OY VET ER KUMEN ZU GEYN, VELN ALE YIDN IN ERETZ YISROEL AYNSHTEYN: I promised a post on U.S. support for Israel, and here it is.

BACKGROUND: Let’s clear one major obstacle out of the way. My father is Jewish. My sister too. I counterprotested the idiotic Jew-hate-not-free-trade! march in April. (Read about it here and here.) Although I was not raised with any particular affection for the state of Israel, and I’m neither ethnically nor religiously Jewish, I still have a lingering sense, I think, of the dream of Israel–a place for us. So I hope I can blog about my problems with the actual state of Israel without drawing accusations of anti-Semitism.

As will soon become glaringly obvious, I’m really conflicted about the question of U.S. aid to Israel. I figure I’ll address a bunch of different arguments and see where I end up. I’ll tackle each “side,” starting with the arguments I find least persuasive.

AGAINST AID TO ISRAEL: Israel is an illegitimate state, founded on stolen land. I’ve read conflicting accounts of the founding of Israel; although I think it should be obvious to everyone why Israel was founded, I also think it was a very bad idea. The Jews suffered from their usual wretched luck–set your state down in the middle of what’s about to become a hotbed of anti-Semitism and imported Naziphilia–and they got used by Europeans who wanted to make those pesky Hebrews somebody else’s problem. My basic stance on the founding of Israel is, I know this sucks, but you should have gone to Brooklyn instead.

But that isn’t really too important in the foreign-policy department, for a lot of reasons. First, the U.S. supports scads of far-less-legitimate states. Some of them we should stop supporting. But some of them are helpful to us, or at least better than the alternatives.

Second, there were Jews settling in the land that became Israel well before the founding of the modern state. Land was stolen from Palestinians (spare me the rant about how there were no “Palestinians”; there were people there, OK? They became a nation-like group partly because of the founding of Israel. That’s how ethnicities form), but if Israel is pushed into the sea (which is where the illegitimate-state argument goes) those pre-Israel settler Jews will have their land stolen. Plus lots and lots of people will die. So even if you think Israel is illegitimate, getting rid of it will lead to murder and theft. And that strikes me as “illegitimate” too.

For more on why Israel is not evil, click here.

The fact that Israel has been expanding the settlements in the Occupied Territories means that Israel doesn’t want peace. Whatever. Yes, the settlement expansions are wrong. I don’t expect our allies to be angels, and if the worst thing you can say about Israel is that it plays dirty pool, I don’t see that as enough of a reason to ditch a mostly-democratic, sorta-liberal ally. (Don’t worry, you’ll get more reasons later on.)

Supporting Israel endangers Americans. This is the “suicide bombers: coming soon to a theater near you!” argument. I frankly think we’ll still be hated even if we yank all our cash and weaponry from Eretz Yisroel. I’m not really sure what, if anything, we can realistically do that will stop terrorist attacks on our country; do too little and you have no effect, but do too much (attempt “regime changes” in every hostile nation, say) and you end up a colonial power with some of the world’s most resentful colonists. In the end, our support of Israel is not a big factor, I think. Not nonexistent–Mickey Kaus has diligently tracked Bin Laden’s references to Israel–but I don’t think ending our support of Israel will protect us. More on why this self-protective approach might backfire, below.

We have no reason to support Israel. This is a smaller version of the previous claim. It’s a “what do you do for me?” question–why should the U.S. support any country unless our own interests are plainly involved? Here’s the big cop-out of this post: I’m not sure whether there can be such a thing as “charitable foreign policy,” which is what many supporters of U.S. aid to Israel are really proposing. I have not yet been convinced that such policy is at all times wrong or impossible. In almost all cases we either don’t know enough about the region and its history–click here for some background on the Kosovo Liberation Army, to take only one example; or read up on our adventures in Haiti–or we can’t do much good anyway. However, I don’t want to rule out the possibility that there are real cases in which the USA can stop (say) genocide or invasion, through military force or military aid (since the latter is what we’re sending Israel), at relatively low costs to us, and without screwing up the affected region worse than it was when we entered.

