Solon Economou

Falmouth author heads for Israel

Does America condone the Arab point of view?

Arnon Rieger (on right) of East Falmouth, author of Israel's Downfall, is heading for Israel this week to celebrate two major events in his life.  May 14 is the 60^th anniversary of the founding of Israel-Arnon Rieger was there-and May 15 is the 50th reunion of his high-school graduation class from the kibbutz, Mishmar Ha'amek, translated as Guardian of the Valley.

Paradoxically, Arnon, an Israeli Jew who came to America in 1964, was introduced to me by an Israeli Arab.   As our talks progressed--about America, Israel, and the history of the world in general--I found that, like me, Arnon is an engineer who attended my alma mater, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, for a year while working for General Electric.  I then discovered that Arnon also was the innovator of the subjects of several NASA Tech Briefs, over 1,000 of which I had written for NASA (but not Arnon's) over a period of 17 years.  So in a way, we have crossed paths before, but not at the same time.

Arnon is one of our foremost experts on American-Israeli relationships and the author of several books on the subject.   He considers the nation of Israel to be in greater peril than it realizes because of lack of leadership both in the United States and in Israel.  He believes the United States and the international community enable the Arab nations to enjoy a "win-win, lose-win" situation.  The US pressures Israel to give up any territory it may have legally occupied in a war initiated by its Arab neighbors and "prevents Israel from crushing terrorism."

A little democracy surrounded by a billion enemies

Rieger says that Israel is "located in an 8,800 square mile area surrounded by 300 million Arabs and 1.5 billion Muslims, all of whom do not recognize its existence and view it as an affront to the Muslim world that should be uprooted from the region."

 "They can never lose any territory to the Israelis," says Rieger of the surrounding Arab states.  "Even if they lose it in a war, the United States will force Israel to retreat."  Rieger says only in the 1967 Six-Day War were the Israelis "allowed" to keep the territories that they occupied because America was deeply involved in Vietnam at the time.

 Rieger also criticizes the United States and the international community of condoning "the Arabs' point of view that Israel is occupying the Palestinian territory of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.  The fact is that there never was a Palestinian state.  When the UN resolution of 1947 declared both a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine, the Arabs immediately rejected it and initiated military hostilities."  Within hours of declaring its independence, the newborn state of Israel, with a population of just 600,000, was invaded by five Arab armies bent on its extermination.

He thinks the US needs "Churchillian-type leadership.  To this day, America has failed to make clear which, if any, interests it is prepared to defend.  All US presidents suffer from a chronic problem of projecting to the world an image of vacillation between engagement and withdrawal." 

Rieger similarly faults current Israeli leadership, which he says involves "the lack of a clear strategic vision about Israel's borders and its long-term relationship with its Arab neighbors."  He claims that "Israel's economic and political relationship with the United States creates a dependency that weakens Israel."

The conundrum is that America is Israel's greatest ally and the source of most of its military might and a good deal of its financial aid.  Without America, it is doubtful Israel would still exist.  On the other hand, America uses this leverage to appease the Arab states by forcing Israel to pull back from any lands it occupies in the wars initiated by those states, leaving no real penalty for their aggression. 

The extremist Arabs only have to win once - no more Israel

There's Israel's initial war for independence, the war of 1956, the Six-Day war in 1967, the Yom Kippur war in 1973, and Intifada I and Intifada II waged by terrorists against Israeli men, women and children.  In every case where occupied land was returned in "land for peace" deals, the terrorism continued. 

Just think, how many military invasions and terrorist attacks would America take before it literally obliterated the enemy?  I think we've already taken them.

Rieger's reunion with his high school classmates will be bittersweet.  Fifteen percent of his class, three boys out of twenty girls and boys, has been killed in wars or clashes with the surrounding Arab states.  Rieger himself is a veteran of the war of 1956 against Egypt.  He has no illusions about Islamic intentions.

I wonder if there'll ever be peace in his Valley.