Rural Ruminations

[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]

For anyone who has not been paying attention to the national press recently, there has been a really nasty battle going on over the appointment of Ambassador Charles Freeman to the post of chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

Freeman is an extraordinarily creative and innovative public servant who has long been involved at the national level in both foreign policy and military matters, having served as Assistant Secretary of Defense and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. As a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, he is the kind of person whose experience and views could have added badly needed clarification to the otherwise cloudy issues in the Middle East.

But there is one really big problem. Freeman has not been sufficiently uncritically pro-Israel over the years to garner the approval of right-wing Israelis and those Americans who most fervently support them.

Generalizations often are inaccurate. Having said that, when it comes to Israel, and our policy in the Middle East, Americans tend to break down into two very broad groups.

The first group is made up of informed, pragmatic Americans who strongly support Israel’s right to exist as a democratic, Jewish state and who are equally opposed to those radical Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims who are trying to bring an end to the existence of the State of Israel. This group is typified by the “J Street” organization and more moderate American Jews and Christians who tend to support the “two state solution” for the region.

The second group, equally informed and certainly more strident, supports the further expansion of Israel into Palestine (the West Bank) through the settler program. This group includes AIPAC (the “Israeli Lobby”) and a more amorphous group of “Christian Zionists” who believe that the second coming of Christ will not take place until Jews occupy the West Bank of the Jordan River (Samaria and Judea).

The stakes surrounding the Palestine issue are very high. They include the survival of Israel as a democratic, Jewish state; an end to the perpetual violence that has characterized the region since the British occupation; a damper on the increasing radicalization of Islam and the Middle East and a viable solution to our problem with radical Muslim terrorism.

All political arguments about the future of Israel aside, there is one extremely important demographic reality at play in Israel: Palestinians living in Israel and Palestine are reproducing at a rate far greater than Israelis. One can dispute when the day of reckoning will be, but the fact is that if demographics continue in typical historical pattern, Palestinians will fairly soon outnumber Israelis in both Israel and in what is becoming, through the settler program, occupied Palestine.

That will leave Israelis with only bad choices: They can let the burgeoning Palestinian population become the majority (a one-state solution), remaining democratic, but relinquishing Israel’s Jewishness. They can set up an apartheid system which will relegate the Palestine majority to total political impotence, giving up any Israeli claim to democracy. Or, they can expel all the Palestinians in Israel and Palestine, giving up their international credibility, while retaining their Jewishness at the cost of democracy.

Only the two-state solution has the potential to solve many of both Israel’s and Palestine’s most important problems. Past opportunities to find a viable and even-handed solution have been passed up by both sides for good and bad reasons, but what really matters are the realities of today.

If Israel wishes to continue as a Jewish democracy and the Palestinians want a state of their own, major compromises will be needed from both Israelis and Palestinians and the full weight of western, particularly American influence, will have to be brought to bear on both sides of the dispute. If America continues its laissez faire policies of the past that underplayed both Arab rockets and Israeli settlements, there will be no peace. Israel, in the end, will be at the mercy of the inevitable march of demographics.

Against that backdrop, we have just had the opportunity to see Israel’s most strident American supporters gear up over the appointment of Ambassador Charles Freeman. Before coming under attack and withdrawing his candidacy, his beliefs and honor were questioned in every conceivable way by uncritically pro-Israel American individuals and organizations.

Accusations that he was somehow controlled by Saudi Arabia, China or anyone else are wholly spurious. If you take the trouble to look carefully at the accusations leveled against him, and do so against the backdrop of his own record, it becomes immediately clear that the campaign against him was not undertaken because he is viewed as anti-Israeli, but rather because he is viewed as insufficiently pro-Israeli. He does not support Israel 100 percent, preferring to consider American national interests in the policy mix.

This campaign against Ambassador Freeman is not unique. Such campaigns have taken place against numerous insufficiently pro-Israeli Americans over the past 60 years of Israel’s existence. However, it is sad in a number of ways.

Purely internally, it is a bad foreign policy start for the Obama administration in the Middle East. Quite simply, they would have been far better advised either to have anticipated the ÅIPAC onslaught and not made the Freeman appointment, or having decided to do so, should have been prepared to stick with him, thus avoiding the shocking embarrassment of having an important personnel decision dictated by foreign-oriented interests.

Further, robust political debate is a way of life in Israel. There is a constant stream of opinion in the Israeli press on any and all contentious political issues from every sector of the political spectrum. Yet, Israel’s most fervent, Israel-centered American supporters use personal attack indiscriminately against those it views to be its critics in the United States, effectively smothering legitimate debate on an issue which has wide-ranging potential consequences for America.

If a representative, effective policy is to evolve in the United States on the Israel/Palestine issue, it will only be validated if it is thoroughly debated in America. Short of that, any policy we undertake will bring with it the potential for political retribution.

Secondly, however many common goals America shares with Israel in the Middle East, our national interests are not always identical. They are not the same on Israel’s territorial goals in Palestine simply because those goals will inhibit an equitable solution to the Israel/Palestine struggle which is and will remain a critical element in our attempts to deal with Muslim fundamentalism and terrorism.

Additionally, our interests are not the same on Iran, where Israel clearly would like either to have us wipe out Iran’s nuclear program, or do it themselves with our weaponry and tacit blessings, while we, in our own national interest, would prefer to pursue negotiations.

Lastly, it would appear that we have crossed a new line and that AIPAC and its supporters will react to appointments like Freeman’s, and presumably to American policies, governed only by the depth and breadth of their commitment to Israel’s definition of their own foreign policy goals and national interests.

We are either heading for, or have already reached the point where Israel’s most strident American supporters hold veto power over our foreign policies and personnel assignments on Israeli-related issues. That is a bad situation in which to find oneself, certainly not one the Israelis themselves would permit the American government to exercise over their sovereign interests and probably not one that a thoughtful Israeli government would like to see in effect today in America.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served over 25 years in East and West Europe, the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff. He lives in Williston.