From: Ali Abunimah
To: wesat@npr.org
Subject: US-Israeli relations

March 31, 2001

Dear NPR News,

In his regular Saturday Q&A with Daniel Schorr, Scott Simon asked regarding the escalating violence in the Middle East, "Can President Bush afford to keep the U.S. on the sidelines?" (Weekend Edition Saturday, March 31, 2001)

Schorr answered. "If he can he will," and among other comments added "this is the kind of situation that inevitably drags America in."

Underlying this brief discussion is the assumption that the U.S. is on the "sidelines," or that the United States was tentatively "stepping back" from the conflict. Certainly the United States attempted to give this impression rhetorically, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The United States has been and is actively intervening in this conflict on the side of Israel and this is unchanged under Bush. The U.S. continues to ship to Israel the deadly weapons it uses to crush Palestinian popular resistance to the occupation, and the U.S. still provides total diplomatic to cover to Israel, last week vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have provided a mechanism to enforce the protections to which the Palestinian people are entitled under the Geneva Conventions and which Israel is flagrantly violating.

Schorr is right that the United States is the only country with enough clout to make a difference by itself. So far, the United States has put all that clout behind Israel. It is a shame that Simon and Schorr attempt to cover this up and convey instead the illusion that the U.S. has been laying back and watching from a distance. If this were true, Israel would not be able to withstand international and internal revulsion and resistance at its brutality and lawlessness for very long.

Sincerely,

Ali Abunimah
http://www.abunimah.org