Why ‘friends of Israel’ should not thank Ronald Reagan

In this strange attempt at a love-fest for Reagan with Menachim Begin, i.e., America with Israel, the double engagement announcement from Israeli newspapers Haaretz plus the Forward suggests, “Friends of Israel should thank Ronald Reagan” and that the “hesitant U.S. stances with Israel be forgotten and the Republican Party be fashioned into the unambiguously pro-Israel party it is today.” Jeez, I thought that was AIPAC’s job.

This unambiguous and uncritical exchange of vows will come as “America marks the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth,” and Israel “will be remembering one of our country’s [their words] greatest leaders with speeches, tributes and television specials.” Ergo, “Friends of Israel will have a special reason to celebrate” and give Reagan and the Republican Party the ‘dubious achievement award’ of the century.” More chutzpah it’s hard to imagine.

Before the Reagan era, Haaretz and the Forward reports that “the Republican Party had a decidedly mixed record on Israel. In the 1940s and early 1950s, the conservative movement had strong isolationist and even anti-Semitic tendencies. Later, Republican presidents, such as Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon—while by no means isolationists—had complicated relations with the Jewish state. Eisenhower forced Israel to return the Sinai to Egypt after capturing it in 1956. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Nixon wasted precious days before finally resupplying a tapped out Israel with arms.” Oh my god, that naive Eisenhower, always up for fair play. And naughty Nixon, no wonder he ended up facing impeachment. Read more in www.forward.com.

The Gipper’s gift: a pro-Israel GOP

Indeed, as America marks the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, our supposed friends of Israel, of which I’m not one, will be remembering one of our country’s greatest leaders, including his star-turn in Bedtime for Bonzo and spokesperson for Twenty-Mule-Team Borax and General Electric. “Friends of Israel will have a special reason to celebrate;” to repeat the Forward and Haaretz mantra: “Reagan made the Republican Party into the unambiguously pro-Israel party that it is today,” including AIPAC.

The two papers add that the Gipper, “by contrast, had staunchly pro-Israel views. These were informed by his perception of Israel as an important American ally in the Cold War and his identification with Israel as a vibrant democracy.” This was in spite of the Shameful bombing of the U.S.S. Liberty as reported at Lew Rockwell.com. Every American, Republican or Democrat, should read about the heartlessness of our good friend Israel’s actions against us:

On the fourth day of the 1967 Arab Israeli War, the intelligence ship ‘USS Liberty’ was steaming slowly in international waters, 14 miles off the Sinai Peninsula. Israeli armored forces were racing deep into Sinai in hot pursuit of the retreating Egyptian army.

‘Liberty,’ a World War II freighter, had been converted into an intelligence vessel by the top-secret US National Security Agency, and packed with the latest signals and electronic interception equipment. The ship bristled with antennas and electronic ‘ears’ including TRSSCOMM, a system that delivered real-time intercepts to Washington by bouncing a stream of microwaves off the moon.

‘Liberty’ had been rushed to Sinai to monitor communications of the belligerents in the Third Arab Israeli War: Israel and her foes, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.

At 0800 hrs, 8 June, 1967, eight Israeli recon flights flew over ‘Liberty,’ which was flying a large American flag. At 1400 hrs, waves of low-flying Israeli Mystere and Mirage-III fighter-bombers repeatedly attacked the American vessel with rockets, napalm, and cannon. The air attacks lasted 20 minutes, concentrating on the ship’s electronic antennas and dishes. The ‘Liberty’ was left afire, listing sharply. Eight of her crew lay dead, a hundred seriously wounded, including the captain, Commander William McGonagle.

At 1424 hrs, three Israeli torpedo boats attacked, raking the burning ‘Liberty’ with 20mm and 40mm shells. At 1431hrs an Israeli torpedo hit the ‘Liberty’ midship, precisely where the signals intelligence systems were located. Twenty-five more Americans died.

