DECOMPLEXIFICATION:

Is It Good for the Jews? (BILL KELLER, March 8, 2003, NY Times)

Making the world safer for us - defusing terrorism and beginning to reform a region that is a source of toxic hostility to what we stand for - happens to make the world safer for Israel as well. But the idea that Israel's interests are driving one of the most momentous shifts in America's foreign policy is simple-minded and offensive. (There is also a simple-minded and offensive flip side, which holds that opposition to the war is heavily fueled by anti-Semitism - another sweeping slander with a grain of truth in it.)

What is demonstrably true is that Israelis believe that the war in Iraq is - to use a phrase that is a staple of Jewish satire - good for the Jews. Even though Israel is a likely target of Iraqi reprisals when war breaks out, it is the only country I know of where polls show overwhelming support for an invasion to oust Saddam, preferably sooner. [...]

There are obvious reasons that Israelis would like to rid the region of a man who trains terrorists and pays blood money to suicide bombers' families. But the deeper explanation, says Stephen Cohen, an analyst at the Israel Policy Forum, is profound despair over the bloody dead end in which Israeli-Palestinian politics sit. A conquest of Iraq offers the prospect that the United States will take the region in hand. It is, to many Israelis, the only hope of change for the better.

In his speech last week to the American Enterprise Institute, President Bush for the first time seemed to embrace this thankless responsibility. He declared that success in Iraq could break the impasse and move Israel and the Palestinians toward the obvious two-state solution. He underscored this as "my personal commitment."

The speech may have been a sop to European opinion, but a successful war would offer Mr. Bush a precious opportunity. A lot of people wish that he had engaged the Palestinian question intensively and earlier, if only to gain some credibility with the Arabs prior to disarming Saddam. But later would still be better than never.

The question is, What will Mr. Bush make of this moment? If the U.S. manages to make a more benign Iraq - and perhaps a chastened Syria - the Israelis could decide to dig in their heels: Our friend Mr. Bush is here, he's on our side; we can now sit tight, wait for the Palestinians to read the handwriting on the walls of Baghdad and maybe offer them half a state.

Or the Americans could seize the opportunity to say to Ariel Sharon, who has shown no prior gift for strategic statesmanship: "We are here now - you know we won't let you down. It's time to roll back the settlements and close a deal."

Will Mr. Bush choose to lead on this? We know now that the man isn't afraid of a big gamble. But we also know that he likes his stories black and white, and no amount of conquest will make the Middle East a simple plot.

As conservatives, perhaps we're just too stupid to perceive all the grays that a Times columnist can, but the Middle East just doesn't seem all that complex: the Arabs of every nation have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and Israel has a right to peace. Any leader who denies these rights is an impediment to a solution. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 8, 2003 6:47 AM