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
US Court Protects 'School of the Assassins'
Graduates
By teleSur
October 04, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "teleSur"
-
Since
the Cold War the school has provided
counterinsurgency training to a number of
Latin American dictators and death squad
members.
A U.S. court has sided with the Pentagon
that it does not have to publicly release
the names of attendees from the training
school, formerly known as the School of the
Americas, on Friday.
The infamous military school was a training
ground for dictators, death squad members,
and torturers, fueling human rights abuses
and coups across Latin America, earning it
the moniker “the School of the Assassins.”
In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals in San Francisco said that activists
from SOA Watch, a group that seeks to close
the school, do not have a legal right to
force the disclosure of the names and units
of foreign personnel trained at what is now
referred to as the Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation.
Judges ruling in favor of the Department of
Defense said that publicly releasing the
information would violate the privacy of
attendees and was not valuable enough to the
public and had the potential of putting
attendees lives at risk. The DoD also argued
that disclosing names would put attendees at
risk of being targeted by terrorist
organizations.
“There are many groups in foreign countries
that would seek to harm those who are
publicly associated with the United States
military,” said Judge Sandra Ikuta who
supported the ruling. Ikuta added that there
were adequate screening processes in place
to instruct attendees on human rights, and
deny enrollment to those previously involved
in a “gross violation of human rights.”
SOA Watch, Torture survivor & activist Mario Venegas + Olmeca Live from teleSUR English on Vimeo.
Judge Paul Watford, who voted against the
ruling, stressed that the military school
has “checkered history” of human rights
abuses, including torture training, and
there was no evidence that graduates had
been targeted.
Watford added the ruling relied on the word
of the government where “the public has no
way of independently verifying if students
are properly vetted before enrolling at the
Institute, or whether after graduating they
engage in human rights abuses in their home
countries.”
The school, located in Fort Benning,
Georgia, was founded in 1946 to provide
"anti-communist counterinsurgency training,"
during the Cold War.
According to SOA Watch, the
military school "has trained over 64,000
Latin American soliders in counterinsurgency
techniques, sniper training, commando and
psychological warfare, military intelligence
and interrogation tactics. These graduates
have consistently used their skills to wage
war against their own people.
Some
of its infamous graduates include a number
of Argentine military leaders involved in
the country's “dirty war,” which saw a
military dictatorship hunting down and
disappearing thousands of left-wing
Argentines.
Manuel Noriega, the former
military dictator of Panama in the 1980’s
also attended the school. Originally backed
by the CIA, he was accused of rigging
elections and trafficked narcotics.
Guatemalan, Efrain Rios Montt was another
military dictator who graduated from the
school, who is facing trial for genocide and
war crimes.
"SOA
Watch will continue to push for the release
of the names of the graduates and
instructors of the notorious institution,
and for its closure," the group said in a
statement.
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