Israeli gunboats circled the wounded ‘Liberty,’ firing at crewmen trying to fight the fires. At 1515, the crew was ordered to abandon ship. The Israeli warships closed and poured machine gun fire into the crowded life rafts, sinking two. As American sailors were being massacred in cold blood, a rescue mission by US Sixth Fleet carrier aircraft was mysteriously aborted on orders from the White House.

An hour after the attack, Israeli warships and planes returned. Commander McGonagle gave the order: “prepare to repel borders.” But the Israelis, probably fearful of intervention by the US Sixth Fleet, departed. ‘Liberty’ was left shattered but still defiant, her flag flying.

The Israeli attacks killed 34 US seamen and wounded 171 out of a crew of 297, the worst loss of American naval personnel from hostile action since World War II.

Less than an hour after the attack, Israel told Washington its forces had committed a ‘tragic error [tragic but no error] Later, Israel claimed it had mistaken ‘Liberty’ for an ancient Egyptian horse transport [horseshit]. US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, and Joint Chiefs of Staff head, Admiral Thomas Moorer, insisted the Israeli attack was deliberate and designed to sink ‘Liberty.’ So did three CIA reports; one asserted Israel’s Defense Minister, Gen. Moshe Dayan, had personally ordered the attack.

In contrast to American outrage over North Korea’s assault on the intelligence ship ‘Pueblo,’ Iraq’s mistaken missile strike on the USS ‘Stark,’ last fall’s bombing of the USS ‘Cole’ in Aden, and the recent US-China air incident, the savaging of ‘Liberty’ was quickly hushed up by President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

The White House and Congress immediately accepted Israel’s explanation and let the matter drop. Israel later paid a token reparation of US $6 million dollars. There were reports two Israeli pilots who had refused to attack ‘Liberty’ were jailed for 18 years.

Surviving ‘Liberty’ crew members would not be silenced. They kept demanding an open inquiry and tried to tell their story of deliberate attack to the media. Israel’s government worked behind the scenes to thwart these efforts, going so far as having American pro-Israel groups accuse ‘Liberty’s’ survivors of being ‘anti-Semites’ and ‘Israel-haters.’ Major TV networks cancelled interviews with the crew. A book about the ‘Liberty’ by crewman James Ennes’ was dropped from distribution. The Israel lobby branded him ‘an Arab propagandist.’

The attack on ‘Liberty’ was fading into obscurity until last week, when intelligence expert James Bamford came out with Body of Secrets, his latest book about the National Security Agency. In a stunning revelation, Bamford writes that unknown to Israel, a US Navy EC-121 intelligence aircraft was flying high overhead the ‘Liberty,’ electronically recorded the attack. The US aircraft crew provides evidence that the Israeli pilots knew full well that they were attacking a US Navy ship flying the American flag.

Why did Israel try to sink a naval vessel of its benefactor and ally? Most likely because ‘Liberty’s’ intercepts flatly contradicted Israel’s claim, made at the war’s beginning on 5 June, that Egypt had attacked Israel, and that Israel’s massive air assault on three Arab nations was in retaliation. In fact, Israel began the war by a devastating, Pearl-Harbor style surprise attack that caught the Arabs in bed and destroyed their entire air forces.

Israel was also preparing to attack Syria to seize its strategic Golan Heights. Washington warned Israel not to invade Syria, which had remained inactive while Israel fought Egypt. Bamford says Israel’s offensive against Syria was abruptly postponed when ‘Liberty’ appeared off Sinai; then launched once it was knocked out of action. Israel’s claim that Syria had attacked it could have been disproved by ‘Liberty.’

Most significant, ‘Liberty’s’ intercepts may have shown that Israel seized upon sharply rising Arab-Israeli tensions in May-June 1967 to launch a long-planned war to invade and annex the West Bank, Jerusalem, Golan and Sinai.

Far more shocking was Washington’s response. Writes Bamford: ‘Despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel attacked the ship and killed American servicemen deliberately, the Johnson Administration and Congress covered up the entire incident.’ Why?

