THE ARROGANCE OF ISRAEL

So, let me get this right: the United States of America funds Israel to the tune of $7 million a day, or around $500 per Israeli per year. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America's entire foreign aid budget. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion. (See this Congressional report for all of the astonishing details of unparalleled US financial largesse towards the Jewish state.)

Yet, this week, when a former President of the United States – who happens to be the man who negotiated Israel’s peace deal with its largest Arab neighbour, and who also happens to be a Nobel Peace Laureate to boot – visits the State of Israel at the start of a Middle East tour, he is denied a meeting with the Israeli prime minister, as well as the country’s foreign and defence ministers, and the Israeli security services even have the temerity to decline the requests for help and assistance from the US Secret Service agents guarding him. (Has anyone actually reminded the Shin Bet that everything they possess – from their guns and grenades, to their suits and sunglasses – is paid for, in full, by the United States?)

Is this the height of arrogance?

Yes.

But why the snub? Why the rudeness and arrogance expressed towards a former occupant of the traditionally pro-Israeli Oval Office – behaviour described by one American source as ‘unprecedented’? Because this former president happens to be none other than Jimmy Carter, author of the 2006 best-selling book, ‘Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid’, in which he describes,

“…the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank. An enormous imprisonment wall is now under construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine, to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers. In many ways, this is more oppressive than what black people lived under in South Africa during apartheid.”

Judging by the official Israeli reaction to his visit now, two years on, I guess what they say is true. The truth hurts...