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Douglas
J. Feith has been appointed Undersecretary of Policy at the U.S.
Department of Defense (DOD). This is one of the Pentagon's four senior
posts, charged with "all matters concerning the formulation of
national security and defense policy and the integration and oversight
of DOD policy and plans." Additionally, among his many areas of
responsibility according to the DOD, the undersecretary of policy has
the responsibility to:
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"Develop
policy on the conduct of alliances and defense relationships
with foreign governments, their military establishments and
international organizations;
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"Develop,
coordinate, and oversee the implementation of international
security strategy and policy...on issues...that relate to
foreign governments and their defense establishments; and
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"Provide
oversight of all DOD activities related to international
technology transfer."
This is a powerful
position with great influence. Feith's appointment to this post is a
matter of great concern.
Feith has had a long career in both government service and the private
sector. During the Reagan Administration he served as the White House
National Security Staff and in the Defense Department as Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy. He also served
as Special Counsel to Richard Perle, then Assistant Secretary of
Defense.
Feith is an attorney
with the Washington firm of Feith and Zell. His own biography says
that he specializes in "technology transfer, joint ventures and
foreign investment in the defense and aerospace industries."
On the political front,
Feith has been associated with the Cold War
"neo-conservative" school of thought. What is of concern
here is the extent to which Feith has transposed the neo-conservative
worldview onto the Middle East. As his fellow cold warriors defined
the world in ideological dualistic terms-the forces of absolute good
confronting the forces of absolute evil-Feith defines the Arab-Israeli
conflict in similar terms.
A prolific writer, Feith
has left a long paper trail of anti-Arab tracts and diatribes against
those who challenge or seek to compromise Israel's strength and as he
defines it, "moral superiority" over the Arabs.
As was the case in the
Cold War battle against Communism, in Feith's view, there can be no
place for compromise between Israel and the Arabs. Since he defines
the Middle East conflict in absolute terms, the only option for Israel
is to confront its Arab enemies until they are defeated, which, in his
worldview, means when they submit and accept Israel's legitimacy and
sovereignty over all of mandatory Palestine.
Since Israel represents
the "good" and "our values," in Feith's view, it
is necessary for the United States to identify with Israel in its
struggle against the forces of "darkness," the Arabs. This
means providing Israel with superior military strength and political
support. It also means that the United States should never pressure
Israel either to surrender land or to compromise its hegemonic
position in the region.
Throughout his career,
Feith has articulated views such as these.
In the late 1970s, for example, he criticized then President Jimmy
Carter's Camp David effort to bring about a "comprehensive
peace"-a concept he decried as false since it required Israel to
weaken itself by surrendering "Judea and Samaria" to the
Arabs. Feith's logic was that
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Arabs have no
legal rights in Palestine;
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Palestinians are
not a "national group as such" and, therefore, have no
special claim to Judea and Samaria;
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Jordan is the
Palestinian state for the Arabs; and
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No pressure should
be brought against Israel for building settlements in Judea and
Samaria, since it is their right to do so.
Operating from this
framework, Feith argues that the notion that "the core of the
Arab-Israeli conflict is the issue of the stateless Palestinians"
is a clever Arab trap designed solely to weaken Israel by threatening
its relationship with the United States and its hold over Judea and
Samaria.
He, therefore, condemned
the Carter Administration for its opposition to Israel's settlement
policy since, in his view, this "only encouraged Arabs to believe
that they could win benefits from the United States by refusing to
make concessions to Israel."
For Feith, Arab
objections to Zionism were at the core of the conflict. Israeli
withdrawal from the occupied territories would not solve the conflict,
only Arab acceptance of and submission to Israel would end it.
Summarizing his recommendations to the Carter Administration, Feith
suggested in a 1979 article that they, "(1) abandon the view that
Judea-Samaria is the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict, (2)
acknowledge that the crux is really the Arab refusal to accept a
Jewish state in Palestine, (3) renounce quarreling over Israel's
rights in Judea-Samaria, which encourages Arab inflexibility and
damages valuable U.S.-Israeli ties, (4) confine itself to the role of
mediator, rather than party, to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and thus
(5) inform Damascus, Amman, the Palestinian Arabs, and Riyadh that if
they want an alteration in Jerusalem's policies they had best start
negotiating with Jerusalem, as Sadat has done, and quit relying on
Washington to 'deliver' the Israelis."
In the 1980s and 90s,
Feith continued his criticism of any U.S. policy that deviated from
his view. He criticized the Bush Administration for denying Israel
loan guarantees and for pressuring the Shamir government to come to
the Madrid peace conference.
His advice to the Bush
Administration in 1991 echoed his earlier recommendations to the
Carter White House. The U.S. government should, he suggested, require
the Arabs to:
"Drop the
slogan of 'land for peace,' which skeptical Israelis must suspect
is a program for dismantling Israel in stages, and simply offer
peace. That is, they could put forward an open, unqualified,
non-grudging and sincere acknowledgement that the Jewish people
are entitled to a state in a Jewish homeland;" and
"Abandon the
name game by which they apply the label 'Palestine' only to the 20
percent of the British Mandate Palestine that lies west of the
Jordan River. So long as one's goal is the elimination of Israel,
one does well to pretend that the Kingdom of Jordan, which
occupies the other 80 percent of Mandate Palestine, is not a
Palestinian state. That makes it possible to propagandize that the
Jews control all the land and the Arabs of Palestine are
'stateless.'"
