The US will never abandon Israel--unless...

UCSD professor Sanford Lakoff writes to the San Diego Union Tribune, "...Israelis should be assured of continued American support rather than threatened with abandonment."

US support is far more assured than you realize, Professor Lakoff, because it's not dependent on current events. It's not even dependent on how anyone in the US feels about Israel. It goes lots deeper than mere affection.

I used to think that Israel was created in 1948 because the United Nations was so horrified at the deaths of 6 million Jewish civilians, mostly at the hands of their own governments, that it decided to give the Jews a country of their own. It was only recently that I began to think about other motives for this apparently kind and loving act. How desperate for oil was the developed world in the mid-1940s? Perhaps "salivating uncontrollably" would describe the leading nations at that time.

Here's a description of the situation:

"In 1944, a prominent petroleum geologist named Everette DeGolyer reported to the U.S. government that he was certain the Middle East nations were sitting atop at least 25 billion barrels of crude oil, at least 5 billion of which were in Saudi Arabia. Not reported at that time were his unofficial estimates of up to 300 billion barrels of oil—a third of which he thought underlay Saudi Arabia. In a report to the State Department, DeGolyer's team commented that 'The oil in this region is the greatest single prize in all history'"
(from a summary of The Prize by Daniel Yergin.)

We wanted a toehold in the Middle East. And how perfect was it that we could give a nice gift to a people without a nation, and then sit back and watch those people willingly fight decade after decade to protect this little toehold of ours? It was sheer genius. Our Israeli friends would be dependent on us for survival because, predictably, the indigenous folk of the Middle East would resent the intrusion.

It is a sad reminder of how easily brother turns against brother in this world to note that the Palestinians who fought the return of European Jews were actually the descendants of the Jewish farmers and herdsmen of biblical times. The Palestinians were displaced by their own relatives. It's a truth that gives comfort to no one.

So don't you worry, Professor Lakoff. The US will not abandon Israel. Unless, that is, the Middle East should run out of oil. Then all bets are off.