Uncle Sam's favorite child at 60: Bernd Debusmann

Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

By Bernd Debusmann

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Over the years, the U.S. government has professed having a special relationship with Britain, Canada, Mexico, the Philippines and several other permanent or temporary allies. But no special relationship has been as special as that with Israel. Or as costly.

Israel enters its seventh decade as an independent state this week, the United States is eight months from getting a new president, and the special relationship looks set to remain extra special -- which means that for the United States, Israel will be both a strategic asset and a diplomatic liability.

In the 60 years since its establishment on May 14, 1948, Israel has been by far the largest recipient of U.S. assistance, military and economic, in the world, according to the Congressional Research Service. Aid has been running at around $3 billion a year since 1985, a sizeable sum for a country with a population smaller than that of New York City.

The "asset" part of the asset-liability equation dates back to the Cold War when Israel served as an American outpost in a region where the Soviets had strategic ambitions.

As a former U.S. secretary of state, Alexander Haig, put it: "Israel ... is the largest U.S. carrier that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one U.S. soldier, and is located in a most critical region for US national security."

On the liability side of the ledger, widespread anti-Americanism in the Arab and Muslim worlds -- a distinct danger to U.S. national security -- has been driven by unquestioning American support for Israel in its often harsh dealings with the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank it occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The U.S.-Israeli relationship at times resembles that of an indulgent parent with a willful child rather than nation-to-nation ties. Its negative effects are barely discussed in Congress or the general public in the United States, unlike other subjects that arouse controversy and passions -- abortion, for example, or gun control.

Criticism of Israeli policies has been subdued largely because of the influence of hawkish pro-Israel lobbies, chief of them the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which has about 100,000 members and takes pride in being labeled "the most important organization affecting America's relationship with Israel." It counts securing aid for Israel among its key achievements.

Two years ago, two prominent American academics, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard, published a paper saying that the U.S., through its wholehearted support of Israel, was neglecting its own security to advance the interests of another state. The two said AIPAC had established a stranglehold on Congress, with the result that U.S. policies towards Israel are not debated there.

ANGRY REACTIONS

The article, later expanded into a book -- "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" -- prompted angry reactions and charges that ranged from anti-Semitism to shoddy scholarship.

The Mearsheimer-Walt paper sparked spirited debates in academia and on the think-tank circuit but had no effect on the flow of aid or the pro-Israel stand of leading politicians, including the candidates for the 2008 U.S. presidential race.

Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain have all gone to great lengths to stress unflagging support for Israel while in no way spelling out in detail how they would advance the flagging process of making peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

All three have sided with President George W. Bush, who is in Israel this week to mark the 60th anniversary, in saying that there should be absolutely no dealings with Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement which controls Gaza, until it formally recognizes Israel.

This is not a view shared by the majority of Israelis, according to an opinion poll conducted earlier this year for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. It showed that 64 percent of Israelis thought their government should hold direct talks with Hamas in Gaza on the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and a ceasefire.

As on other sensitive subjects, opinions that can be voiced freely in Israel are considered out of bounds in the United States.

Enter a new pro-Israel lobby, whose formation was announced in April. Called J Street, a play on Washington's K Street where most lobby organizations are based, the new group sees eye-to-eye with AIPAC on the need for American assistance to Israel, "including maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge." But that's where consensus ends.

J Street's executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, says his group wants to counter the reflexive Israel-is-right, no-matter-what attitude of traditional pro-Israel lobbies -- he carefully avoids mention of AIPAC -- and to take back a debate he says has been hijacked by right-wing hardliners whose views do not reflect those of the majority of American Jews or of most Israelis.

Ben-Ami is a former political adviser in the Clinton administration. His father fought alongside Menachem Begin for Israel's independence and his grandparents were among the founders of Tel Aviv.

He thinks there can be no Israeli-Palestinian peace without negotiations with Hamas and without engaging Syria and Iran. "Precisely because Hamas and Iran represent the most worrisome strategic challenges to Israel, responsible friends of Israel who'd like to see it live in security for its next 60 years should be engaging with them to search for alternatives to war," he said in an interview.

"We should at least have a discussion here in the United States about whether or not somebody should be speaking to Hamas."

According to Ben-Ami, the best birthday gift Israel could get from the United States would be a return to its once-leading role in Middle East diplomacy -- as an honest broker, not the hardliners' amen choir.

(You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters.com) (Editing by Howard Goller)