A Problem In American Foreign Policy: Palestine
**********
FOREWORD & INTRODUCTION:
Below are some thoughts on American policy toward Palestine from Ambassador John Gunther Dean. Born Jewish in Germany,
John Gunther Dean cares deeply both about his adopted homeland, the United States of America, and about justice and
human decency.
Dear friends and former colleagues:
Having just celebrated my 80th birthday, I feel the need to commit to paper my outlook on the role of an American
diplomat. I should add that when I took the U.S. Foreign Service examination more than 50 years ago, there were few
naturalized citizens in the Service. I still believe today that an American diplomat’s first obligation is to look after
U.S. long-term national interests and not to have dual allegiance due to family ties with another country or religious
affiliations. As I repeated on several occasions before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee when seeking
confirmation for an ambassadorial assignment, I always believed and was told that I represented a secular state and that
tolerance, respect for the law, justice, fairness and perhaps compassion were qualities which Americans like to be known
for around the world. In my many years of public services I tried to live up to these standards. I also always believed
that speaking up for the truth was essential.
Having fled my native land because of Nazi persecution, I became progressively appalled by the Israeli policy and
actions in Palestine and against the Palestinian people. But even more alarming was the consistent American policy to
support unequivalently Israeli actions and policy on Palestine. I believed while was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, and
today as a retired person, that I cannot have dual values. As U.S. ambassador to Lebanon I fiercely criticized Israeli
policy in Lebanon which resulted in my family and myself nearly being killed with American weapons shipped to Israel. I
spoke up 26 years ago on Israeli policy in the Near East and I still speak up today about current U.S. policy toward the
area which I believe is not in the long-term interest of the United States (nor in that of Israel).
It is for that reason, as a patriotic American, who served in two wars and held senior positions in U.S. Embassies
located in countries racked by civil strife, that I have put a few ideas on paper. I am sending these thoughts to you in
the attachment in the hope that our leaders today will take note of them so that our descendants will continue to be
proud to say “I am an American” and foreigners will continue to look at America as a beacon of hope for humanity.
Respectfully,
John Gunther Dean
Former Deputy for CORDS in military Region 1 Vietnam
Chargé D’affaires – LAOS
Ambassador to Cambodia
Ambassador to Denmark
Ambassador to Lebanon
Ambassador to Thailand
Ambassador to India
**********
In many ways, the Palestine problem is the most pervasive, complex and dangerous problem in American foreign policy. It
is also the most difficult to address because it is so deeply embedded in guilt, emotion and fear as to be almost beyond
rational thought. Americans, both government officials and private citizens, feel far freer to criticize America,
Britain or France without being thought to dislike or oppose the peoples of those countries, but most non-Jews are
afraid of being charged with anti-Semitism even if they are only critical of the hard-line policies of former Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon. This American attitude is not only demeaning to us Americans but is not helping Israel or Jews
elsewhere. Israel is no longer, if it ever was, an international charity. It is a relatively powerful, rich
nation-state. It should be analyzed, as its own citizens analyse its actions, in respectful terms.
Like any other two states, Israel and America have national interests which do not always coincide. Only if the
citizens of each rationally define their interests and understand what they are prepared to do to protect them can they
correctly order and evaluate their relationship. Certainly that is how the Israelis themselves have always analyzed
their relations with America. When Israel saw a conflict between its goals and ours, it naturally chose its own. America
has seldom done so. At the governmental level we tip-toe around issues which have severely harmed American interests.
Example: the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon was profoundly disturbing to American relations throughout the
Middle East; its policy toward the Palestinians has stopped the peace process and certainly promoted terrorism directed
at America.
We have closed our eyes to events which elsewhere and by other people we would oppose, in some cases even with military
force. Two of the most spectacular instances are when Israeli agents set fire to an American government library in
Alexandria in 1954 in an attempt to damage Egyptian-American relations and when the Israeli air force and navy attempted
in 1967 to sink a U.S. Naval ship, USS Liberty, during which attack 75 American servicemen were wounded and 34 were
killed. They shot up even the life boats and life preservers with torpedo, machinegun, rocket and napalm fire,
apparently attempting to ensure that there were no survivors. Such an attack by any other country in the world would
almost certainly have provoked an immediate military reaction.
Despite our own fiscal problems, the U.S. has been a cornucopia for Israel. We have given to Israel or provided in
loans that were never expected to be repaid about $100 billion, have given Israel special trade relationships that in
some cases remove import duties we charge other countries and have subsidized Israel armaments industry even when it has
thwarted American policy by selling arms where we are trying to prevent arms sales, as it did recently with China.
Mindful of the danger of being thought to be anti-Semitic, American specialists on the Middle East feel inhibited to say
in public what their studies lead them to think.
Israelis act in a far more egotistical and security-conscious fashion than Americans. Whereas Americans fear to
criticize the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the outstanding Israeli scholar Avi Shlaim [1] was forthright in describing the Israeli occupation of Gaza before their unilateral withdrawal. After pointing out that
in Gaza the 8,000 Israeli settlers controlled 40% of the arable land and most of the water while the 1.3 million
Palestinians struggle to exist in what little remains to them, he commented that the Israeli occupation “is a hopeless colonial enterprise, accompanied by one of the most prolonged and brutal military
occupations of modern times.” A non-Jewish American writing that would have been excoriated as anti-Semitic or even hounded from his academic or
government post. This is unworthy of America and is misleading for the Israelis. Knowing that they have virtually a
blank check to do as they wish, they pay little attention to American government attempts to bring about conditions
conducive to its interests in the Middle East. This is not to say that the Israelis are to blame; Americans are more at
fault. The Israelis are merely acting rationally as they see their interests. It is America that is acting irrationally.
Many senior and respected Israelis agree. They worry that the main beneficiary of the American weakness is the Israeli
extreme Right and that Israeli’s long-term best interests, and even Israeli democracy, will suffer as a consequence.
FOOTNOTE
[1] Born in Baghdad in 1945, he grew up in Israel, served in the Israeli army and is now British Academy Research
Professor of international relations at St Antony’s College, Oxford. He also commented on what we all know that
“American foreign policy has habitually displayed double standards toward the Middle East: one standard towards Israel
and one towards the Arabs. To give just one example, the U.S effected regime change in Baghdad in three weeks but has
failed to dismantle a single Jewish settlement in the occupied territories in 38 years.”
ENDS