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
J’Accuse – French
Condemnations of Russia in Syria Beyond
Cynical
By Finian Cunningham
October 08, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"SCF"
-
French Foreign Minister
Jean-Marc Ayrault worked up his
frequent-flyer air miles account this week
with consecutive flights to Moscow then to
Washington in a bid to push through a UN
Security Resolution for a new ceasefire in
Syria.
Ayrault began his shuttle
diplomacy with stern condemnation of
the Syrian government for what he said were
«war crimes» committed in the besieged city
of Aleppo. The French minister also implied
Russian complicity in the same alleged
crimes. It wasn’t the first time he made
such accusations against Russia and its
Syrian ally.
When the ceasefire brokered
by US Secretary of State John Kerry and
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
broke down at the end of last month, it was
Ayrault who led vociferous denunciations at
the UN, along with American UN ambassador
Samantha Power, blaming Russia for
«barbarous crimes against humanity».
This week on his way to
Moscow, Ayrault accused Russia
of «cynicism that is fooling nobody» in
reference to the renewed Russian-backed
offensive by Syrian state forces to
recapture the militant-held eastern quarter
of Aleppo. That part of the city housing
about 250,000 people has been under the
control of various Islamist militants
dominated by the terrorist group Al Nusra
Front since 2012.
France, the US and Britain,
amplified by the Western news media, have
been conducting a relentless campaign to
portray the Russian-backed Syrian operation
on Aleppo as criminal and brutally injurious
to the civilian population. Since the
ceasefire collapsed during the last week of
September, the Western media have been
saturated with unverified claims of Russian
air strikes killing civilians in eastern
Aleppo and of targeting hospitals and
humanitarian aid facilities.
France 24, the state-owned
broadcaster of Ayrault’s country, never
gives any reports from the Syrian
government-held quarters of Aleppo where the
majority of citizens – some 1.5 million –
are residing. These areas are routinely
shelled by the militants, with hundreds of
victims over the past few weeks. Yet, France
24 and the other Western media outlets
appear to operate on the basis that the
majority of Aleppo’s population simply does
not exist.
Nor do the Western media
report that the majority of Aleppo’s
civilians are willingly residing in the
government-held districts out of seeking
protection from the Islamist militants.
Moreover, neither is it reported that the
mainstay of the 250,000 civilians in eastern
Aleppo are being held there against their
will by the militants as hostages, or human
shields. They can’t flee out of fear that
remaining family relatives will be murdered
in retribution.
The evidently selective
humanitarian concern expressed by the French
foreign minister and his Western
counterparts for the people of Aleppo begins
to alert one of a more nuanced – dare we say
cynical – agenda.
Claims of Russian and Syrian
«war crimes» made by Ayrault and other
Western officials are based on «rebel
sources» within besieged eastern Aleppo. One
of the primary sources is the so-called
«volunteer aid» group known as the White
Helmets. Video footage purporting to show
the aftermath of Russian air strikes is
routinely aired by France 24 and other
Western channels with the White Helmets logo
displayed. It is presented as a bona fide
humanitarian agency, when it fact the group
is funded by
US and British governments to the tune of $
23 million and is embedded with the Al Nusra
terrorist-controlled Aleppo Media Center. In
short, a terrorist propaganda outlet, which
serves to feed Western media and government
ministers with disinformation that is
purveyed to the Western public in order to
discredit and demonize Syria and Russian
forces.
French diplomats told Reuters
this week that France is drafting its
proposed resolution to the UN Security
Council in such a way that Russia would have
to exercise its veto if it is to block it.
In that way, the French purpose is to
project Russia as an unreasonable member of
the Security Council and a stalwart backer
of the Syrian «regime». This amounts to more
cynical Western attempts to traduce Russia
and Syria as the perpetrators for the
ongoing violence.
Russia is unlikely to support
the French-sponsored resolution because the
resolution is impossibly one-sided and
belies a political objective of undermining
Syria and Russia. France is calling for an
immediate cessation of fighting in Aleppo,
including no military flights over the city;
and, secondly, for the complete humanitarian
aid access to eastern Aleppo.
This French initiative –
under the guise of urgent humanitarianism –
is a de facto «no fly zone» that will
bolster the fighting capability of the
anti-government insurgents, which, as noted,
are dominated by al-Qaeda-affiliated terror
groups.
When Russia and Syrian forces
agreed to the ceasefire declared earlier on
September 12, they did so on the strict
condition that militants not associating
with terrorist brigades would henceforth
separate physical units. But no such
separation occurred, as many observers had
predicted, because Western government claims
of «moderate rebels» being interspersed with
«extremists» are nothing but a cynical
charade. All these militants belong to the
same terrorist front which Western
governments have been arming in a covert war
for regime change against President Bashar
al-Assad – a longtime ally of Russia and
Iran.
The only parties to respect
the ceasefire called by Kerry and Lavrov
last month were the Syrian army and its
allies among the Iranian and Hezbollah
militias, as well as the Russian air force.
The foreign-backed militants continued to
carry out hundreds of breaches of the truce,
while also using the initial reduction of
operations by the Syrian and Russian forces
as an opportunity to regroup and rearm.
What French minister Ayrault
is calling for in a renewed ceasefire this
week is merely a repeat of the previous one
– this time without even a pretense that the
terrorists might separate into «moderates»
and «extremists».
French and Western anxiety to
implement some kind of cessation around
Aleppo is correlated with the increasingly
desperate, losing situation for the
regime-change insurgents. Aleppo is a key
battleground. If the Syrian and Russian
forces manage to vanquish this bastion for
the militants then the six-year war in Syria
will be over.
The Western sponsors of the
covert war in Syria stand to incur a huge
strategic defeat. It should be also noted
that 66-year-old Jean-Marc Ayrault was
previously French prime minister back in
2012, at the very time that France was beginning to
covertly supply weapons to illegally armed
groups in Syria – in contravention of a
European Union embargo.
This is why Ayrault and his
American and British allies are now
assiduously piling the political pressure on
Russia to desist from its offensive in
Syria. The Western sponsors are desperately
trying to salvage their proxy assets on the
ground and to salvage their criminal
regime-change project – using the language
and emotion of humanitarian concern and
legal niceties.
You can’t get much more
cynical than that. Now Monsieur Ayrault,
just who is accusing who of what? |