If Israel can only survive through US aid, it’s a client state not a sovereign state–and the US shouldn’t be in the client-state business. I don’t have an argument against this. I basically agree with it.

ARGUMENTS FOR U.S. AID: You’re anti-Semitic. I hope I’ve dealt with this already. An analogy: Lots of racists oppose affirmative action. I oppose affirmative action. I am not, however, racist. I think an excellent argument could be made–in fact, let’s cut the middleman here and I’ll just make the argument myself–that the existence of the modern state of Israel is bad for the Jews. Jewish grandmothers are getting blown up at bar mitzvahs, people. How is this good for the Jews? Cui bono? If the claim is that personal safety is less important than political self-determination–again, to what extent is Israel genuinely autonomous and to what extent is it a US client? Also, do Jews actually lack representation in the US? If you wanted to raise a Jewish family–wouldn’t you rather do it here, and doesn’t that tell you something about what’s good for the Jews?

Also, if there were no Israel, the Schools of Resentment in the Middle East would have to find somebody besides the Jews to hate. They could start with their tyrant rulers, who use state-run media to pump out blood libel and Nazi-like propaganda. Again: good for the Jews, or bad for the Jews?

I know that the establishment of the state of Israel was a huge psychological boost for Jews around the world. Instead of being slaughtered, Jews were fighting back, and they were winning. They proved that Jews could win; and every people needs to know that it has a fighting chance in the world. I know that, as Glenn Reynolds eloquently put it (quoting from memory here; and close to tears), if Israel’s enemies win out against her, “Many Israelis will remember Masada and die with the dream.” All I can say in response is, the dream is already dead; it was stillborn. You can’t build a country, in the midst of vicious enemies, on a dream. When blood runs in the streets of the “land of milk and honey,” the dream is already dead.

Always support every mostly-democratic and vaguely-liberal state. I have great sympathy for this position, and in general it’s right–just as, in general, “charity-war” is a bad idea. Most of the time, supporting the countries more like liberal democracies over the countries less like liberal democracies is the best plan, and very much in our long-term self-interest. (The world needs to know that liberal democracy works.) However, if there were ever an exception to this rule it would be Israel. Israel is not self-sufficient (and some of that is doubtless the fault of its socialist heritage and practice), so it’s not a great example of liberal democracy “working”; and the fact that the most liberal-democratic state in the region is a pariah among its neighbors, in my opinion, does more to retard liberalization in the Middle East than to spur it on.

If the U.S. abandons Israel, Islamist terrorists everywhere will rejoice; our allies will see that we can’t be trusted; we’ll look weak, mutable, and beatable. This too is where I throw up my hands in defeat. I think this is just true. This, to my mind, is the best argument for supporting Israel–and it’s an argument from despair. (And yes, I know that the intifada is not all that Islamist. But I still think Islamists would take a US aid cutoff as a major victory, and proof that terrorism works.)

FAINT HOPES: At this point, I see only a few very unlikely ways out of the impasses created in 1948.

The U.S. does something really awesome in the war on terror, thus allowing us to slowly withdraw from supporting Israel without looking weak. This is my least preferred option. I do not think Israel can last long without us.

That “something” also changes the balance of power in the Middle East significantly enough that Israel has a much better chance of making a lasting peace with her neighbors. When the threat of all-out war against Israel is removed, I think it may be possible to negotiate Palestinian statehood or (vastly less likely, not that any of this is likely) assimilation. This is better.

Move to Brooklyn. The least realistic of all the options; and by far the best.

I think it should be obvious that I’m open to persuasion on this–in fact, I’d love to be persuaded out of the confusion and hopelessness I’m in. So check out the email link to your left. Thanks to everyone who emailed me before I wrote this vast post; and feel free to write again.