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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
Two Separate Worlds

By Thierry Meyssan

During a very important meeting of the Security Council – not even mentioned in the Western Press – on 28 October, the United States voted against UNO cooperation with regional organisations which include Russia, and therefore also China. By refusing to work with others, and thus to admit that other powers are their equals, Washington has taken the path towards a division of the world into two distinct spheres and the end of economic globalisation.

November 18, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "Voltaire" - Moscow called for a special meeting of the Security Council on 28 October 2016, to debate the cooperation between the UNO and certain regional organisations. Ambassador Vladimir Churkin, who was then presiding the Council, invited the representative of the Commonwealth of Independent States (Russian Sergey Ivanov, CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (Russian General Nikolai Bordyuzha, CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (Tajik Rashid Alimov, SCO).

The three General Secretaries presented the work of their organisations – cooperation between the states of the ex-Soviet Union for the CIS, a military alliance for the CSTO, and a regional cooperation to stabilise central Asia for the SCO. They stressed their contribution to the UNO concerning the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism – two subjects which are unanimously approved by the international community, although everyone knows that these plagues are created and controlled by the United States.

Although everything started well, and the different ambassadors who are members of the Security Council were congratulatng one another on this breath of fresh air, the meeting took a turn for the worse after the presentations by the ambassadors of Ukraine and the United States. Concerned about preventing these three organisations from troubling the monopoly of NATO and the European Union, they accused Russia of all sorts of crimes, and denounced these organisations as covers intended to mask Russian expansionism. The US ambassador concluded that, in these conditions, it was not possible to envisage any form of cooperation of the UNO with these organisations, including the SCO, in other words, also with China.

We find here the position held by various participants during Geneva Conference 2 – while everyone is in theory united against terrorism, Washington does not see this problem as being a priority, but puts the demands of its own imperialism first. Except that this time, it has not attacked Syria, but offended both Russia and China.

The world is therefore paying for the fog that has surrounded the fight against terrorism since 2001. Let us remember that terrorism is not an enemy in itself, but a method of combat used by enemies.

Washington has thus closed the only exit that was open to it. The Obama administration refuses to recognise the development of Russia, the world’s major conventional military power, and of China, the world’s major economic power. It refuses to let go of the unipolar organisation of the world which was set up after «Desert Storm», in 1991, and pursues its wars in the Levant and in Ukraine with the unique aim of cutting the two land supply routes from China to Western Europe.

Given that its position is untenable in the short term, and that it does not want a World War, Washington is preparing to separate the world in two. This does not mean a replay of the Cold War, where the world was one, even if it was administered by two powers, but a new structure – on one side a unipolar world governed by the United States alone, and on the other a number of independent and refractory states cooperating together around Russia and China, and with the fewest possible number of bridges between these two worlds. This implies the end of world free trade, the organisation of world commerce, and economic globalisation, and thus constitutes a gigantic step backwards.

If Washington persists in this direction, it will have to withdraw militarily from Syria and allow peace to return – except on the Iraqi border, where it will maintain its interdiction of the Silk Road. Because of the United States this time, an impenetrable barrier will circle the globe and divide Humanity, just as the Berlin Wall separated the population of the ex-capital of Germany, dividing its families for almost half a century. It will therefore become very difficult for the Syrians, who fled to foreign lands to escape the jihadists, to return home and join with their families again. And it will become impossible for a Westerner to spend his holidays in Moscow or buy Chinese computers.

Thierry Meyssan -  French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.

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