average, of Israel's national budget. The continuing
effort to defend, support and increase settlements in the West Bank and Gaza
costs at least $1 billion a year. The money spent annually in directly
subsidizing the existing settlements was estimated in 2001 at $400 million.

An American government that was resolved to stop expansion of the
settlements would not need to keep sending the secretary of state to
Jerusalem to repeat that we really mean what we say. We could prove it by
deducting the total cost of the settlements each year from the United
States' annual allocation to Israel. To show that we were not being
unfeelingly mean, the United States should add that we would hold $1 billion
a year in escrow to help those settlers who would peacefully move back into
Israel's pre-1967 borders.

No doubt there would be an outcry among some supporters of Israel,
especially the ultranationalists, whose goal is to realize their vision of
the "undivided land of Israel." But an American government that had the
courage to force the end of settlement activity would find far greater
support among Jews both in Israel and in the United States than many people
in Washington imagine.

Much of this support is because of the pressing matter of demographics in
the "undivided land of Israel." Between the Mediterranean and the Jordan
River, the total population is now more than 40 percent Arab. Since the Arab
birthrate is far higher than the Jewish (by a ratio of more than two to
one), there will be an Arab majority in at most 20 years. At that point,
Israel will effectively be a binational state. It will have to make a
fateful choice between being a democracy that will empower the Arab majority
to dominate its government or to subject the Palestinian Arabs to a rule
resembling apartheid in South Africa.

The hard-liners in Israel and their supporters abroad avoid this prospect by
talking about the "transfer" of population or of making life so difficult
that the Palestinians would choose to leave. This is nonsense. Life has been
difficult for the Palestinians for several decades, but they have not gone
away in large numbers.

The mainstream in Israel and in the Jewish Diaspora will be grateful to
America for saving Israel from itself. The United States government must act
with comparable tough love toward the Palestinians. No Israeli government,
whichever party might constitute it, can put up with the defiance of the
Palestinian militants who keep reiterating that their ultimate aim is to
push the Jews into the sea.

Yet the United States cannot replace Israel in the day-to-day battle with
the enemies of peace. We cannot police the territories, for that task might
become endless. What American influence can achieve is to dry up the
financial and military support of the Palestinian war-makers. A good first
step came on Friday, when President Bush ordered the Treasury Department to
block the assets of the leaders of the militant Palestinian group Hamas and
the charities that officials say help finance it. The group had claimed
responsibility for a bus bomb a few days before that killed 21 people in
Jerusalem.

But the United States can do more. It is within our power to insist that
other countries - both our allies and enemies - freeze the financial
accounts of militant groups and to demand that they also cease supplying the
most violent Palestinian factions with weapons.

If this does not work, there is no choice but to cut off all but the most
basic humanitarian help that the United States, along with many other
nations, is giving to the Palestinians. It will surely be an unpopular move,
as we are certain to hear statements of compassion from those speaking out
in the cause of human rights. But Israelis, too, have the right to ride in a
bus or go to a cafe without endangering their lives.

In the end, the anger at these tough measures will fade. The Palestinians
will be left with their real problem: how to find work and living wages in a
region that is economically depressed. And the two sides will have a common
cause, to find ways of helping each other wage peace.

The United States must act now to disarm each side of the nasty things that
they can do to each other. We must end the threat of the settlements to a
Palestinian state of the future. The Palestinian militants must be forced to
stop threatening the lives of Israelis, wherever they may be. A grand
settlement is not in sight, but the United States can lead both parties to a
more livable, untidy accommodation.

Arthur Hertzberg, visiting professor of the humanities at New York
University, is author of the forthcoming "The Fate of Zionism."