Loan Guarantees to Israel
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The Times scored a bull’s-eye with its editorial about the Israeli loan-guarantee controversy. As noted, “There’s plenty of humanitarian support in Washington for the housing loans, but there’s little support for the Israeli government’s feverish ideology.”
At issue is the Israeli fringe right’s concept of “‘Greater Israel.” Depending upon which Israeli hard-liner one queries, Greater Israel can include all of Israel’s current borders, plus the West Bank and Gaza, or all of Israel and the occupied territories, plus Jordan, or even all the lands from the Euphrates to Suez.
What Israeli zealots like Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Housing Minister Ariel Sharon are essentially seeking is to have Palestinian statehood placed in a suitcase and shipped out of the occupied territories, at favorable rates backed by U.S. loan guarantees.
Gone are the Israeli giants of yesteryear, people like Israel’s first prime minister and president, David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann; leaders whose clear-eyed vision has been replaced by a near-manic mysticism that bodes ill for all concerned. In this vein, the United States has no moral choice but to condition any loan guarantees upon the unconditional cessation of all future Israeli settlement programs in the West Bank and Gaza.
MICHAEL A. SCOTT
Glendora
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