Israel-supporters in the U.S. know they will lose if the issue is framed as a linkage: Palestinian grievances are endangering our troops. Jeffrey Goldberg does some digging: "I called the White House to ask if Biden actually said this. It would be quite something, of course, if he did."
There’s no problem, man. The press misquoted Biden.
However, the leading US blog dealing with counterinsurgency strategy (very close to McChrystal) says that if Petraeus did wish to bring I/P into his mandate then it would be a good thing. I presume that this is something that the IDF and their supporters (the Lobby) would not like: US military scrutiny of their operations in Gaza and Lebanon.
US military doctrine in spite of high civilian casualties in Afghanistan doesn’t deliberately target civilian categories, unlike Israel (a point that Richard Goldstone also disputed). US actually works to explore how this can be mitigated. When civilians are killed then a US commander arrives and apologizes and attempts to make reparations.
Abe Foxman calls the charge that the special relationship is endangering Americans "anti-Semitic."
What is ironic is that neoconservatives painted a seamless picture of a common Islamic threat facing America and its favorite partner in the region. Now when the linkages are made in a way that isn’t helpful to the Golden Calf Merkava state they backpedal and say Hey buddy there is no linkage.
JPost on Foxman:
The charge that supporting Israel endangers US soldiers, Foxman said, comes from the “linkage fantasy,” a point of view that “if you just resolve this conflict, everything else will fall into place: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, America’s war with fundamentalist Islam.”
[Political science prof Eytan] Gilboa, meanwhile, said that if not combated aggressively, this argument – if it gains traction among the American public – could undermine the widespread support in the US for Israel. “All Americans support their troops,” he said, adding that this particular argument was “very dangerous.”
The logic behind the argument is that the US feels it needs to maintain the pro-Western Arab block for the scheduled withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in August, and then later from Afghanistan, and that this block will crumble without a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Gilboa said.
Gilboa said this argument might be an excuse being used by the US military to cover up its failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said he didn’t think the Ramat Shlomo project was important to al-Qaida fighting the US in Iraq, or to the Taliban in Afghanistan. “It is complete nonsense,” he said. “This is dangerous, because it could hurt public opinion toward Israel, and increase anti-Semitism. There is a great need to do something,” he said, adding that US soldiers were being killed
