The New York Times

Thursday, October 22, 1999

ON MY MIND / By A. M. ROSENTHAL

The Deadly Cargo

More often now, the special cargo arrives in China from Israel -- files from Israeli military computers, crates with the makings of missiles and other weapons, and the men in the lab coats, the engineers and scientists who know how to put it all together.

Many other countries send that kind of cargo purchased by the Chinese for the same reason, clearly understood by the vendors -- to add to the accuracy, skills and range of the Communists' armed forces.

That's the way it is -- once again democracies, their friends and beneficiaries are strengthening a dictatorship that governs by fear and force. They do it for money.

Then why focus this column on Israel's part? I do for the same reason I focus often on U.S. help to dictatorships, military or political.

The U.S. is special, for me, for my family, for all people who believe that peace in freedom is the bread and rose of life. When America helps empower governments that destroy freedom at home and abroad, it brings agony of body and soul to those who fight for liberty.

If the U.S. kneels to help tyrannies for money, who will remain standing?

Israel is also special to me, and to almost all Jews, under whatever Israeli government, and to great numbers of Christians. They see its creation as an act of enduring bravery and succor in a wicked millennium, think of Israel as the only Mideastern democracy and therefore an enemy of tyranny, and without embarrassment -- Christian friends particularly -- speak of it as rooted in righteousness.

So for years I have told Israeli prime ministers and diplomats, of left and right, that military sales to China dim their country as a lantern of democracy. I have written that Israel should not sell a single pistol to China.

The double standard by which Israel is often judged assumes that Israel will not follow the dirty path to China's cash register. To me the double standard is most often an honor.

But about China, Israeli leaders reject it. They say they are trying to dissuade Beijing from selling more arms to their Mideast enemies, quite as if they believe the Politburo word, like Americans. They say they need customers for armaments factories they could not otherwise afford without them. I doubt that -- Israeli technology important to weapon making is already sold elsewhere, and American experts tell me more could be sold in the U.S.

And now I see the Chinese minister of defense, who is one of the ranking Tiananmen killers, visits Israel. I read obsequious Israeli speeches praising him and his government.

The two countries talk openly about bigger arms deals in the making. I learn that the Chinese have knit together Russian and Israeli specialties. The Russians are converting Ilyushin planes into the framework of U.S.-type flying command posts and will ship them to Israel for long-range radar to be installed and meshed into electronic intelligence systems.

This is not a pistol. Nor are the Russian-made MIG-21's, which the Chinese want Israel to "upgrade" -- meaning better able to shoot down U.S. or Taiwanese planes.

Selling arms technology to China -- however Israel chooses to justify it -- carries no penalty from the U.S. America has become so much the prisoner of Beijing, selling high-powered computers and missile-launch know-how, that it cannot denounce other countries in the market. Israeli officials tartly point that out.

In March 1992 I wrote denying charges by the columnists Evans and Novak that Israel was selling American-originated missile equipment to China. I was right then. But with China's armed forces snapping up so many varieties of Israeli military technology, what journalists would be confident enough to deny transfer of U.S. technology in the future?

One day a U.S. administration will break out of China's prison.

Then Israel's sales to China will make it an American political target -- a warning that comes from some of Israel's good friends in Congress.

People like myself, friends without office, simply do not believe that because America, Russia and other profit-driven countries sell power to the Chinese Politburo, Israel should do the same.

If the U.S. will not stop first, then perhaps if Israel does, it will be a light unto the nations.