Israel's Real Friends
    By Jean Daniel
    Le Nouvel Observateur

    Wednesday 13 September 2006

    1. All the information one may pull together about the mind-set of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, as well as that of the neo-conservatives and evangelicals, indicates that they have not learned the slightest lesson from the Iraqi disaster. For the fifth anniversary of September 11, even though he was forced, with death in his soul, to concede that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, while it was their presence that was invoked to justify the war, George Bush not only did not have a single word of remorse - which would be asking too much from him - but even of regret. Not only did the head of the greatest democracy in the world not feel guilty for an unbelievable lie, but he used the argument of the threats coming from Iran today to justify the false alarms of yesterday with respect to Iraq.

    Apparently, one currently hears former colleagues of George Bush Senior confide their worries about what we can expect before the end of George Bush Junior's mandate. For the signals, the slogans against Islamo-fascism now appear in a succession of declarations.

    It's a matter of hardening the tone and preparing minds for we know not what test of strength with the Iranians. In the face of his plunge in the polls, George Bush is apparently tempted to look for his salvation by procuring Americans that enemy which, according to Henry Kissinger, they will always need - in the present instance, Iran - the fear of which could hijack voters from electing the Democratic Party this coming November 7.

    2. Must one and can one really make war on Iran? None among those who could decide that issue appears to be truly persuaded that way. All the same, is it possible not to respond to the daily provocations of Tehran's leaders? Obviously, not. But Westerners - like the Chinese, the Russians, and, moreover, the Arabs themselves - are divided about the nature of the riposte. A first observation: Iranians' right to possess - like China, India, Pakistan ... and Israel - a nuclear weapon, called for the moment "uranium enrichment for civilian purposes": that right is defended by all Iranians, even the ayatollahs' opponents.

    Consequently, the question becomes how the Iranians' new ideological and military expansionism can be contained. Serious reflection inexorably ends up with the conclusion that we must first of all end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a conflict the Iranians use - better than anyone else has heretofore - to inflame the spirits of the Muslim masses.

    The Saudi bin Laden, when he commented on the reasons for his fight against the Americans in his 2001 declaration about September 11, made no allusion to Israel. Al-Zarqawi, leader of the Iraqi insurgents, also did not make much of a fuss over it - in the beginning. It's the Iranian Ahmadinejad who has discovered in radical anti-Zionism ("Israel must be erased from the map.") the means of discrediting Saudi Arabia, the Americans' principal ally and, consequently, Israel's.

    It was under Tehran's impulsion that the idea spread that the guardians of the holy sites are in fact apostates, that the Arabs have not succeeded in protecting the Arab and Muslim land of Palestine, and that salvation can only come from that great nation, Iran - Persian and Shi'ite, no doubt, but the theocratic regime of which represents the sole true religious revolution since the birth of the Prophet.

    3. Today we must all - each from his own position and in his own domain - do everything we can so that the politicians in Israel take back the power that has been left to the military and renew dialogue with the Palestinian Authority as well as with a part of the Hamas government. It is only by establishing true peace in Gaza and the occupied West Bank that we can contribute to withdrawing from the Lebanese Hezbollah its reasons for fighting, and so put a brake on the contagion of Iranian Islamism. Clinton saw rightly that peace in this region would be a considerable asset for the West and for development in the Near East. Arafat, to his country's misfortune, did not understand that he needed to accept less to obtain more in the interests of his people.

    But today, if Europe and the West want to struggle against Tehran's gesticulation by means other than a crusade, it's by political means of this type that they may do so.

    As an Israeli political scientist remarked, it is just as superficial to underestimate the nationalist dimension of Hezbollah as to underestimate the Israeli government's autonomy. Certainly, the United States and Iran procure sophisticated weapons, money, and intelligence for their prot g s and share common values with them. But that does not mean that they will go along in solidarity up to the end, come what may.

    4. Meanwhile, the facts are the facts. Before 1967, the world was pro-Israel. Neither newspapers nor intellectuals haggled over their enthusiasm for the Jewish state. After 1967, minds divided. Before this past August 8th, the world, including the Arabs, condemned Hezbollah and found Israel's right to riposte normal. After the massive Israeli offensive against Lebanese territory, with bombardments and occupation, everything has changed.

    One must agree to be judged, not on the basis of what one is, but for what one does.

    5. In any case, those Israelis whose behavior is an example for all the world's democrats must receive from outside Israel testimony of a solidarity that does not extend to the errors of their government. They know who the true "friends of Israel" are since this expression has been transformed into a miserable polemic. The true friends of Israel are those who have announced the impossibility of a free country occupying another free country; are those who recall what Emmanuel Levinas says about the fact that, with the Jewish genius, the ends could never justify the means.

    All that we have written for years goes in the same direction as what the daily paper Haaretz publishes, as what journalist Gideon Levy and writers Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman write, as what the savant David Shulam and former Knesset President Avraham Burg say, as what all the Judeo-Palestinian groups brought together in the orchestras of Daniel Barenboim and in the review of Victor Cygielman do. It's a serious responsibility to appear to be in solidarity with, and consequently to encourage, the governments that have led Israel into the present situation. As for me, I reject that someone may be considered a friend of Israel who approved Sharon, both when he was mistaken and when he later said himself that he was mistaken; when he justified the establishment of the colonies, source of all evils, and when one is enraptured to see them evacuated today.