Israel And US Elections

[Violet_Crumble]

By Uri Avnery
20 August, 2004
Gush Shalom

Once upon a time, an assistant to Levy Eshkol, our late Prime Minister, rushed up to him and cried: “Levy, a disaster! A drought has set in!”

“Where?” the Prime Minister asked anxiously, “in Texas?”

“No, here in Israel!” the man replied.

“Then there’s nothing to worry about,” Eshkol said dismissively.

Right from the beginning, the State of Israel has been critically affected by events in the United States. “If America sneezes, Israel catches cold,” is the local version of the universal saying.

This is particularly true in the run-up to American elections. They can be as important for Israel as our own, since the occupant of the White House can influence the fate of Israel in many significant ways. But they have an additional significance: the months before the American elections are a kind of open season for Israel.

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However, Sharon does have a vital interest in Bush’s reelection. He is afraid of John Kerry, even if he says exactly the same as Bush on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and his grandfather’s name was Cohen. Experience has shown that there is no necessary correlation between what politicians say before elections and what they do after them. That is the other side of the election coin.

So Sharon may be induced to do something – anything at all – that will allow Bush to claim the credit for a “historical breakthrough” in the Middle East. Perhaps – who knows? – a week before the elections, three mobile homes may be dismantled on some godforsaken hilltop in Samaria. Wow


http://www.countercurrents.org/avnery200804.htm