Home   Bookmark and Share

 Print Friendly and PDF

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

Media Ask Which Candidate Can Better Exploit Our Irrational Fear of Terrorism

By Adam Johnson

Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth- based journalist and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism - See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2016-09-19/palestinians-lose-in-us-military-aid-deal-with-israel/#sthash.H1NbQCac.dpuf

September 22, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "FAIR" -  The media’s tendency to focus on horserace issues—who’s up and who’s down, what the cosmetics are of an event rather than the substance—is routinely derided by media critics, and mocking it has become something of an election year tradition. But one 2016 topic in particular, terrorism, has become the hot horserace topic of the year in a way that goes beyond the silly to the potentially damaging:

  • Clinton, Trump Jockey Over Who Would Best Fight Terrorists (WNBC, 9/20/16)
  • Who Has the Upper Hand on Terrorism, Clinton or Trump? (Politico, 9/20/16)
  • Terror Threat Clash: Trump, Clinton Accuse Each Other of Boosting Enemy (Fox News, 9/19/16)
  • Clinton, Trump Spar Over Terrorism in Wake of Latest Attacks (USA Today, 9/20/16)

Something missing from these reports is any discussion of the relative danger of terrorism. The reporters begin with the premise that voters are afraid of it, never challenging the underlying rationality of those fears.

The reality is that terrorism remains, objectively, a very minor threat. (One is 82 times more likely to be killed falling out of bed than by a terrorist.) But by framing the issue as an urgent danger, with two candidates “dueling” over opposing ways of addressing this menace, the media further inflate terrorism’s importance. Can one even imagine Trump and Clinton “jockeying” for position on climate change, or violence against women and LGBT communities, or lowering heart disease—all of which, statistically, are far, far more dangerous than terrorism?

This isn’t a new problem, of course. In nine Democratic primary debates, for example, the moderators asked a total of 30 questions about  terrorism or ISIS, and not one question about poverty (FAIR.org, 5/27/16). (A 2011 study by Columbia’s school of public health estimated that 4.5 percent of all deaths in the United States are attributable to poverty.)

Polls show people are indeed increasingly worried about terrorism—and about “Islamic fundamentalism,” with which it is often conflated in media discussions. (Republicans’ fear of “Islamic fundamentalism” is now higher than immediately after 9/11.)

But such worries are fueled, at least in part, on the media’s outsized coverage. Since 2006, according to the tabulations of USA Today, there have been 320 incidents of mass murder in the United States—incidents in which four or more people were killed, not including perpetrators. During that time, there have been five such attacks carried out by people apparently motivated by Islamicist ideology: the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the 2015 Chattanooga shooting, the 2015 San Bernardino attack and the 2016 Orlando nightclub massacre. Two other mass murder incidents—the 2012 Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting and the 2015 Charleston church massacre—were carried out by right-wing extremists. These seven potentially terrorist attacks represent about 2 percent of the mass murder events in the United States over a little more than the last decade.

But media don’t just cover terrorism, they engage in meta-terrorism—the terror that comes from the gratuitous or excessive coverage of stories that don’t actually involve terrorism, but rather potential or staged terrorism, or ISIS propaganda repackaged as news. Note that in none of the following “terror” stories did any terrorism actually occur:

  • Online Posts Show ISIS Eyeing Mexican Border, Says Law Enforcement Bulletin (Fox News, 8/24/14)
  • FBI Director Comey: Several ISIS-Inspired July 4 Attacks Foiled (NBC, 7/9/15)
  • Smugglers Busted Trying to Sell Nuclear Material to ISIS (AP, 10/7/15)
  • ISIS Threatens NYC in New Propaganda Video (New York Post, 11/18/15)
  • A Freeway Terror Attack Is the ‘Nightmare We Worry About,’ Law Enforcers Say (LA Times, 12/21/15)
  • Feds: New York Man Was Planning ISIS Attack on New Year’s Eve (CNN, 1/2/16)
  • ISIS Planning ‘Enormous and Spectacular Attacks,’ Anti-Terror Chief Warns (Guardian, 3/7/16)
  • ISIL Plotting to Use Drones for Nuclear Attack on West (Telegraph, 4/1/16)
  • ISIS Nuclear Attack in Europe Is a Real Threat, Say Experts (Independent, 6/7/16)

The list could go on and on—with stories involving the FBI foiling terrorist “plots” of their own making, “experts” coming up with hypothetical terror attacks, or the outright dissemination of ISIS propaganda. The constant drum beat of meta-terror acts as an accelerant, taking each spark of actual terrorism and turning it into an inferno of panic.

The failure of those pieces on Trump and Clinton’s “jockeying” for position on the issue of ISIS terrorism to note that the perception of fear does not equal the actual threat–that we are still far more likely to be harmed by dozens of other threats than terrorism—is in line with horserace journalism’s prioritization of optics over substance, a phenomenon that’s that much more toxic when dealing with a subject whose optics are skewed by racism and irrationality.

To the extent that there is any dampening of fears, it comes from the Clinton camp, in the context of countering Trump’s brand of outright xenophobia. The Overton window has narrowed to a choice between overwrought ISIS panic and overwrought ISIS panic that’s overtly racist.

Reporting that reached beyond the two campaigns’ anti-ISIS talking points, and horserace analysis of their attempts to “out-position” each other, would serve the public by putting our fears of terrorism in perspective.

Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
 

Click for Spanish, German, Dutch, Danish, French, translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load.

What's your response? -  Scroll down to add / read comments 

Email Newsletter icon, E-mail Newsletter icon, Email List icon, E-mail List icon Sign up for our FREE Daily Email Newsletter

For Email Marketing you can trust

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 Please read our  Comment Policy before posting -
It is unacceptable to slander, smear or engage in personal attacks on authors of articles posted on ICH.
Those engaging in that behavior will be banned from the comment section.
 
 

 

  

 

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

Privacy Statement