Today, a virulently anti-American article written by Ted Belman was published on the Internet. Guess who published it?
Was it one of the usual suspects? Der Spiegel? The Guardian? Liberation? Le Monde?
Nope. The website on which it has been published is “the American Thinker”.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/the_unholy_usmuslim_alliance.html
Belman is a crappy writer biased in favor of the country where he lives (Israel); he’s a virulent enemy of anyone who doesn’t support a one-sided foreign policy in favor of Israel and continued wars with Muslim countries; and he has already submitted several biased, ridiculous, laughable articles to AT.
Nonetheless, this article is the worst one ever published on AT, because not only is it factually wrong, it also smears the US.
Belman accuses the US of maintaining an “unholy US/Muslim alliance” directed against Israel and believes that this alliance is motivated by greed and oil. (See below.)
Belman, parroting Avi Lipkin (an IDF spokesman), has accused the US of tolerating the Holocaust and of allying with the Arab world (whose oil was supposedly a key factor as early as the 1930s and the 1940s) to enable it. Furthermore, to Lipkin’s questions directed towards Americans, “And now you mean to say that it is going to happen again? You guys are going to sacrifice 5 million more Jews in Israel for the barrel of oil?”, he answered affirmatively, meaning that Belman believes the US plans to sacrifice 5 million Israeli Jews for a barrel of oil and allow a second Holocaust. The truth is that Israel is not threatened with a second Holocaust. Why? Because militarily, it’s the strongest ME country by far. It is the only ME country that possesses nuclear weapons; it has a missile defense system; and its conventional troops are far superior to those of its Muslim competitors. As a study by the Tel Aviv University admitted, “the strategic balance decidedly favors Israel”. Who the hell can threaten Israel, anyway? Egypt and Jordan are militarily weaker than the Jewish state, and they’ve signed peace-treaties with it. Saudi Arabia has offered to do so. The Palestinian Authority barely possesses a police, let alone an army that could threaten Israel. Syria no longer has a Soviet patron to resupply it (although Russia backs it), Iraq has been devastated by two Gulf Wars, and Iran is hundreds of miles away from Israel.
Belman falsely claimed that “The State Department negotiated UNSC Res. 242 at the end of the war, which allowed Israel to remain in occupation until she had an agreement for “secure and recognized borders.” But the Arabs refused to accept it.” This is also a lie. Resolution #242 does not Israel to continue the occupation of ANY Arab territories, under any circumstances; and it calls for “secure and recognized borders” for EVERY country in the Middle East, not just Israel. Furthermore, it calls on Israeli troops to withdraw from ALL territories occupied during the Six Day War (the English text of the resolution itself does not contain the definite word “all”, but it nonetheless means “all”; as was understood by all UNSC members at the time).
Belman also falsely claimed that after 1975, “the U.S., at first surreptitiously and then openly, backed the PLO. She saved them from Israel’s coup de gras in Beirut and enabled them to be welcomed in the United Nations and in the U.S.” This is utterly false. The US never backed the PLO and the only US President to ever meet with the PLO’s leader was Clinton.
Belman, who knows no shame and no moral limits, asked, “Remember how sick Rabin looked when he was forced to shake the hand of the arch-murderer Arafat on the White House lawn under the auspices of the smiling President Clinton?” Actually, Rabin was killed not by the “arch-murderer Arafat”, but by an Israeli, Yigal Amir, who admitted that he killed his own Prime Minister because of the Oslo Peace Accord. It is ridiculous and arrogant for Belman to use Rabin as a cover for his anti-American and anti-Arab BS.
Belman also lied that “While the U.S. maintains that the final agreement had to be negotiated between the parties, the U.S. puts a “gun” to Israel’s head during negotiations. The peace process is all about reaching an agreement predetermined by the Saudi/U.S. alliance.” Quite the contrary. Although successive Administrations have backed the PP, they accepted only agreements and proposals that are acceptable to Israel; no US Administration has ever pressured Israel to accept an agreement or proposal it didn’t like; and no US Administration has ever forced Israel to conduct policies Israel itself opposed. During the 2000 Camp David summit, the American delegation did not offer its own independent proposals, took clues from Ehud Barak, and coordinated with the Israeli delegation in advance. One of the American delegates to that summit, Aaron David Miller (an advisor of President Clinton), admitted that “we functioned as Israel’s lawyer”.
The only Administration of the last 49 years that even TRIED to pressure Israel to moderate its policies was the Bush Administration, which, however, capitulated to Ariel Sharon two times.