Domestic politics: Johnson, a man never noted for high moral values, preferred to cover up the attack rather than anger a key constituency and major financial backer of the Democratic Party. Congress was even less eager to touch this ‘third rail’ issue.

Commander McGonagle was quietly awarded the Medal of Honor for his and his men’s heroism—not in the White House, as is usual, but in an obscure ceremony at the Washington Navy Yard. Crew member’s graves were inscribed, ‘died in the Eastern Mediterranean . . . ‘ as if they had be killed by disease, rather than hostile action.

A member of President Johnson’s staff believed there was a more complex reason for the cover-up: Johnson offered Jewish liberals unconditional backing of Israel, and a cover-up of the ‘Liberty’ attack, in exchange for the liberal toning down their strident criticism of his policies in the then raging Vietnam War.

Israel, which claims it fought a war of self defense in 1967 and had no prior territorial ambitions, will be much displeased by Bamford’s revelations. Those who believe Israel illegally occupies the West Bank and Golan will be emboldened.

Much more important, the US government’s long, disgraceful cover-up of the premeditated attack on ‘Liberty’ has now burst into the open and demands full-scale investigation. After 34 years, the voices of ‘Liberty’s’ dead and wounded seamen must finally be heard.

Returning to Haaretz and the Forward’s faux-love song, “Only by full appreciation of the critical role the State of Israel plays in our, strategic calculus can we build the foundation for thwarting Moscow’s designs on territories and resources vital to our security and our national well-being,” Reagan said. Yesterday, it was Moscow [today Iran] posing an existential threat to Israel. As Mitchell Bard, executive director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise noted: “Ronald Reagan was the first President to state explicitly that Israel was a strategic asset to the United States.” It has also been one of its most treacherous enemies I might add, as the Liberty incident illustrates, plus the fact that no other nation had spied upon us more than Israel.

But for Reagan, America’s Alzheimer ‘friendship of forgetting’ with Israel was not a matter of strategic calculus. A deluded Reagan in his 1980 campaign said, “Israel represents the one stable democracy sharing values with us in that part of the world. . . . I think we should make it plain that we are going to keep our commitment to the continued existence of Israel.” And so the self delusion continued at the rate of billions of dollars per year for military aid, and well after an Israeli Nuclear reactor had been built at Dimona in the Negev desert in 1956, and Johnson first turned a deaf ear and blind eye.

Yet this Reagan-Israel love-song must be music to the ears of neoconservatives, even those that backed Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election only to grow disillusioned. Reagan gave pro-Israel neoconservatives, such as Jeane Kirkpatrick and Elliott Abrams, prominent roles in his administration. Kirkpatrick, in particular, defended Israel from her perch as American ambassador to the United Nations.

The neoconservatives gave Republican foreign policy a pro-democracy emphasis that it often lacked in the era of, get this, a “Kissingerian realpolitik,” permanently altering the way that Republicans related to Israel and its conflicts with its undemocratic neighbors. The most “notable undemocratic neighbor” was Israel to Palestine, whose country was stolen piece by piece, settlement by settlement from the Palestinians. For this you shouldn’t be proud.

Israel has been a thorn in the Middle East’s side, from the Gipper’s “morning in America” reelection campaign to the day he met his maker; and to this very day, when Syria has recently been bombed by Israel as well.

Moreover, few Americans realize that the Reagan administration’s “hostage crisis” was a scam manufactured by Reagan’s cadre (including David Rockefeller) in 1980 to steal the election from Jimmy Carter.

On the narrow plus-side, Reagan did support the sale of AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia over Israel’s objections, and he surprisingly condemned Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility, which was sheer insanity. He also displayed genuine anger with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin over Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. As to these incidents taking place within the context of Reagan “taking the U.S.-Israel relationship to a place of genuine friendship,” it was more like his making us parties to mass murder. Palestine, over a period of sixty years and more, has earned the painful title of being the largest outdoor concentration camp in the world.

