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
The Debates Of Loathing: Trump And Clinton
At Hofstra
By Dr Binoy Kampmark
“It’s all words, it’s all soundbites.”
— Donald Trump, Hofstra
University, Sep 26, 2016
It really
doesn’t matter that these two creatures
loathed and feared in varying degrees should
even be conducting a debate. What, after
all, is there to dispute? Both Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump inhabit worlds of
the disparately dislikeable, and reaped the
bounty of the US with varying degrees of
ruthlessness.
Of
course, the assessment from the pundits
resembled everything that had transpired
before. Take the NBC live coverage, filled
with the tepid, the unsure and the stunned.
The presidential debate had been “surreal”;
Clinton was “overly prepared” yet pleasant,
placing Trump on the defensive at points.
For
The Donald, he was reactive, filled with
emotion, using shock as substitute for
substance. “Not a knock-out evening.” The
Donald then resorted to “bombast”. The NBC
crew suggested that he was pugilistic – and
could not help but refer to those pugilistic
voters.
What did matter on this occasion was that
neither candidate could manage matters quite
as they had hoped. Clinton had had her
coaching sessions, but, as the German
military theorist Helmuth von Moltke made
clear, the eventuality one is prepared for
is exactly the one that does not happen on
the field of battle. The skill will always
lie in dealing with the unanticipated.
Nothing in this entire affair had been
anticipated. Clinton at stages could not
remove that sense of disbelief around her
conduct, visibly taken aback by seeing a
character who refused to remain a peripheral
creation. Yet this peripheral phenomenon
has shrunk the advantage she has in the
polls, having toned down elements of his
frequent outrage and capitalised on her
mistakes.
Trump did his usual business trick, treating
the United States as a pawnshop business
gone wrong, and in need of a general audit.
The industrious Chinese, of course, were
doing better. Then came the Mexicans with
their various advantages on tax in sending
goods back into the country.
Regulations were attacked as lethal for US
business, and there was the pressing issue
of the jobs situation. “How do you bring
the jobs back?” asked the moderator Lester
Holt, losing a grip on the unmanageable
Donald.
Fantasy then intruded, wearing The Donald’s
mask. “The first thing you do,” he shot
back, “is not let them leave.” The
protectionist instinct kicked in, one
entirely at odds with neoliberal orthodoxy –
if such companies are to manufacture
products outside the US and then export to
the United States, they must, in turn, pay a
tax.
He
then played the “Secretary Clinton” card –
“Is that okay with you?” (The Donald would
subsequently claim that he was being all too
soft on Clinton, as he did not “want to hurt
anyone’s feelings.”)
Debates that take place in the realm of the
hypothetical suit Hillary Clinton. Her
arguments offer a layer cake of false
projections bolstered by an army of fact
checking soldiers: plans for clean energy, a
green vision with a modern electric grid,
sound accounting and a promise for a more
secure world in face of threats. “I have
tried to be specific on what we can and what
we do.”
On
energy, Trump brought matters back to
business, ever his default position.
Investing in solar panels had been
disastrous. Naturally, he did not stay at
that terminus, moving rapidly to the issue
of the ballooning debt. The focus, again,
was always “keeping jobs” and “companies to
build companies”. Shadows chasing shadows;
mirages breeding mirages.
Then, his interest was piqued by the comment
about how “my husband did a good job”.
NAFTA and the issue of trade deals came into
the debate with some punchiness, with
Clinton finding herself having to avoid the
issue of that “devastation” it had caused.
Refusing to accept the social calamity of
NAFTA, Clinton put on an air of balance,
claiming that she had been discriminatory
about such deals.
As
for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement,
Clinton had to explain the gyrations of her
approach. Again, having initially
considered it the “gold standard,” the good
Secretary had to veer away from Trump’s
suggestion that she could not be trusted on
it. She had seen the material, and was not
convinced it was good for the United States.
A
deal of the debate focused on that now
redundant entity known as “facts”. Clinton
spoke about checking facts in “real time”
with plans that would avoid creating debt,
and streamline regulations for small
business. Raising taxes on corporations and
the wealthy were matters she believed in,
and anything Trump said in response to that
could be “fact checked”.
Such false meticulousness, masquerading and
reliability, is the hallmark of the Clinton
technique. Trump might have reaped more
from that aspect, but chose not to,
succumbing to such dismissive remarks as “No
wonder you have been fighting ISIS all your
adult life!” Yes, it was true that Clinton
was the “typical politician” but his
procured dagger remained at the surface.
An
example of this caution was Trump’s counter
on the “law and order issue”. Trump openly
spoke of police endorsements, while Clinton
was more cautious. She preferred to back
the black community, a point that Trump only
capitalised on in reminding her about those
“super predators” that were stalking the
land during the 1990s. Was Madame
Secretary’s mind slipping?
The
cynical metre of the entire proceeding was
well caught by a catty language of
bartering. If Clinton released those
valuable emails that had been sent on a
private server, he would release his tax
returns. Clinton’s response focused on his
potential deceptions. Was he truly as
wealthy as he claimed? She, it must be
said, is a rather adept hand at this, being
rather practised in the field of mendacity.
Racism, often in the closet of presidential
campaigns, was trundled out on wheels laced
with venom. There was sniping over the
birther issue (“hurtful” to the President,
according to Clinton); racial discrimination
by Trump and his comments on Mexico.
Whether any of these comments actually
registers an advantage at all is impossible
to say. In an environment of polarising,
untrustworthy candidates, prejudices tend to
be re-enforced rather than alleviated. Come
November, Trump is guaranteed a decent
showing. Whether that showing of loathing
is enough to push him across the line is not
necessarily something these debates will
change. That battle will be won off the
screen, and will not necessarily be helped
by any degree of “fact checking”.
Dr.
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth
Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He
lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Copyright ©
Dr. Binoy Kampmark, Global Research,
2016 |
