Will Obama Give Israel even more American Weapons
and Dollars to Kill Palestinians?By
Ann Wright
Editor's note: Say
no at
http://noweaponsforisrael.org
November 13, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "War
Is A Crime" - President Obama met with
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on November 9 in the White House
and is considering the Israeli request to give a 50% increase of
nearly $1.5 billion in U.S. military funding bringing the U.S.
donation to the killing of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to
$4.5 billion a year.
As it stands now, more that half of the U.S.
foreign military spending for 2016 goes to Israel. As in all things,
Israel gets special treatment by the U.S. allowing Israel to spend
25% of its gift from the U.S. to pay itself for buying weapons from
its own weapons industry!!!
According to a recent
congressional report, Israel has received $124.3 billion in
military assistance from the US since its founding in 1948.
The report states that “strong congressional
support for Israel has resulted in Israel receiving benefits not
available to any other countries; for example, Israel can use U.S.
military assistance both for research and development in the United
States and for military purchases from Israeli manufacturers.
In addition, U.S. assistance earmarked for Israel
is generally delivered in the first 30 days of the fiscal year,
while most other recipients normally receive aid in installments,
and Israel (as is also the case with Egypt) is permitted to use cash
flow financing for its U.S. arms purchases.
In addition to receiving U.S. State
Department-administered foreign assistance, Israel also receives
funds from annual defense appropriations bills for rocket and
missile defense programs. Israel pursues some of those programs
jointly with the United States.”
As Obama was meeting Netanyahu, eight blocks away
at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC, a surgeon from Norway who
works on behalf of his university part of each year in al Shifa
hospital in Gaza, told of the devastation, destruction and human
suffering these American weapons and dollars cause.
Dr. Mads Gilbert spoke of 51 days of terror in
Gaza in the summer of 2014 as the Israeli Attack forces brutalized
the people of Gaza with Israeli and U.S. artillery, assassin drone
ordnance, F16s, hellfire missiles and dense inert military
explosives. Gilbert said that the 2014 Israeli attack on Gaza was
500% stronger than 2009 attack. He was working at al Shifa hospital
in 2009 when the IDF attacked Gaza. In 2014, the IDF fired 50,000 of
those shells into Gaza and conducted over 6,000 air strikes,
destroying over 3,500 buildings in Gaza City alone including over
50% of the hospitals in Gaza.
At the end of the 51-day attack, 2250 Palestinians
were dead, including 551 children and 299 women. 3,500 Palestinian
children were wounded and the 1 million children and youth who live
in Gaza were all deeply affected by the attacks. 60 percent of the
1.8 million who live in Gaza are under the age of 22.
Dr. Gilbert’s presentation included mind-searing
photos of the carnage caused by Israeli attacks and the audio of the
sounds of jets racing overhead, bombs exploding and buildings
collapsing.
Citing the
report of the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry
on the 2014 Gaza Conflict, Gilbert said the IDF purposefully
targeted the civilian population including entire families, that the
IDF purposefully targeted hospitals, ambulances and four UN shelter
facilities.
The report stated that “Hundreds of Palestinian
civilians were killed in their own homes, especially women and
children. At least 142 families lost three or more members in an
attack on a residential building during the summer of 2014,
resulting in 742 deaths. The fact that Israel did not revise its
practice of air-strikes, even after their dire effects on civilians
became apparent, raises the question of whether this was part of a
broader policy which was at least tacitly approved at the highest
level of government.”
Additionally, “the commission is concerned about
Israel’s extensive use of weapons with a wide kill and injury
radius; though not illegal, their use in densely populated areas is
highly likely to kill combatants and civilians indiscriminately.
There appears also to be a pattern whereby the IDF issued warnings
to people to leave a neighbourhood and then automatically considered
anyone remaining to be a fighter. This practice makes attacks on
civilians highly likely. During the Israeli ground incursion into
Gaza that began in mid-July 2014, hundreds of people were killed and
thousands of homes destroyed or damaged.
The commission report stated: “Palestinian armed
groups fired 4,881 rockets and 1,753 mortars towards Israel in July
and August 2014, killing 6 civilians, including one child and
injuring at least 1,600.” 66 Israeli soldiers were killed in
military operations inside Gaza.
The commission also reported: “In the West Bank
including East Jerusalem, 27 Palestinians were killed and 3,020
injured between June and August 2014. The number killed in these
three months was equivalent to the total for the whole of 2013. The
commission is concerned about what appears to be the increasing use
of live ammunition for crowd control by the Israeli Security Forces,
which raises the likelihood of death or serious injury.”
The commissioners wrote, “Impunity prevails
across the board for violations allegedly committed by Israeli
forces, both in Gaza and the West Bank. “Israel must break with its
lamentable track record in holding wrong doers accountable, and
accountability on the Palestinian side is also woefully inadequate.”
Signaling further attacks on Gaza, during a
November 10 talk at the Center for American Progress in Washington,
Netanyahu
said that Gaza has “become this poison thumb, this poison dagger
that sends rockets” into Israel and that Israel must be prepared for
a long period of tension.
This blind backing for whatever Israel does and
providing the weapons to do it is dangerous for the United States
and for Israel. As Israeli journalist Gideon Levy recently wrote
concerning Hillary Clinton’s unwavering support for Israel, but can
be expanded to the similar support given by both Republican and
Democratic led U.S. administrations: “… support (for) the continued
occupation is like a person who continues to buy drugs for an
addicted relative. This is neither concern nor friendship; it is
destruction… “false” friends of Israel – have been one of the curses
on this country for years. Because of them, Israel can continue to
act as wildly as it likes, thumbing its nose at the world and paying
no price. Because of them, it can
destroy itself unhindered.
Israeli attacks on people in Gaza and the West
Bank will end when we the citizens of the U.S. force our government
to stop its military and diplomatic backing of the State of Israel.
Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S.
Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. She also was a U.S.
diplomat for 16 years and resigned in 2003 in opposition to the war
on Iraq. She has been in Gaza six times and was on the 2010 Gaza
Flotilla that was attacked by the IDF and who executed nine
passengers and wounded 50.