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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

Why Hillary Won't Unleash WWIII

By Pepe Escobar

October 31, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "RT" - She is fully supported by virtually the whole US establishment; a bipartisan, neocon/neoliberalcon, regime change/”humanitarian” imperialist axis.

On the opposite side, for all his personal pathology problems and incoherent twitter-mouth ramblings, Donald Trump seemed to be on the money when he said that if elected, Hillary would use Syria to unleash WWIII.

To check out if that holds, let’s start with an essential backup.

The ‘Queen of War’, at the final US presidential debate in Las Vegas: "A no-fly zone [in Syria] can save lives and hasten the end of the conflict."

The ‘Queen of War’, in one of her 2013 speeches to Goldman Sachs, published by WikiLeaks: a no-fly zone would "kill a lot of Syrians.”

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: a no-fly zone in Syria “would require us to go to war, against Syria and Russia."

Predictably, the Clinton (cash) machine has been relentless promoting Hillary’s no-fly zone. Whenever cornered, the machine switches the narrative to Russian hacking of the DNC. Edward Snowden, who knows a thing or two about cyberwarfare, stresses there is no solid proof Russian intel hacked the Democratic/Clinton machine. And if they actually did it, the NSA would know. The fact the NSA is mum reveals this is no more than information war.

Pass the missile launchers, please

Trump seems to have been more on the money when he insisted how Hillary will be outsmarted – as she already was in the past – when dealing with President Putin, who she has demonized as Hitler.

I have shown how Hillary will be prevented from launching WWIII because her no-fly zone is already implemented in Syria by Russia. And the Pentagon – reflecting Dunford’s comments - knows it, no matter how emphatically soon-to-be-unemployed Pentagon head Ash Carter threatens “consequences.”

The Pentagon ranks Russia and China as the number one and two “existential threats” to US national security, in that order. And the US government reserves for itself the privilege of a nuclear “first-strike” – which Hillary supports (but not Trump); this is part of the 2002 Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine.

The relentless hysteria now crystallized as Cold War 2.0 has led scores of analysts to game the actual – terrifying - possibility of a US-Russia hot war. As much as the Cold War MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine may now lie in the dust – exactly because Washington refuses to back down from “first-strike” – only armchair Dr. Strangeloves get their kicks with the possibility of fighting a nuclear power. Dunford does not seem to be one of them.

What Hillary Clinton will certainly do is to double down on proxy wars, Vietnam/Afghanistan-style. So expect a President Clinton to authorize full weaponization of those Beltway-loved “moderate” Al-Qaeda-in-Syria rebels with plenty of shoulder-held missile launchers. This could easily get out of control – with lethal, yet not nuclear, consequences.

That’s exactly the point made by Mikhail Rostovsky in Moscow daily Moskovsky Komsomolets; if Hillary ratchets up tensions, “things could get out of hand.”

Also expect not so proxy ratcheting up of tension in the South China Sea; after all it was Hillary who claimed ‘mothership’ of the pivot to Asia; and it was Hillary who steered intra-South East Asian maritime disputes into the boiling cauldron of wider US-China competition.

And if that was not hard boiled enough, US frustration will be at an all-time high after Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s own pivot to China.

Say hello to my new Sarmat

A case can be made that official Moscow is carefully getting ready to work with a Clinton – as in Obama III – presidency, with Hillary, a devil they know well when she was Secretary of State, to be dealt with as a pragmatist, unwilling and unable to plunge US-Russia relations into total incandescence.

A Clinton presidency for its part should know better than overestimate Russia’s financial “weakness.”

The national debt of Russia is only 17.7 percent of GDP; for the US it is a whopping 104.17 percent of GDP, or $19.2 trillion. Russia in 2015 had a trade surplus of $150 billion, while the US had a trade deficit of $531.5 billion. The current account surplus of Russia was 5.1 percent of GDP, or 65.8 billion, while the US ran a current account deficit of 484.1 billion, or 2.7 percent of GDP.

Besides, Russia has all the natural resources it needs; unlike the US government, which believes it needs an empire of bases overseas and ten aircraft carrier task forces to secure the resources it lacks.

Moreover, as much as the Pentagon may continue to be infested by neocon cells, sound generals are also able to identify key Russian signals – such as the unveiling of the RS-28 Sarmat nuclear missile, which NATO calls Satan 2. The Sarmat delivers monster warheads of 40 megatons; boasts a top speed of seven kilometers per second; and is able to outfox any anti-missile shield system anywhere.

Hot war? Hillary Clinton may have pulled a Julius Caesar over Gaddafi. But she’s realist enough to not pull a (nuclear) Hitler over Moscow. Or is she?

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