[Salon] U.S. MUST AVOID DANGER OF INVOLVEMENT IN A MIDDLE EAST WAR - Guest Post by Allan Brownfeld

[Salon] U.S. MUST AVOID DANGER OF INVOLVEMENT IN A MIDDLE EAST WAR Inbox Chas Freeman via Salon 3:44 PM (1 hour ago) to salon U.S. MUST AVOID DANGER OF INVOLVEMENT IN A MIDDLE EAST WAR By Allan C.Brownfeld —————————————————————————————————————— There is great danger that the U.S. will be drawn into a Middle East war that does not serve our national interest or the cause of world peace. It may also involve us in assisting policies which we have warned against, and probably violate international law. U.S. officials are concerned that massive U.S. aid to Israel—-which has totaled more than $200 billion since Israel’s creation, more than aid given to any other country——violate laws prohibiting American military assistance to foreign powers that have committed gross human rights violations or blocked the movement of humanitarian aid. The Biden administration acknowledges that Israel may have violated humanitarian law using American weapons. In May, the White House paused the shipment of thousands of weapons to Israel, including controversial 2,000 pound bombs. Amid concerns over Israel’s plans to expand military operations in Gaza, where more than 42,000 people have already been killed, the majority of them women and children. Now, in addition, several thousand civilians have thus far been killed in Lebanon. The Biden administration subsequently resumed the shipment of weapons, sending 500-pound munitions. Many U.S. allies——including Britain, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium—-have restricted military equipment transfers to Israel because of legal and political concerns about their potential use to commit war crimes. Now, the Biden administration has announced that it is sending a THAAD or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense antmissile system to Israel along with U.S. troops needed to operate it. THAAD is one of the most advanced U.S. missile defense systems. It fires interceptors to destroy incoming missiles. Each interceptor is estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars and a standard battery contains 48 interceptors. There is great danger that having U.S. military personnel in Israel, firing missiles at other countries, will involve the U..S. in a war without Congress ever declaring war, as the Constitution mandates. Beyond this, the government of Israel is acting in contradiction to U.S. policy. For more than 50 years Israel, in violation of international law, has occupied the West Bank. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have called for a “two state solution.” This would involve the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank. Instead, Israel’s government is building settlements throughout the West Bank and members of the Netanyahu government call for annexing the territory and expelling its indigenous Palestinian residents. In the West Bank, Israeli settlers have full legal rights. Palestinians have almost none. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem have categorized this as “apartheid.” More and more Jewish Americans are lamenting that while Israel proclaims itself a “Jewish” state, it had abandoned Jewish moral and ethical values when it comes to its treatment of Palestinians, and the Biden administration has remained silent. Peter Beinart, an editor of Jewish Currents, notes that, “Through his unwavering backing of Israel, Mr. Biden has effectively supported its unequal treatment and oppression of Palestinians—-especially in Gaza—-and undermined the ethical rationale for his presidency…Israel’s political system is explicitly based on religion and ethnicity. Its controversial 2018 nation-state bill declares that ‘’Jews alone can excercise national self-determination. Most of the Palestinians under Israeli control —-those in the West Bank and Gaza Strip—-can’t become citizens of the state that dominates their lives. A minority of Palestinians who live within Israel’s 1967 borders do enjoy citizenship and the right to vote. But when Arab Israeli politicians advanced a bill that would have made legal equality between Arab and Jewish citizens a foundation of Israeli law in 2018, the speaker of Israel’s Parliament refused to allow a vote on it because it would ‘gnaw at the foundation of the state.’” Beinart laments that, “When it comes to Israel, Mr. Biden hasn’t supported equality under the law. The war in Gaza has made that contradiction impossible to ignore. It is most glaring when Biden expresses deep empathy for Israeli suffering but relative indifference to the far larger number of dead Palestinians, or when his administration seems to distinguish even between American citizens , showing more concern for those murdered by Hamas than those killed by Israel’s military.” Peace in the Middle East was a real possibility before Prime Minister Netanyahu’s extremist government came to power. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states said they would recognize Israel and make peace as soon as steps were taken to create a Palestinian state on the West Bank, which is what U.S. policy supported. Instead, Netanyahu and the extremists he named to his Cabinet rejected the creation of a Palestinian state and, instead, hope to annex the West Bank and remove the Palestinians. Terrorism by Israeli settlers against the West Bank’s indigenous population is growing. The U.S. remains largely silent. The danger of us getting involved in a Middle East War is growing as American troops will be in Israel firing weapons at Israel’s adversaries, at the same time that Israel rejects U.S. policy advice and is in violation of international law. War by accident is a real possibility and completely ignores the Constitutional path by which we are to to war. Unfortunately, Congress has abdicated its constitutionally mandated role in declaring war. During the administration of Lyndon Johnson, at a time when ever increasing numbers of American troops were being dispatched to Vietnam, then Undersecretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach told the Congress that in popular terms the U.S. was “clearly at war” but defended the administration’s refusal to seek a formal declaration to justify U.S. action. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Katzenbach said that Congress had “authorized President Johnson to take all necessary steps , including the use of the armed forces to assist any member of protocol states of the Southeast Asia collective defense treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom.” The last time Congress declared war was after Pearl Harbor. Since then, we have gone to war in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places without a congressional declaration. Now, American military officers in Israel are ready to fire advanced American weapons against Israel’s various adversaries. This is not how the authors of the Constitution wanted America to go to war. Where all of this will end is impossible to know. ## ———————————— Allan C. Brownfeld is a nationally syndicated columnist and is editor of ISSUES, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.