The most absurd part of Belman’s completely ridiculous article, however, is his implicit endorsement of Mordechai Nisan’s claim that “ the U.S. has long sided with the Arab world. (…) The U.S. arms Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the PA. Now she is also arming the Lebanese army, which is controlled by Hezb’allah. Who else but Israel is the target?”
The claim that the US has sided with the Arab world is utterly ridiculous. So is the companion claim that the US has sided with the Arabs against Israel. Every US Administration of the last 65 years, except the Eisenhower Admin, has backed Israel, often against Arab states, and always at the expense of America’s relations with the Arab world an America’s national interests.
Since 1967, the US has given Israel tens of billions of dollars for free. It gives Israel $3 bn per year, more than the amount received by any other FMF program beneficiary. This amounts to $500 per year per every Israeli. This largesse is suprising, given that Israel is a wealthy industrial state comparable with South Korea, with a per capita GDP of ca. $26000. Also, Israel, unlike all other recipients, receives in annually and can thus interest on it, and, again unlike all other recipients, is not required to spend all of it in the US. It is allowed to use 25% of the annual sum to finance its own defense industry. It is also never forced to account how the money is spent. Sometimes, it spends the money on bulldozers that raze Palestinian homes, or on the settlements that it builds in the ruins of already-razed Palestinian homes.
The US gives Israel intelligence information it denies to other countries, including NATO allies. Nonetheless, Israel believes the US is not generous enough, spies on the US, and has passed on American secrets to America’s enemies, including the Soviet Union. Jonathan Pollard did so in 1985 – at the same time that the Reagan Administration was negotiating with the Soviet Union on such important issues as intermediate-range ballistic missiles and the USSR’s abysmal human rights record. (AT has published several articles and blog posts calling on the US government to free Jonathan Pollard.)
Since 1982, the US has vetoed over 30 UNSC resolutions critical of Israel, thus vetoing more UNSC resolutions than all other permanent members of the UNSC combined.
In 1973, the US risked an Arab oil embargo (which devastated the US economy and seriously harmed other Western economies) by resupplying Israel during the Yom Kippur War to the tune of $2.2 billion in terms of free equipment delivered for free.
And regarding American arms sales, on which Belman commented that “The U.S. arms Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the PA. Now she is also arming the Lebanese army, which is controlled by Hezb’allah. Who else but Israel is the target?”, it must be underlined that the US annually sells Israel more weapons than it does to any Muslim country, and the weapons sold to Israel are always of higher quality than those concurrently sold to Muslim countries. Obama Administration officials have even publicly admitted that they sell weapons to Muslim states only if Israel approves, and only weapons inferior to those possessed or ordered by Israel.
For example, Israel has been allowed to buy dozens of F-35 jets, and was even offered F-22s (which no other country was even allowed to buy, and neither the DOD nor the Congress were even willing to consider allowing other countries to buy them). The best fighterplanes that the Bush and Obama Admininistrations have offered to Arab countries are F-15s, aircraft which first flew in 1974. No Arab country was ever offered F-35s or F-22s. Even such reliable longtime allies as Japan and Australia were not allowed to buy F-22s, while Britain was denied the source code for F-35s. Because Saudi Arabia wants modern, capable fighterplanes, it had to order EF-2000 Typhoon jets.
Israel has been allowed to buy high-quality weapons for decades, even though it has repeatedly transferred American weapons to America’s enemies, such as China, the deadliest foe of the United States.
So the accusation that the US is arming and has been arming Arab countries against Israel is ridiculous.
Belman complained about America’s ties to Turkey and Pakistan, and the muted criticism of how Saudi Arabia and Egypt treat Christians. Belman is blind to the fact that, with the exception of the alliance with Pakistan, all of these links are absolutely necessary. The US was right to bring Turkey into NATO, and it is right to back Turkey’s application to join the EU. Turkey is one of the most important allies the US has, unlike Israel.
Belman also lied that “the Turkish Muslims slaughtered one and a half million Christian Armenians during WWI, to little Western condemnation. This silence gave Hitler confidence twenty years later that he could slaughter the Jews.” The West has repeatedly condemned Turkey, and this genocide remains one of the reasons why Turkey hasn’t been admitted into the EU yet. Plus, this massacre had nothing to do with the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany. Hitler was motivated by his own racist ideology, and Nazi camps were killing people even as late as 1944.
