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Quotes From A
Column Entitled
"Is It Good For The Jews?"
By Bill Heller
The New York Times, March 8, 2003
"...The conspiracy theory appears in several variations, ranging from
malignant to merely cynical, but it goes something like this: A cadre of
pro-Zionist zealots within the Bush administration and among its media
chorus (the "amen corner," as the isolationist Pat Buchanan crudely called
them last time we threatened Iraq) has long schemed to make the Middle East
safer for Israel by uprooting the hostile regime of Saddam Hussein. They
have finally succeeded, the theory goes, in pushing their agenda up to the
desk of a gullible president.
Exhibit A for this plot is a document entitled "A Clean Break: A New
Strategy for Securing the Realm," prepared in 1996 by a group of American
defense thinkers for the hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of
Israel. This study proposed an aggressive redirection of Israeli strategy,
including a plan for "removing Saddam Hussein from power." Three of the
authors of the prescription — Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser
—are now prominent "embeds" in the Bush administration.
The "Clean Break" group, interestingly, did not call for an American
conquest of Saddam. With President Bill Clinton in office, there was little
hope of that. They proposed that Israel handle it together with Jordan and
Turkey. Jordan's Hashemite dynasty would share the management of Iraq with
the Shiites — presumably leaving the fate of the poor Kurds in Turkish
hands. As for America, the document proposed that Israel adopt a new policy
of self-reliance, immediately declining economic aid and, eventually,
military assistance. This was all a bit much, even for the ultranationalist
Mr. Netanyahu.
A less conspiracy-minded observer might point out that the longstanding
Bushite animosity toward Iraq is complex and hardly secret, and the fact
that our interests coincide with Israel's does not mean that a Zionist fifth
column has hijacked the president's brain. But that would not satisfy the
yearning for a simple story.
Reinforcing this sinister narrative is the suspicion that the
presidential mastermind Karl Rove designed the war as shameless pandering to
Florida's Jewish voters and to the tens of millions of evangelical
Christians who have taken up Israel as a passion. (Many evangelicals love
Israel because in their Biblical end-of-days scenario, the gathering of Jews
in the Holy Land is necessary for the Second Coming. Inconveniently for the
Jews, the story calls for them to either abandon their beliefs or be
exterminated in time for the great rapture....."
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