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03/14/2006:

"More Pro-Israel Than Israel"

In a letter to the editor of The New York Times last week, retired Israeli general Shlomo Gazit could not have been more clear: "This is not the time for politicians from your country or ours to offer knee-jerk counterproductive declarations or legislation to cater to their electorates."

Gazit is not your run-of-the-mill retired general. He was Israel's first coordinator of government operations in the Palestinian territories and served afterward as head of military intelligence. And he says: This is not a time for posturing. This is a time to "wait and see what unfolds within the Hamas-led Palestinian government."

Come Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Tom Lantos and offer a bill that was almost surely on Gazit's mind when he wrote, a bill that could be a poster-child for knee-jerk reaction. Ros-Lehtinen is chair of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia of the International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives, and Lantos is its ranking minority member.

What they have offered, and what at least 70 of their colleagues have by now endorsed, is a draconian measure that would forbid any and all contact between the American government and Hamas — and similarly, between the United States and any Palestinian government in which any member of Hamas has any part at all. According to the language of the bill, for example, if the Palestinian Authority were to employ a postman who is a member of Hamas, any and all relationship between any American government agency and the P.A. would have to cease. No contact.

The bill, as written, is a piece of meddlesome foolishness, but it's exactly the sort of thing that most members of Congress are reluctant to oppose for fear of seeming "anti-Israel." That's been the case in Congress for many years now, and the result has done Israel no service at all.
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