After some hiccups during the first Bush administration, Republicans have drawn on their “Reaganite” inheritance; and lost several elections for it, trying to become a reliably pro-Israel party, even though Obama quietly released a $500 million gift to the Palestinians. The post-1994 Republican Congress regularly backed Israel on both substantive and symbolic issues. But what did these open pockets know?

Ironically, after 9/11 the Reaganite view that Israel was on the side of democracy in the struggle against the forces of tyranny secured an uncontested place as a central pillar of Republican foreign policy. President George W. Bush was so supportive of Israel that his mother reportedly joked he was “the first Jewish president.” How prescient of her. He supported Israel as an ally who helped pull off 9/11, and to manufacture from it the necessary hatred for Muslims as the patsies that did it. Not.

A visit to Israel is now a rite of passage (and boondoggle) for prospective GOP presidential candidates, which is remarkable given that so few Jews vote in the Republican primaries, with Mitt Romney taking the latest pilgrimage. At the grassroots level, according to a Gallup poll last year, 85% of Republicans say they support Israel over the Palestinians, compared to slightly less than half of Democrats—this despite Jewish voters’ longstanding alliance with the Democratic Party.

Some might counter Republican support for Israel as simply a byproduct of the evangelical community’s misguided affection for the Jewish state. Others might argue incorrectly that America’s alliance with Israel was always set in stone. But the strength of the American-Israeli alliance, and in particular the passionate Republican support for this relationship, is in fact a more recent achievement. And we have Reagan to thank for it. And also to thank for a Middle East in flames, the destruction of American unions, and the savaging of the middle class.

Just as Reagan knit together the diverse strands that today make up the Republican Party’s base—social conservatives, national security conservatives, fiscal conservatives and neoconservatives (a toxic combination)—he also took the passions of these constituencies and wove them into a coarse fabric of support for Israel.

As we celebrate this clueless B-actor’s American’s centennial, those of us who are disgusted by Israel’s rampant tyranny owe him our enduring disdain. All who don’t support Israel should be thought of heroes.

Personally, I have nothing but contempt for (1) Reagan’s destruction of the American economy (2) for leaving us a national debt larger than the combined debt of all previous presidents (3) for his excesses in military spending that increased that debt and (4) for his savaging the middle class with increased taxes while taxes for the rich were lowered.

It was Reagan who introduced favoring the 1% and how to ignore the 99%. It was Reagan who blamed government for America’s problems not the greed-driven 1%. It was Reagan who inspired politicians like Paul Ryan, who recently proposed inhumane cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, suggesting “vouchers” for the last two.

Toward the end of his life, in the full bloom of Alzheimer’s, his legacy caused the destruction of the American Dream for Middle Class and working people. Reagan set the table for the predators now droning our economy, the too-big-to-fail banks, the full-blown insane Israeli clamoring to bomb Iran, and the nearly complete failure of regulatory mechanisms to control theft and corruption of the markets. Last but not least, we can thank Israel for its Samson Option. Michel Chossudofsky writes of it at in Global Research:

“We bring to the attention of our readers the response of Israeli poet Itamar Yaoz-Kost to the message of Nobel Laureate Guenther Grass, who warns the World of the dangers of a US-Israeli sponsored war on Iran.

“The Samson option” (“We Go Down, Everyone Goes”) is not an abstract concept in Israeli politics. It has been addressed by military strategists in both Israel and the US.

“While Israel’s Interior Ministry has banned Guenther Grass from entering Israel, the “We Go Down, Everything Goes” hate rhetoric against humanity in its entirety, is accepted as a concept by Tel Aviv policy makers.

“Israel is a rogue state and a threat to global security. Is it not time to restore an element of sanity in the so-called “international community”?

Bottom line, there’s little here to give thanks for Israel’s planet-endangering criminality, let alone Ronald Reagan, who consciously or not, aided and abetted it.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.