The announcement last week by the United
States of the largest military aid
package in its history – to Israel – was
a win for both sides. Israeli prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu could boast
that his lobbying had boosted aid from
$3.1 billion a year to $3.8bn – a 22 per
cent increase – for a decade starting in
2019.
Mr Netanyahu has presented this as a
rebuff to those who accuse him of
jeopardising Israeli security interests
with his government’s repeated affronts
to the White House.
In the past weeks alone, defence
minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared
last year’s nuclear deal between
Washington and Iran with the 1938 Munich
pact, which bolstered Hitler; and Mr
Netanyahu has implied that US opposition
to settlement expansion is the same as
support for the “ethnic cleansing” of
Jews.
American president Barack Obama,
meanwhile, hopes to stifle his own
critics who insinuate that he is
anti-Israel. The deal should serve as a
fillip too for Hillary Clinton, the
Democratic party’s candidate to succeed
Mr Obama in November’s election.
In reality, however, the Obama
administration has quietly punished Mr
Netanyahu for his misbehaviour. Israeli
expectations of a $4.5bn-a-year deal
were whittled down after Mr Netanyahu
stalled negotiations last year as he
sought to recruit Congress to his battle
against the Iran deal.
In fact, Israel already receives
roughly $3.8bn – if Congress’s
assistance on developing missile defence
programmes is factored in. Notably,
Israel has been forced to promise not to
approach Congress for extra funds.
The deal takes into account neither
inflation nor the dollar’s depreciation
against the shekel.
A bigger blow still is the White
House’s demand to phase out a special
exemption that allowed Israel to spend
nearly 40 per cent of aid locally on
weapon and fuel purchases. Israel will
soon have to buy all its armaments from
the US, ending what amounted to a
subsidy to its own arms industry.
Nonetheless, Washington’s renewed
military largesse – in the face of
almost continual insults – inevitably
fuels claims that the Israeli tail is
wagging the US dog. Even The New York
Times has described the aid package as
“too big”.
Since the 1973 war, Israel has
received at least $100bn in military
aid, with more assistance hidden from
view. Back in the 1970s, Washington paid
half of Israel’s military budget. Today
it still foots a fifth of the bill,
despite Israel’s economic success.
But the US expects a return on its
massive investment. As the late Israeli
politician-general Ariel Sharon once
observed, Israel has been a US
“aircraft carrier” in the Middle East,
acting as the regional bully and
carrying out operations that benefit
Washington.
Almost no one blames the US for
Israeli attacks that wiped out Iraq’s
and Syria’s nuclear programmes. A
nuclear-armed Iraq or Syria would have
deterred later US-backed moves at regime
overthrow, as well as countering the
strategic advantage Israel derives from
its own nuclear arsenal.
In addition, Israel’s US-sponsored
military prowess is a triple boon to the
US weapons industry, the country’s most
powerful lobby. Public funds are
siphoned off to let Israel buy goodies
from American arms makers. That, in
turn, serves as a shop window for other
customers and spurs an endless and
lucrative game of catch-up in the rest
of the Middle East.
The first F-35 fighter jets to arrive
in Israel in December – their various
components produced in 46 US states –
will increase the clamour for the
cutting-edge warplane.
Israel is also a “front-line
laboratory”, as former Israeli army
negotiator Eival Gilady admitted at the
weekend, that develops and field-tests
new technology Washington can later use
itself.
The US is planning to buy back the
missile interception system Iron Dome –
which neutralises battlefield threats of
retaliation – it largely paid for.
Israel works closely too with the US in
developing cyberwarfare, such as the
Stuxnet worm that damaged Iran’s
civilian nuclear programme.
But the clearest message from
Israel’s new aid package is one
delivered to the Palestinians:
Washington sees no pressing strategic
interest in ending the occupation. It
stood up to Mr Netanyahu over the Iran
deal but will not risk a damaging clash
over Palestinian statehood.
Some believe that Mr Obama signed the
aid package to win the credibility
necessary to overcome his domestic
Israel lobby and pull a rabbit from the
hat: an initiative, unveiled shortly
before he leaves office, that corners Mr
Netanyahu into making peace.
Hopes have been raised by an expected
meeting at the United Nations in New
York on Wednesday. But their first talks
in 10 months are planned only to
demonstrate unity to confound critics of
the aid deal.
If Mr Obama really wanted to pressure
Mr Netanyahu, he would have used the aid
agreement as leverage. Now Mr Netanyahu
need not fear US financial retaliation,
even as he intensifies effective
annexation of the West Bank.
Mr Netanyahu has drawn the right
lesson from the aid deal – he can act
against the Palestinians with continuing
US impunity.
- See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2016-09-19/palestinians-lose-in-us-military-aid-deal-with-israel/#sthash.fL4Eq28N.dpuf
Syria: Attack on Aid
Obliterates US War Crimes in Support of
ISIS-Daesh Terror Group?
By Felicity Arbuthnot
Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth- based
journalist and winner of the Martha
Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism -
See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2016-09-19/palestinians-lose-in-us-military-aid-deal-with-israel/#sthash.H1NbQCac.dpuf
“The President does not
have power under the Constitution to
unilaterally authorize
a military attack in a situation that
does not involve stopping an actual
or imminent threat to the nation.” Candidate
Barack Obama, December, 2007
September 22, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Global
Research"
-As
the US heaps blame and accusations on Russia
and Syria for the alleged air strike on the
aid convoy on Monday 19th September,
as ever there are more questions than
answers – and whatever US spokespersons
state, absolutely no certainties.
