|
Israel is a democracy in a limited sense. However, millions of Arabs have not been allowed to vote or have their own state, but are required to pay Israeli taxes. Also non-jews, including Christians, have had their land expropriated and are banned from buying land. Israel is a democracy on the old South African model, certainly not the model of any other democratic nation.
The Samson scenario seems ridiculous to me. It is highly unlikely we will ever see another all out Arab-Israeli war, because they know they could never win. Even if the Arabs build nukes, they don’t want to get nuked in return. I doubt we’d even see a limited war like in 1973 when the object was to strengthen negotiating power.
Observer, I don’t think you completely understand the oil issue. Oil entering the world supply lowers prices world-wide even if not shipped directly to the US. Therefore it is important to us that the Mid-east oil keeps flowing. Is democracy bad in the mid-east? Most Arabs, excluding the privileged, would like it, but it is the worst thing that could happen for oil prices.
You say that an Arab democracy would also ship oil for economic reasons. They would ship some oil definitely, but they would cut back to a large extent. This is the heart of why the Arab people hate their royal families, why the Iranian royal family was overthrown in 1979 and why the US has done everything possible to prevent further royal revolutions in the Gulf. The Arab people feel that their oil is being exploited by the West and would want to cut back shipments regardless of our support for Israel. They also see that most of these profits go to the royals who are corrupt and wasteful beyond imagination. The royals could care less about the Palestinians except that the issue creates popular unrest at home.
The royals keep shipments high, not so much because they need the money, but to keep in power. We ship a lot of weapons to the gulf royals, and to Iran before 1979, along with providing political and intelligence support in order to keep them in power. When the Shah was overthrown in a national popular revolution, a religious limited democratic regime came to power, that was extremely popular. The Arabs in the other gulf states would like to see a similar overthrow of the royals in which an Islamic state with a limited democracy would cut back oil shipments. In short the royal families are walking a tight rope between the US and their own people.
Our support of Israel backfired on us big time in 1973. I think it was a shock to the leadership in this country, because I doubt anyone thought oil prices could shoot up so dramatically. It did however, reinforce the need to have control over the Gulf. We’d have a permanent semi-embargo if the Saud family collapsed along with others in the region.
The point about the Mossad doing dirty work for the CIA is also an excellent point.
The defense industry loves Israel. We ship them tons of weapons, we also ship weapons to other Mid-east states because of Israel. Congress bans the US weapons industry from shipping to many countries with poor human rights records. Israel serves the lucrative role of arms broker for our defense industry to Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Zimbabwe among many others. They even tried to ship the AWACS to China last year. Congress threatened to cut off aid and of course the Israelis backed down.
|
|