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
The US Road Map To Balkanize Syria
By Pepe Escobar
September 22, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "RT"
- Forget about those endless meetings
between Sergei Lavrov and John Kerry; forget
about Russia’s drive to prevent chaos from
reigning in Syria; forget about the
possibility of a real ceasefire being
implemented and respected by US jihad
proxies.
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
Forget about the Pentagon investigating what
really happened around its bombing 'mistake'
in Deir Ezzor.
The
definitive proof of the Empire of Chaos’s
real agenda
in Syria may be found in a 2012 Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) document
declassified in May last year.
As
you scroll down the document, you will find
page 291, section C, which reads (in caps,
originally):
“THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO]
SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS
THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED
OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN
EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS
IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE
OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE
SYRIAN REGIME, WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE
STRATEGIC DEPTH OF THE SHIA EXPANSION (IRAQ
AND IRAN)”.
The
DIA report is a formerly classified SECRET/NOFORN
document, which made the rounds of virtually
the whole alphabet soup of US intel, from
CENTCOM to CIA, FBI, DHS, NGA and the State
Department.
It
establishes that over four years ago US
intel was already hedging its bets between
established al-Qaeda in Syria, aka Jabhat
al-Nusra, and the emergence of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh,
aka the Islamic State.
It’s already in the public domain that by a
willful decision, leaked
by current Donald Trump adviser Lt. Gen.
Michael Flynn, Washington allowed the
emergence of the Islamic State – remember
that gleaming white Toyota convoy crossing
the open desert? - as a most convenient US
strategic asset, and not as the enemy in the
remixed, never-ending GWOT (Global War on
Terra).
It’s as clear as it gets; a “Salafist
principality” is to be encouraged as a
means to Divide and Rule over a fragmented
Syria in perpetual chaos. Whether it’s
established by Jabhat al-Nusra – aka
“moderate rebels” in Beltway jargon –
or al-Baghdadi’s “Califake” is just
a pesky detail.
It
gets curioser and curioser as Hasaka and
Deir Ezzor are named in the DIA report – and
directly targeted by the 'mistaken' Pentagon
bombing. No wonder Pentagon chief Ash
'Empire of Whining' Carter took no prisoners
to directly sabotage what Kerry had agreed
on with Lavrov.
No
one will ever see these connections
established by US corporate media – as in,
for instance, the neocon cabal ruling the
Washington Post’s editorial pages. But the
best of the blogosphere
does not disappoint.
So what are
Russia's options?
The
crucial question is of course what will
Russia do about it – beyond Vitaly Churkin,
Russia’s ambassador to the UN, being
absolutely appalled by the recent drama
queen performance of notorious batsh*t crazy
Samantha Power
.
What will Moscow do about the fact that the
whole nebulae described in the Beltway as
“moderate rebels” – all of them
issued from the Wahhabi ideological matrix -
enjoys and will continue to enjoy,
especially under Hillary 'Queen of War'
Clinton, a CIA and/or Pentagon weaponized
connection?
The
DIA document spells it all out, in a stark
link with all previous Divide and Rule
schemes, from the Israeli Yinon plan to the
Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
delirium.
In
Pipelineistan terms, this continues to be
about the Qatar to Turkey – via Syria –
natural gas pipeline versus the proposed $10
billion Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, for which
there is already a memorandum of
understanding.
Lavrov is too much of a stellar diplomat to
leak it – but after Deir Ezzor, Moscow has
definitive proof any possible ceasefire
bargained with Washington will be smashed.
So
never-ending GWOT once again metastasizes
from fighting “evil” al-Qaeda to
allowing al-Qaeda in Syria and its spin-off
the “Califake” being allowed to
carve up their privileged space in Syria.
Nothing substantial will happen before the
November US presidential election – apart
from similar Deir Ezzor 'mistakes' ordered
by soon-to-be-unemployed Ash Carter.
Afterwards, all bets are off. For
contractors feeding off the
industrial-military-security-surveillance
complex, Russia demonization will remain
a historic” business opportunity.
And just wait if
The Three Harpies manage to get their
tentacle hands on the Empire of Chaos.
Pepe
Escobar is an independent geopolitical
analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and
TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor
to websites and radio and TV shows ranging
from the US to East Asia. He is the former
roving correspondent for Asia Times Online.
Born in Brazil, he's been a foreign
correspondent since 1985, and has lived in
London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles,
Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even
before 9/11 he specialized in covering the
arc from the Middle East to Central and East
Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power
geopolitics and energy wars. He is the
author of "Globalistan" (2007), "Red Zone
Blues" (2007), "Obama does Globalistan"
(2009) and "Empire of Chaos" (2014), all
published by Nimble Books. His latest book
is "2030", also by Nimble Books, out in
December 2015.
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