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
US Public Don’t Care If Politicians Lie
By Eric Zuesse
September 20, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "SCF"
-
To say that a voter cares
whether or not a given politician is a liar,
is to say that even if the politician is of
that voter’s own political party, the voter
will reject the politician for being a liar.
In the United States, most
voters are either Democratic or Republican;
and, for example, Republicans accept George
W. Bush (he left office in 2009 with a
Republican approval
rating of 75%, but a Democratic approval
rating of 6%) even though he
lied us into invading Iraq, and
Democrats accept Barack Obama (his
latest approval rating is 90% from Democrats
but 11% from Republicans) even though
he tried to lie us into invading Syria and
was stopped only when British intelligence
warned David Cameron and leaked
to Seymour Hersh that the 21 August 2013
Syrian sarin attack which Obama was using as
a pretext for his planned invasion had been
done by the jihadists that Obama was arming,
not by Assad as Obama was falsely claiming.
An independent American
investigation found exactly he same thing.
And Obama knew that if he couldn’t get
Britain in on the invasion, the invasion
would need to be cancelled. And, as things
turned out, he couldn’t get Britain in on
it. Cameron didn’t want to become another
Tony Blair.
All of the U.S. ‘news’ media
hid all of this from the U.S. public, but
Americans nonetheless trust U.S. ‘news’
media enough to subscribe to them. And
Republicans still trust George W. Bush, and
Democrats still trust Barack Obama — despite
their proven lies (which U.S. ‘news’ media
hide and have hidden: the crucial lies are
the ones that the ‘news’ media,
of both political Parties, refuse ever to
expose; so, the ‘news’ media are locked into
continuing their lies about those matters — lies
such as the official story about 9/11,
which are the
government’s lies that the nation’s press
still accepts as being truths).
Consequently, Americans
actually distrust only foreign news-sources
— and only politicians of, and news-reports
by media that lie for,
the opposite political party from their own.
Americans trust domestic ‘news’ sources, and
their own political party (though both are
full of lies — and both
serve the U.S. aristocracy). However,
believing in lies produces
self-contradictions, which few people even
so much as notice, much less comment upon;
and this acceptance of
self-contradictions enables the public to
be, and to remain, deceived.
For example, a
poll by Monmouth University during 4-7
August found that 63 % of Americans said
they were «tired of hearing about» Hillary
Clinton’s emails, and only 34% said «this is
something the media should continue to
cover».
A month earlier, a
poll by Rasmussen, taken on the same day
(July 5th) when the FBI announced there
would be no prosecution of Clinton’s email
operation, found that "37 % of likely U.S.
voters agree with the FBI’s decision. But 54
% disagree and believe the FBI should have
sought a criminal indictment of Clinton.
Ten percent (10%) are undecided». Then, on
July 6-7, «The Post-ABC
poll found 56 percent disapprove of [FBI
Director] Comey’s recommendation against
charging Clinton while 35 percent approve».
So, clearly, Americans overwhelmingly
rejected the FBI’s decision.
In other words, though
Americans overwhelmingly (by 54 % to 37 %,
or 56 % to 35 %) believed that the FBI was
covering up for Clinton, Americans even more
overwhelmingly (by 63 % to 34 %) didn’t want
there to be any further investigation into
the matter. Deep down, most Americans are
authoritarian, and are willing to accept a
dictatorial government — one in which the
top people stand above and beyond the reach
of the law; they are immune from the law: not a
nation «of laws, not of men»; but a nation
«of men, not of laws». That type of
nation is a classical aristocracy, now
commonly called an «oligarchy,» in order to
enable aristocrats to deny that there
stillis an aristocracy — to fool the public
into believing that they’re being ruled by
the public, instead of by an aristocracy
(otherwise known as a «dictatorship»).
Furthermore, Rasmussen found
extreme partisanship in the public’s beliefs
regarding whether Clinton should have been
prosecuted: Though 54% of the total public
thought the FBI ought to have prosecuted her
email operation, only
25 % of Democrats did; but 79% of
Republicans did. Democrats
overwhelmingly wanted her to be immune from
prosecution — which is what the FBI did in
her case (held her immune from prosecution
for crimes that they
had prosecuted and convicted lesser people
for). This is truly an aristocracy.
Not only George W. Bush stands above the law
for his crimes; but so do Barack Obama, and
Hillary Clinton, and all the rest of the
aristocracy, stand above the law for theirs;
and so do the billionaires who financed
their political careers.
The only difference is that,
whereas Democrats don’t want Democratic
politicians to be imprisoned for violating
their oaths of office, Republicans don’t
want Republican politicians to be imprisoned
for violating their oaths of office.
Regardless of whether a politician is
serving mainly Democratic aristocrats or
Republican aristocrats, the ‘public’
official serves the aristocracy, and
therefore is above the law, just as are the
people that the ‘public’ official is
serving. But the reason why it can be so, is
that the public are deceived to think that
the great conflict is between Democrats and
Republicans, when, in fact, it’s between the
aristocracy, and the public (regardless of
Party).
America used to be a
democracy, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt
ruled, and to a decreasing extent
afterwards, until around 1980, when
inequality of wealth soared in America, and
the billionaires increasingly took over. But
now it’s so much a dictatorship that even
the last of the democratic U.S. Presidents,
Jimmy Carter, recently
blurted out that «it's just an oligarchy
with unlimited political bribery».
The American public don’t yet
recognize what that means, because their
‘news’ media pretend, even today, there
still remains a big Democratic-Republican
Party split. Americans thus are now choosing
between one criminal gang and another, and
still think that they’re choosing ‘their’
government. It still is
government over them, but no longer
government by them. And they accept it
because they’ve been deceived.
For example, even after 15
years, they still haven’t been informed
that 9/11 was a joint
project between the Saudi royal family
and George W. Bush, among others (including,
but not limited to, the top level of Al
Qaeda).Even after 15 years. In 2007, a Zogby
poll found that «Only 4.8 percent of the
respondents agreed that members of the U.S.
government ‘actively planned or assisted
some aspects of the attack.’»
After Obama became President,
there has been almost no polling on this
matter; but, on 21 March 2010, the Angus
Reid polling organization randomly polled
1,007 Americans, and
found that the proposition that «The
collapse of the World Trade Center was the
result of a controlled demolition» was
believed by only 15%, and was rejected by 74
%, though it is actually
true regarding WTC7, and almost certainly
true also for WTC1 and WTC2.
So, one can reasonably wonder
how much longer truth, and truthfulness,
will continue to remain matters of only
partisan interest in the United States, or
whether democracy (in which truthfulness
rises above partisanship) here will
simply never be able to be restored (and
politics will therefore continue to be based
upon lies, and the public will continue to
vote on that fraudulent basis).
Investigative historian Eric
Zuesse is the author, most recently, of
They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs.
Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and
of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that
Created Christianity |
