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 Vision Thing

By Paul Edwards

October 27, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - 

That this election is an abysmal disgrace is nationally acknowledged; that it is 
absolutely unique is not, although it’s undeniable.  Never before has virtually 
the entire mainstream media avidly, emphatically endorsed one Presidential 
candidate while furiously, contemptuously vilifying the other.   Never has a 
sitting President joined in general denunciation of a candidate. 
 
With ten days to go it’s affirmed by most key sources that Donald Trump can’t 
win and Hillary Clinton will.  Many pundits predict a landslide for her. 
 
Assume it.  What then? 
 
The most hated President-elect ever will not be loved by the Congress she will 
confront.  Even with a majority in the Senate--just possible--and in the 
House--not--prospects for a legislative agenda, should she have one, are 
non-existent.  What Obama’s phony charm failed to achieve, Hillary’s lack of it 
will scarcely obtain.  This presages four more years of stasis and nullity, of 
social and economic rot, financial chicanery, and national decay. 
 
As regards the composition of the Supreme Court--the panicky Liberal pitch for 
being “with her”--unless she nominates hidebound conservatives, which is 
probable, not a single selection will be confirmed during her term. 
 
So... paralysis in Congress, reaction in the Court; two limbs of government 
neutralized, gives us rule by a disliked, distrusted figurehead with the full 
power of Wall Street and the Imperial War-loving Establishment behind her. 
 
What then will be accomplished?  First, the interests of The Empire will be 
promoted at least as robustly as in Obama’s eight years of sycophancy.  
Including his Rube Goldbergian Obamacare, still foundering and gouging, nothing 
of any benefit to Americans was achieved under this charlatan who perfected the 
skill of describing an airplane crash as a triumph of gravity. 
 
So what will she do in office?  Well, start with what she won’t do.  She won’t 
make any effort to restrain The Big Casino, the Gold Sacks Mafia.  They made her 
an offer she couldn’t refuse.  She won’t attempt any closing of the inequality 
gap.  That would entail clipping her base--”Our Crowd” of the Hamptons, Palm 
Beach and Beverly Hills.  She won’t meddle with Sick Care--”fool me 
once...”--or, corporate tax enforcement.  Her Big Donors don’t want to pay them 
and why should they, right?  She can just let Labor die of its own raging 
leukemia.  College grads have to stay in their parents’ basements and service 
their college debt via Macdonalds because Arbeit Macht Frei.  No need to do 
anything about Global Warming so long as you denounce it boldly at international 
meetings.  Best leave the environment in the hands of those who can turn idle 
nature into money.  Besides, the solution to pollution is dilution and clearcuts 
grow back in a millenium or so. 
 
On the minor agenda, she knows there are still small poor countries who require 
our R2P and cluster bombs.  Others have resources that, with the odd military 
coup or assassination, should come on line nicely.  Africa, say, has low-hanging 
fruit, and the Latin American mess needs our firm hand to prevent Lefty 
dictators diverting perfectly good profits to their own societies. 
 
Turning to the major crises, Exceptionalism requires that they be made far 
bigger.  Our Defense Industries can’t be expected to muck along forever on 
paltry brushfire wars: Iraq, Afghanistan--though in fairness they’ve profuced 
steady income streams--and Libya, no bonanza, and Syria, which Putin’s 
diabolical meddling prevented blossoming as we hoped.  Still, there’s no earthly 
reason we can’t achieve a profitable Third World War simply by refusing to take 
the bait of Satanic Putin’s wimpy peace offers and calling them what they really 
are: a mortal threat to our Capitalist System. 
 
So much for her first Hundred Days. 
 
Beyond the panicked cheerleading of the Imperial Elite--those that the late, 
great George Carlin referred to as “your owners”--and their failing organs of 
crowd manipulation, and beyond the day Clinton takes office if their hopes are 
consummated, America faces a cataclysmic crisis of governance; one of the order 
of magnitude of the secession of The South under Lincoln. 
 
Clinton and Trump are the physical, mental and emotional symptoms of that 
crisis.  Our dead system must, and will, have catharsis.  Which of them 
precipitates it may not greatly matter.  Or it may mean everything. 
 
As Brutus said at Philippi: “Oh, that a man might know the end of this days 
business ere it come; but it sufficeth that the day will end and then the end is 
known.”