The
only undeniable fact is that another tragedy
killed at least twenty Syrian Arab Red
Crescent volunteers and the organisation’s
local Director Omar Barakat, father of nine.
At least eighteen of the thirty one-truck
convoy were destroyed with the warehouse
where humanitarian aid was stored.
The
Russian Defence Ministry has categorically
denied any attack and claims the convoy
caught fire (1): “We have studied video
footage from the scene from so-called
‘activists’ in detail and did not find any
evidence that the convoy had been struck by
ordnance”, commented Igor Konashenkov, a
Ministry spokesman.
“There are no craters and the exterior of
the vehicles do not have the kind of damage
consistent with blasts caused by bombs
dropped from the air.” His observations are
hard to challenge, anyone who has studied
the assaults of the “international
community” on far away countries over the
last decades knows what a bombed truck looks
like – what fragments remains of it.
Photographs of the affected lorries show
burned out vehicles, metal skeleton intact.
Konashenkov said that damage visible in
footage was instead the result of cargo
igniting – “oddly” occurring at the same
time as militants (formerly Nusra Front) had
started a big offensive in nearby Aleppo,
backed by tanks, artillery and other heavy
equipment.
He
added:
“Only representatives of the ‘White
Helmets’ organization close to the Nusra
Front who, as always, found themselves
at the right time in the right place by
chance with their video cameras can
answer who did this and why.”
Indeed the ‘White Helmets’ boasted in a
video of being on the scene within
“moments.”
The
“White Helmets” who have had the gall to
entitle themselves the Syrian Civil Defence
Force are seemingly neither Syrian, nor
Civil, nor Defence. Vanessa Beeley who has
meticulously charted their antics points out
(2)
“This is an alleged ‘non-governmental’
organization … that so far has received
funding from at least three major NATO
governments, including $23 million from
the US Government and $29 million (£19.7
million) from the UK Government, $4.5
million (€4 million) from the Dutch
Government. In addition, it receives
material assistance and training funded
and run by a variety of other EU
Nations.”
She
informs of such concerns regarding the
organization that:
“A
request has been put into the EU
Secretary General to provide all
correspondence relating to the funding
and training of the White Helmets. By
law this information must be made
transparent and available to the
public.”
Beeley points out: “There has been a
concerted campaign by a range of
investigative journalists to expose the true
roots of … the White Helmets.” The most
damning statement, however (comes from)
their funders and backers in the US State
Department who attempted to explain the US
deportation of the prominent White Helmet
leader, Raed Saleh, from Dulles airport on
the 18th April 2016.
Of
the incident, Mark Toner, State Department
spokesman stated:
“And any individual – again, I’m
broadening my language here for specific
reasons, but any individual in any group
suspected of ties or relations with
extremist groups or that we had believed
to be a security threat to the United
States, we would act accordingly. But
that does not, by extension, mean we
condemn or would cut off ties to the
group for which that individual works
for.”
Figure that one, Dear Reader.
The
Ron Paul Institute has pointed out:
“We have demonstrated that the White
Helmets are an integral part of the
propaganda vanguard that ensures
obscurantism of fact and propagation of
Human Rights fiction that elicits the
well-intentioned and self righteous
response from a very cleverly duped
public. A priority for these NGOs is to
keep pushing the No Fly Zone scenario
which has already been seen to have
disastrous implications for innocent
civilians in Libya, for example.” (See
2.)
What better chance to push “the No Fly Zone
scenario” than arriving within “moments” of
the convoy tragedy, filming it and creating
a propaganda scenario before any meaningful
forensic investigation could even be
started, since the trucks were still
burning. And of course, the “White Helmets”,
aka “Syrian Defence Force”, were filming
rather than attempting to put out the fire
and rescue those in the burning trucks.
The
Russian Defence Ministry subsequently caused
outrage by claiming that Drone footage:
“shows bombed Syrian aid convoy included
truck full of militant fighters carrying
mortar guns.” (3)
However: “The footage emerged as the United
Nations rowed back from describing the
attack on the aid convoy as air strikes,
saying it did not have conclusive evidence
about what had happened.”
It
must be asked, why on earth, after long and
protracted negotiations over the convoy
would Syria and or their Russian ally risk
the wrath of US and “coalition” further
decimation of the country by laying
themselves open to accusations of bombing
and aid convoys?
The
tragedy has emphatically achieved one thing,
however. Wiped from the headlines is another
atrocity – the US bombing which killed over
sixty Syrian soldiers and wounded over a
hundred others just two days earlier, on
Saturday 17th September, causing
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria
Zakharova to comment: “We are
reaching a really terrifying conclusion for
the whole world: That the White House is
defending Islamic State. Now there can be no
doubts about that”, according to
the RIA Novosti news agency.
Again
– Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will
guard the guards?
Notes
1.http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-convoyfir-idUSKCN11Q1SG
2.http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/06/21/who-are-the-syria-white-helmets/
3.http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/drone-footage-shows-bombed-syrian-8879319
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