During the Clinton
years, Feith continued to oppose any agreement negotiated between the
Israelis and Palestinians: Oslo, Hebron and Wye.
At one point he defined
Oslo as, "one-sided Israeli concessions, inflated Palestinian
expectations, broken Palestinian solemn understandings, Palestinian
violence...and American rewards for Palestinian recalcitrance."
His objection to the
Hebron and Wye understandings, however, is more interesting because it
was his ideological soul mate, then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, who had agreed to them.
In 1996, Feith, together
with Richard Perle wrote an advisory paper for the newly elected Likud
Prime Minister. In that piece, entitled "A Clean Break: a New
Strategy for Securing the Realm," they advised Netanyahu to:
"make a clean break from the peace process;" reassert
Israel's claim to its land by rejecting "land for peace" as
the basis of peace; strengthen Israel's defenses to better confront
Syria and Iraq; and forge a new and stronger relationship with the
United States based on self-reliance and mutual interest.
Feith was, therefore,
deeply disappointed when Netanyahu appeared to accept the basis of
Oslo and sign two additional agreements with the Palestinians that
turned more land over to them. In a lengthy piece written in 1997
"A Strategy for Israel," Feith returned to his
neo-conservative roots arguing that "land for peace" was a
fabrication designed to weaken Israel. Peace would only come when Arab
and specifically Palestinian society was transformed into a
democratic, law-abiding and peaceful one. Since Oslo had created
unrealistic expectations and rewarded bad Palestinian behavior, the
only solution for Israel was to repudiate Oslo and "reestablish
an effective security and intelligence policy in the areas under
Palestinian Authority control" (i.e. reoccupy the West Bank and
Gaza). He went on to note that "the price in blood would be
high," but would be, a necessary form of "detoxification-the
only way out of Oslo's web."
Despite his apparent
obsession with the Arab-Israel conflict, Feith has written about a
number of other Middle East-related topics. In all cases, inspired by
the same pro-Israel, anti-Arab Manichean worldview.
He has written
condemning U.S. politicians for estranging themselves from Israel in
order to accommodate Arab oil states. He has associated himself with a
controversial strategy paper that suggested, among other options, that
the U.S. might lead a Kuwait-style invasion and war of liberation to
oust Syria from Lebanon. And he has been one of Washington's strongest
advocates supporting the Iraq Liberation Act.
As disturbing as Feith's
views may be, his political associations cause even greater concern.
In recent years, Feith has frequently been featured in the activities
of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). Known for its virulent
anti-Arab incitement, the ZOA regularly attacks all Arab American
political activity and demonizes politicians who hire Arab Americans
or even associate with community organizations. The ZOA also
frequently attacks American Jews whom they feel are not in line with
their extremist pro-Likud philosophy.
In just the past few
years, Feith was the Guest of Honor at ZOA's 100th
Anniversary Gala Banquet. He served as Master of Ceremony at two other
major ZOA functions and has been a frequent participant at ZOA
sponsored policy briefings on Capitol Hill supporting that
organization's anti-Palestinian legislative initiatives.
Feith's law practice in
Washington sheds further light on the one-sided nature of his work.
His small law firm has one international affiliate, in Israel. Over
two-thirds of all their reported casework involves representing
Israeli interests. And, in light of Feith's new appointment, one of
these cases deserves some attention. As described on the firm's
website, Feith "represented a leading Israeli armaments
manufacturer in establishing joint ventures with leading U.S.
aerospace manufacturers for manufacture and sale of missile systems,
to the U.S. Department of Defense and worldwide."
Feith has long been a
strong advocate for Israeli military technology. In a 1992 article, he
wrote that the U.S. should deepen its military cooperation with Israel
noting that, "Israel has a number of unique military technologies
that it behooves the U.S. armed forces to acquire, such as unmanned
aircraft and air-to ground missiles. With shrinking U.S. defense
budgets, it is less expensive for the Defense Department to acquire
these technologies from the Israelis than to pay to have them
reinvented."
He also observed in the
same piece that, "It is in the interest of the U.S. and Israel to
remove needless impediments to technological cooperation between them.
Technologies in the hands of responsible, friendly countries facing
military threats, countries like Israel, serve to deter aggression,
enhance regional stability and perhaps also promote peace
thereby."
In the private sector,
Feith is free to hold whatever views he wishes to hold, associate with
whomever he wishes to associate, and do whatever legitimate business
comes his way. But serious questions must be asked whether or not
someone with his views and associations can fairly serve in a critical
post at the Department of Defense. I, for one, am terrified at the
prospect. He is ideologue with an extreme anti-Arab bias, and his role
in the sensitive position of chief architect of U.S. defense policy
can, I believe, have grave consequences for the United States and its
relations with the entire Arab world.
For comments or
information, contact jzogby@aaiusa.org
or aai@aaiusa.org
[Reprinted with
permission of AAIUSA]
Related Material:
"Go Ahead - Let Arafat declare his state," by Douglas Feith,
"The New Republic On-line,"
Issue date: 09.11.00
http://www.tnr.com/091100/feith091100.html
Resume - Douglas J. Feith, Attorney at Law, Feith & Zell, P.C.
http://www.fandz.com/feith-res.html
"No Alternative to Peace," by Douglas J. Feith, reprinted
from The Jerusalem Post of March 25, 1996
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/apr96/feith.htm
Related Sites:
http://www.aaiusa.org
http://www.aaiusa.org/aboutaai/zogbypage.html
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