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# Standing by Israel
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/standing-by-israel/
- Published: 2003-01-12T00:01:00.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:07:27.000Z
- Description: It is 12 January 2003 and US president Bush has rallied his troops for what he calls “The first war of the 21st century”. What is your view of this crisis, where, briefly, do you stand? This is the question we are putting to people around the world, especially those with their own public reputatio
- Author: Ralph Giordano
- Tags: Conflict & security, #Migrated, Middle East & North Africa, Writers, artists and civic leaders on the Iraq war, iraq: war or not?, middle east conflicts, conflict, iraq: understanding the handover, #en, #Import 2026-04-09 17:02

You ask me where I stand?

My immediate reaction: any question about the Iraq crisis which mentions George W. Bush, but not Saddam, contains *per se* a tendentious answer. Which prompts me to ask back: "And where do you stand?"

My second spontaneous reaction is to say: "I am on Israel’s side, ladies and gentlemen, primarily on Israel’s side!"

No, I do not want this war, I dread it and its consequences – but I strongly oppose the impulse which lets the arch crook Saddam off the hook, leaving intact this terrible *status quo,* and delegating sole responsibility for the crisis to "the Americans". I am fed up to the point of nausea with the pathology of anti-Americanism and refuse to identify oil greed as the motive for the escalation of the crisis in the Middle East.

I am not a blind defender of the United States, and I have often raised my voice against a foreign policy which connived in the Cold War with all right-wing dictators around the globe. America, however, does not have one face. It has many. And it is a good thing to have America – I owe her my life after all, even though the 8thBritish Army liberated me on 4 May 1945.

I hope that Saddam will be defeated without a war – but he has to be defeated! And the UN must be behind it.

Again it rings true: pacifism in a non-pacifist world means nothing but the continuation of murderous and terrorist regimes. It cannot be the answer to the chief rogue Saddam Hussein.

Originally published as part of a debate on 12 January 2003[Writers, artists and civic leaders on the War: Pt. 1](http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-114-882.jsp#1).

See also [Writers, artists and civic leaders on the War: Pt. II](http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-iraqwarquestions/article%5F960.jsp)