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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
What Is At Stake In The Election

By Paul Craig Roberts

October 27, 2016 "Information Clearing House" -  Here Are The Presstitutes Who Control American’s Minds:

I just heard an NPR presstitute declare that Texas, a traditional sure thing
for Republicans was up for grabs in the presidential election. Little wonder if this report on Zero Hedge is correct. Apparently, the voting machines are already at work stealing the election for Killary.

From my long experience in journalism, I know the American public is not very sharp. Nevertheless, it is difficult for me to believe that Americans, whose jobs, careers, and the same for their children and grandchildren, have been sold out by the elites who Hillary represents would actually vote for her. It makes no sense. If this were the case, how did Trump get the Republican nomination despite the vicious presstitute campaign against him?

It seems obvious that the majority of Americans who have been suffering terribly at the hands of the One Percent who own Hillary lock, stock, and barrel, will not vote for the people who have ruined their lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren.

Furthermore, if Trump’s election is as impossible as the presstitutes tell us—Hillary’s win is 93% certain according to the latest presstitute pronouncement—the vicious 24/7 attacks on Trump would be pointless. Wouldn’t they? Why the constant, frenetic, vicious attacks on a person who has no chance?

There are reports that a company associated with Hillary backer George Soros is supplying the voting machines to 16 states, including states that determine election outcomes. I do not know that these reports are correct. However, I do know for a fact that the oligarchic interests that rule America are opposed to Trump being elected President for the simple reason that they are unsure that they would be able to control him.

It is hard to believe that dispossessed Americans will vote for Hillary, the representative of those who have dispossessed them, when Trump says he will re-empower the dispossessed. Hillary has denigrated ordinary Americans who, she says, she is so removed from by her wealth that she doesn’t even know who they are. Clearly, Hillary, paid $675,000 by Goldman Sachs for three 20-minute speeches, is not a representative of the people. She represents the One Percent whose policies have flushed the prospects of ordinary Americans down the toilet.

What is really disturbing is the pretense by the presstitute scum that Trump’s lewd admiration for female charms is deemed more important than the prospect of nuclear war. At no time during the presidential primaries or during the current presidential campaign has it been mentioned that Russia is being assaulted daily by propaganda, threatened by military buildups, and being convinced that the United States and its European vassals are planning an attack.

A threatened Russia, made insecure by inexplicable hostility and Western propaganda, is a danger manufactured by the neoconservative supporters of Hillary Clinton.

If the American people are really so unbelievably stupid that they think lewd remarks about women are more important than avoiding nuclear war, the American people are too stupid to exist. They will deserve the mushroom clouds that will wipe them and everyone else off the face of the earth.

Donald Trump is the only candidate in the primaries and the general election who has said that he sees no point in conflict with Russia when Putin has shown nothing but desire to work things out to mutual advantage.

In contrast, Hillary has declared the thrice-elected president of Russia to be “the new Hitler” and has threatened Russia with military action. Hillary talks openly about regime change in Russia.

Surely, in a free media at least one person in the print and TV media would raise this most important of all points. But where have you seen it?

Only in my columns and a few others in the alternative media.

In other words, we are about to have an election in which the important issue has played no role. And yet allegedly we are the exceptional, indispensable people, a people’s democracy protected by a free press.

In truth, this mythical description of America is merely a cloak for the rule of the Oligarchs. And the Oligarchs are risking life on earth for their continual supremacy.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts editor of was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are Dissolution of The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

 

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