It is always worthwhile to monitor – before it’s too late – policy recommendations emerging from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC ecosystem. Since 1984 that ecosystem includes AIPAC’s associated think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Two WINEP thought leaders are currently advancing a serious proposal for the US to help Israel avert the fate of becoming a "bi-national state." It’s a two-step process. First the US would formally recognize Israeli sovereignty over large Israeli-annexed West Bank settlement blocs. Then the U.S. would use its powers of persuasion to win European, U.N. and Arab acceptance of the deal, all the while giving Israel billions more in foreign assistance.
All of these policy prescriptions appear in the new Dennis Ross/David Makovsky book, Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel’s Most Important Leaders Shaped its Destiny. Dennis Ross worked on the "peace process" within US government for decades. Though trying to maintain a pretense of impartiality, Israel partisans like Ross working within such teams always managed to make the US appear to operate as "Israel’s lawyer." WINEP’s David Makovsky labored as a journalist and then executive editor of the Jerusalem Post reporting on the "peace process" before joining WINEP.
The rocket boosters for the new book’s delivery vehicles are lessons Makovsky and Ross reveal from decisions made by Israel’s "founding fathers." According to the book, whenever Israel was at an existential inflection point, David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon made near-unilateral and controversial decisions necessary for Israel to prevail.
For example, just prior to Israel’s declaration of statehood in 1948, David Ben-Gurion had to overcome opposition from the venerable US Secretary of State George Marshall. Marshall famously argued for a US funded plan to rebuild post-WWII Europe. Less known is that Marshall wanted "Zionists to delay declaration of statehood" based on department views of how to best advance US policy toward the Soviet Union and Arab states.
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