Israel and Iraq
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
We’ve been steady supporters of the liberation of Iraq for a decade now, since the idea was just a dream. So it comes as a disappointment to see two recent statements from high Iraqi officials. The prime minister of Iraq, Nouri Maliki, who is due to arrive in Washington today, has been quoted by the New York Times condemning “Israeli aggression” in Lebanon. And the speaker of the Iraqi parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, this month blamed Jews for acts of violence in Iraq. “These acts are not the work of Iraqis. I am sure that he who does this is a Jew and the son of a Jew,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
There are those who argue that Mr. Maliki’s comments are a sign of freedom of speech and thought in independent Iraq, which is a good thing. President Bush’s chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, straight-facedly attempted this argument Sunday on “Meet the Press,” where NBC News’s Timothy Russert asked him about Mr. Maliki’s comment. But this supposed freedom of speech seems to run only in one direction, the direction of criticizing Israel. When an Iraqi politician, Mithal al-Alusi, attended a conference in Israel, his two sons were killed in Iraq as punishment. Iraq, unlike Egypt and Jordan, has no peace treaty or formal diplomatic relations with Israel.
Mr. Bolten said that Messrs. Maliki and Bush would have a chance to discuss things in person.It would be a fine opportunity for the president of America to explain unambiguously to the Iraqi leader that the American taxpayers have no desire or inclination to spend government money or sacrifice the lives of American soldiers to defend a government in Baghdad that shares even a hint of the anti-Semitism or anti-Israelism that infected Saddam Hussein’s regime. If the Iraqis want to go in that direction they can do it without help from Washington. This is not because of the “Israel lobby’s” supposed stranglehold on Congress but because the American people understand that the treatment of Israel and of the Jews is a signal of what side this Iraqi government is on in the broader war for freedom.