Belman also lied that “Recently, Turkey turned Islamist and aligned itself with Iran, Hezb’allah, and Hamas, but still President Obama stands by Turkey.” Turkey is a strictly secular state (although the AKP party sympathizes with Muslim countries), and has remained such a country to this day. The Constitution of Turkey is proof of this, as is the continued veneration of Turkey’s first president, Ataturk.
Belman also made another slanderous accusation against the US: “President Obama’s much-pursued Muslim outreach merely makes public what has been a covert reality for American policy for a hundred years.The Islamic countries can do no wrong. They have all the oil and money. Israel can do no right. They are a pain in the globalist’s butt.” No American official has ever said that. Nor has any prominent American politician ever said that. Moreover, politicians of both parties are biased in favor of Israel, because they know the political fact that if they don’t reflexively back Israel regardless of Israeli policies, they can’t win elections.
Défense et Géopolitique 
For those of you who make determinations based on facts, I challenge you to research whether my facts are in all instances correct and Mazurak’s facts where they differ from mine are all propaganda and not facts at all.
But I warn you, it won’t be easy to do as you will have look to basic documents and original sources to find the truth rather than to what the Arab propaganda and mainstream media want you to believe.
As a case in point, I write that Res 242 required secure and defensible borders whereas Mazurak writes that it required Israel to withdraw from all territories notwithstanding its wording. I am 100% right and he is 100% wrong.
The same holds for every factual difference we have.
False. You’re the one who’s wrong.
Resolution #242 does require Israel from all territories conquered during the Six Day War – although, as I wrote in the original blogpost, it also requires safe, defensible, recongizable borders for every country in the ME (including Israel). The claim that this, however, authorizes Israel to continue the occupation of the territories conquered during the Six Day War for as long as it wishes to do so is absurd, and is NOT based on Resolution #242.
Your claims are patently false, period.
Zbigniew,
From what I read, the only information Pollard passed to Israel was the information of Syrian chemical weapons program. And he passed it not to Mossad, but to some other organization similar to our Department of Energy. The information he was accused of passing to Soviets via the Israeli intelligence was actually passed to the Soviets directly by Aldridge Ames. Unfortunately I don’t have any links handy now, but I can try to dig them up. As for your criticism of Mr. Bellman for supporting “one-sided foreign policy in favor of Israel”, I would never expect something like that to be written by you. There are instances, when such “one-sided foreign policy” is justified and moral. An example would be one-sided support of Poland against Germany by Britain, a policy advocated by Winston Churchill long before September 1, 1939. He did later screw it up by letting the Soviets to take control of Poland, but that is a whole other issue.
You see, the Islamist ideology is not much different from the Nazi ideology. In fact, there is a long history of Islamist-Nazi alliance. Here is an interesting link for you to start with:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/12/the-muslim-hitler-haj-amin-al-husseini-was-promised-leadership-of-israel-palestine-after-annihilatio.html
Merry Christmas and best regards,
Eric.
Eric,
Thanks for the hint. I intend to check the Pollard affair again. But he must have really aided the Soviets if Caspar Weinberger (an ally of Israel) ensured that he wold receive a lifetime sentence.
As for “a one-sided policy in favor of Israel”: I believe that America’s interests require that the US do not involve itself in the Arab-Israeli conflict on any side of that conflict. A one-sided policy only harms American interests. The US should not involve itself in foreign conflicts unless American interests require that it does.
Zbigniew,
Regarding “one-sided policy”, as I said before, there are instances when such one-sided policy is moral and justified, even if it is against one’s interests. I’ll go back to my example of one-sided support of Poland against Germany, which was clearly against British interests, since Hitler specifically did not want a war against Britain. Had the British and French support of Czechoslovakia been just as one-sided a year earlier, the whole ordeal of WW2 would have been avoided.
During the Nazi occupation of Poland thousands of Poles hid Jews, which was clearly against those Poles’ interests: those caught were usually shot by the Nazis. There were, of course, others who were either indifferent or, acting even more in their interests, sold the Jews and those who hid them to the Germans. I believe you know which behavior was moral. Polish Home Army also had an opinion on this subject: the traitors who acted in their self-interest were shot.
Acting in one’s self-interest is not always the right thing to do.
Eric.
Acting as one’s self-interest requires is always the right thing to do. Of course, stopping Hitler was required by Britain’s and France’s own national interest.
There is no moral reason for the US to back either side of the Arab-Israeli conflict.