“One of the questions President Bush will face in the coming war against Iraq is what role is to be played by Israel,” these columns observed back in August. Now, right on schedule, as the war against Iraq draws near, we are starting to gain a glimpse of the administration’s role for Israel, and the irony couldn’t be thrown into any sharper relief. As the Bush administration works feverishly to round up support from foreign governments for the war to liberate Iraq, it’s working feverishly to keep one foreign country from joining the fray on our side. It’s pressing billions of dollars in aid in exchange for the cooperation of Turkey. It’s courting Mexico and Russia and France. But with respect to Israel, the big fear is that it might enter the lists.

An important account of the administration’s efforts to keep the Jewish state sidelined appeared at page one of yesterday’s number of the Wall Street Journal. The dispatch, by reporters Carla Anne Robbins and Karby Leggett, ran under the headline, “How the U.S. Plans to Keep Israel on Iraq War Sidelines.” It reported that the Bush administration has made arrangements for the government in Jerusalem to get a live view of the battlefield. It has set up elaborate technology in Israel to do this, giving Israel’s missile defense batteries more time to get their aim at any incoming missiles from Iraq. This is way ahead of what the first Bush administration did during the Gulf War of 1991. American commanders have also made the hunt for Iraqi Scuds a priority this time around, the Journal reports.

But all this defensive help to Israel is designed precisely to keep the Israel Defense Force from entering the actual combat. It seems that the administration just doesn’t want to appear in arms with the Israeli army, this for fear of alienating the Arab states. Indeed, Reporters Robins and Leggett of the Journal report that this time around, as last, the administration is refusing to make available to the Israelis the “identify friend or foe” codes that would enable Israeli warplanes to operate in allied airspace without danger of attack from our own side. Prime Minister Sharon clearly intends to be a team player. Much to his credit, though, he has stated bluntly that Israel will respond if it is attacked in the war, and he warns of a devastating counter-attack if the Jewish state sustains casualties.

These columns have marked the point before, but we don’t mind marking it again. All this effort to keep Israel out of the fray is, in and of itself, a kind of appeasement — particularly at a time when America is having to bid billions in foreign aid for countries like Turkey to lend us the support to which, a plain language reading would indicate, we’re entitled under the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty. The far better strategy would be to make a precondition for membership in the “coalition of the willing” that is going to fight this war the willingness to fight alongside the Jewish state for the values that America and it hold in common.