Ordered to Die Quietly Emanuel A. Winston 11 March 2003
US President George W. Bush, through Secretary of State Colin Powell, has given notice to Israel that, should Saddam attack Israel and should Israel respond, Israel would forfeit all international support.(1)
The United States has given Israel the privilege of receiving, in real time, whatever electronic intelligence that the U.S. is generating. The report did not say what Israel was supposed to do, or allowed to do, if Saddam’s attack was non-conventional, such as NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical). I presume that Bush and Powell would expect to be notified if Israelis were to suddenly die en masse, as did the Iranians or the Iraqi Kurds (in an Iraqi town of 45,000, Halabja, in August 1988). As I recall, Saddam used a mix of Mustard Gas and a potent co*cktail of nerve gases, including Tabun, Sarin and Soman. Half of the victims died in choking, blistering agony, while those hit with Sarin died as if peacefully asleep. Some may recall the photos of Saddam’s work in one photo news magazine.
The people of Halabja who survived are now suffering from tumors and cancers of all kinds, mutations in birth, eye damage, respiratory and neurological malfunctions. Children die in a few years from Leukemia and lymphomas. Miscarriages are common. Well, you get the idea. And yet, despite all this prima facie evidence, Israel is not to attack preemptively and not even after she has been struck.
Bush and Powell mentioned that Israel would "forfeit" international support. I was wondering what "International Support" they were referring to. Hopefully, the President did not mean America would remove her support if Israel fought back should it be struck with WMD (Weapons of Mass Death). Israel has always been grateful for the generous support America has given her throughout the years, and tried to repay that generosity with good intelligence and loyalty. As for the "International Community", they are not even supporting America in her fight against global terrorism and terrorist nations. If Bush and Powell were referring to the "Quartet" - namely, the United Nations, European Union (especially France and Germany), Russia and the U.S. State Department - well, Israel does not have to do anything to forfeit their support, since it was never there.
In the last Gulf War, Desert Storm 1991, Israel was promised that American, British and French aircraft would make taking out the Iraqi SCUD launchers a "top priority", if Israel did not attack Iraq and upset the Arab coalition members. Not one launcher was actually destroyed, according to the U.S. Government Accounting Office report years later. As a relevant aside, those mobile SCUD launchers were manufactured by Matrix-Churchill, an English company, later purchased by Saddam’s front companies, where Matrix also acted as a procurer for other weapons, like cluster bombs. In any case, after the 1991 Gulf War, the GAO published its findings about President George Herbert Walker Bush, then-Secretary of State James Baker and then-Chief of Staff Colin Powell regarding their pledge to attack the SCUD missile launchers. The fact surfaced that, apparently, the order was never given; but, even if it was, it was not obeyed.
Israel was hit by 39 SCUDs and if any had contained biological or chemical warheads, the casualties would have been in the tens of thousands and worse than those in Halabja. By G-d’s miracle, only one man was killed by a SCUD, although the property damage was extensive. The Patriots of that day hit the motors of the incoming SCUDS and their shrapnel and explosives hit the residential areas. Israeli pilots who are trained to fly at deck level could have found and hit those SCUDs and maybe could have saved the 28 American soldiers who were killed when their barracks in Saudi Arabia was hit by a Saddam SCUD.
Israel received many promises for additional aid and protection if they stayed out of the war in which they became targets. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir kept his side of the bargain and didn’t send Israeli aircraft, which were warmed up on the runways, to hit Iraq’s mobile SCUD launchers. But, when he later asked Bush, Baker and Powell for the promised loan guarantees for war damages and absorption of one million incoming Soviet Jews, all the administration’s promises evaporated, until Israel accommodated the State Department for Yasser Arafat. Later, after they drove Shamir out of office by interfering with the Israeli elections, they replaced him with a more accommodating Yitzhak Rabin, with Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin, on their way to creating the failed Oslo experiment. Only then were the loan guarantees granted.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has kept his promise of restraint, but he only received delays when he asked President George Bush, Jr. for the promised loan guarantees, intended to offset damages from the 29 months of Arab Palestinian terror attacks and defensive preparations for the possible and probable attack by megalomaniac Saddam Hussein, in his last throes of dictatorship, with the WMD (Weapons of Mass Death) at his disposal.
So, dear Jews of Israel, you have been ordered not to make a fuss and to die quietly. You remember how to do that - just like you did when you waited for the "International Community" to come to your rescue 60 years ago: No bombing of the death camps, the crematoria, the rail-lines to the death camps; the conferences of the "International Community" in Bermuda and Evian, where the leading nations among the Allies decided it would be better not to rescue, feed or clothe Jewish victims until after Germany was defeated. Yes, indeed, we Jews had better be more careful this time, lest we irritate the "International Community". We must be very careful not to defend ourselves and our country, just in case we "forfeit" their support.
So, how about it President Bush? Play fair with the Israelis, because now you know you cannot buy the loyalty or affection of the U.N., E.U., France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, or Arafat’s Arab Palestinians no matter how much you push Israel to the wall. Remember, only the British, Australians and the Israelis stepped up immediately next to the American troops when it counted. Let America treat an ally and a friend with the honor and respect it deserves. It is small, but it has proven its fighting spirit against overwhelming forces. And now, America faces the same enemy.
1. “U.S. Military Plugs Israel into Real-Time War Monitoring” by Nathan Guttman, Ha’aretz English Edition (March 4, 2003). -------------------------------------------------------- Emanuel A. Winston is a Middle East analyst and commentator with the Gamla and Freeman organizations.
