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
Hillary Clinton's Axis of Evil
By
Pepe Escobar
October 14, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"Sputnik"-
Let’s
cut to the chase; Hillary Clinton is
ready to go to war against Russia in
Syria – with inbuilt, potentially
terrifying, thermonuclear consequences.
Anticipating an outcome of the US
presidential election as a remix of the 1972
Nixon landslide, Hillary has also coined,
George “Dubya” Bush-style, a remixed axis of
evil: Russia, Iran and “the Assad regime”.
Clinton Claims Russian Aggression Keeps War
in Syria Going On That’s not even counting
China, which, via “aggression” in the South
China Sea, will also feature as a certified
foe for the Founding Mother of the pivot to
Asia.
And
if all that was not worrying enough, Turkey
now seems on the path to join the axis.
President Putin and President Erdogan met in
Istanbul. Moscow positioned itself as ready
to develop large-scale military-technical
cooperation with Ankara.
That includes, of course, the $20 billion,
Rosatom-built, four-reactor Akkuyu nuclear
power plant. And the drive to “speed up the
work” on Turkish Stream – which will de
facto strengthen even more Russia’s position
in the European gas market, bypassing
Ukraine for good, while sealing Ankara’s
position as a key East-West energy
crossroads.
In
addition, both Moscow and Ankara back UN
Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura’s
position that “moderate rebels” (the
Beltway’s terminology) holding eastern
Aleppo hostage must be eradicated.
The geopolitical game-changer is
self-evident. As much as Erdogan may be
a whirling political dervish, impossible
to fathom and trust, while Putin is a
master of the strategic long game,
Moscow’s and Ankara’s interests tend to
converge in the New Great Game; and that
spells out closer integration in the
dawn of the Eurasian Century.
Quite a cup of hemlock for Hillary Clinton,
who has already equated Putin with Hitler.
Regime change or hot war?
In
the appalling spectacle that turned out to
be round two of the interminable
Trump/Clinton cage match, Donald Trump once
again made a rational point – expressing his
wish for a normalized working relationship
with Russia. Yet that is absolute anathema
for the War Party, as in the
neocon/neoliberalcon nebulae in the
Beltway-Wall Street axis.
The
Clinton (Cash) Machine-controlled Democrats
once again condemned Trump as a tool of
Putin while bewildered Republicans condemned
Trump because he goes against “mainstream
Republican thinking”.
Here’s what Trump said; “I don’t like Assad
at all, but Assad is killing ISIS.
Russia is killing ISIS and Iran is killing
ISIS.”Trump’s outlook on Southwest Asia
relies on only one vector; destroy
ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. That’s what adviser and
former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
director, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn,
has been infiltrating into Trump’s
notoriously short attention span.
Flynn may have admitted on the record that
ISIS/ISIL/Daesh’s progress was a “willful”
decision taken by the Obama administration.
Yet in his disjointed book Field of Fight,
Flynn insists that, “the Russians haven’t
been very effective at fighting jihadis on
their own territory”, are “in cahoots with
the Iranians”, and “the great bulk of their
efforts are aimed at the opponents of the
Assad regime.”
This is a neocon mantra; unsurprisingly, the
co-author of Flynn’s book is neocon Michael
Ledeen.
From dodgy American Enterprise Institute
(AEI) and Washington Institute for Near East
Policy (WINEP) armchair “experts” to former
counselors at the State Department, they all
subscribe to the laughable view that the
remixed axis of evil – now fully adopted by
Hillary – is useless against jihadis; the
good guys doing the difficult work are “the
US-led coalition”. And damn those who dare
criticizing the “relative moderates” backed
by the CIA.
What Trump said is anathema not only for
establishment Republicans who despise Obama
for not fighting against the Hillary-adopted
remixed axis of evil. The real mortal sin is
that it “disregards” core US foreign policy
bipartisan assumptions held to be as sacred
as the Bible.
Thus the success of the neocon Ash
Carter-led Pentagon in bombing the
Kerry-Lavrov ceasefire deal which would
imply coordinated airstrikes against
both ISIS/ISIL/Daesh and the Front for
the Conquest of Syria, formerly Jabhat
al-Nusra, a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria.
Russian military air group at Khmeimim
airbase in Syria © Sputnik/ Dmitriy
Vinogradov Pentagon ‘Silent’ Coup Undermines
US-Russia Engagement on Syria – Ex-White
House Advisor Neocons and mainstream
Republicans blame lame duck Team Obama for
the “unholy reliance” on Russia and Iran,
while neoliberalcons blame Russia outright.
And high in the altar of righteousness,
hysteria rules, with the neocon president of
the NED calling for the US government to
“summon the will” to pull a Putin regime
change.
Ready to go nuclear?
Hillary Clinton continues to insist the US
is not at war with Islam. The US is de facto
at war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen,
Somalia, Pakistan’s tribal areas; involved
in covert war in Iran; and has totally
destroyed Libya. It’s not hard to do the
math.
In
parallel, the deafening talk about
Washington now advancing a Plan C in Syria
is nonsense. There has never been a Plan C;
only Plan A, which was to draw Russia into
another Afghanistan. It did not work with
the controlled demolition of Ukraine. And it
will not work in Syria, as Moscow is willing
to supply plenty of air and missile power
but no boots on the ground of any
consequence. That’s a matter for the Syrian
Arab Army (SAA), Iran and its Shi’ite
militias, and Hezbollah.
Ash
Carter has threatened Russia with
“consequences”. After blowing up the
ceasefire, the Pentagon – supported by the
Joint Chiefs of Staff — now is peddling
“potential strikes” on Syria’s air force to
“punish the regime” for what the Pentagon
actually did; blow up the ceasefire. One
can’t make this stuff up.
Major-General Igor Konashenkov, Russia’s
Defense Ministry spokesman, sent a swift
message to “our colleagues in Washington”;
think twice if you believe you can get away
with launching a “shadow” hot war against
Russia. Russia will target any
stealth/unidentified aircraft attacking
Syrian government targets – and they will be
shot down.
The
only serious question then is whether an out
of control Pentagon will force the Russian
Air Force – false flag and otherwise — to
knock out US Air Force fighter jets, and
whether Moscow has the fire power to take
out each and every one of them.
So
in this three-month window representing the
“death throes” of the Obama era, before the
likely enthronization of the Queen of War,
the question is whether the Pentagon will
risk launching WWIII because “Aleppo is
falling”.
Afterwards, things are bound to get even
more lethal. The US government is holding
open a first-strike nuclear capacity against
Russia. Hillary firmly supports it, as Trump
made clear he “would not do first-strike”.
The
prospect of having axis of evil practitioner
Hillary Clinton with her fingers on the
nuclear button must be seen as the most
life-and-death issue in this whole circus. |
