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
U.S. Military Operations Are Biggest
Motivation for Homegrown Terrorists, FBI
Study Finds
By Murtaza Hussain, Cora Currier
October 12, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"The
Intercept"
-
A
secret FBI study found that anger over U.S.
military operations abroad was the most
commonly cited motivation for individuals
involved in cases of “homegrown” terrorism.
The report also identified no coherent
pattern to “radicalization,” concluding that
it remained near impossible to predict
future violent acts.
The
study, reviewed by The Intercept, was
conducted in 2012 by a unit in the FBI’s
counterterrorism division and surveyed
intelligence analysts and FBI special agents
across the United States who were
responsible for nearly 200 cases, both open
and closed, involving “homegrown violent
extremists.” The survey responses reinforced
the FBI’s conclusion that such individuals
“frequently believe the U.S. military is
committing atrocities in Muslim countries,
thereby justifying their violent
aspirations.”
Online relationships and exposure to
English-language militant propaganda
and “ideologues” like Anwar al-Awlaki are
also cited as “key factors” driving
extremism. But grievances over U.S. military
action ranked far above any other factor,
turning up in 18 percent of all cases, with
additional cases citing a “perceived war
against Islam,” “perceived discrimination,”
or other more specific incidents. The report
notes that between 2009 and 2012, 10 out of
16 attempted or successful terrorist attacks
in the United States targeted military
facilities or personnel.
Overall, the survey confirmed the “highly
individualized nature of the radicalization
process,” a finding consistent with
outside scholarship
on the subject.
“Numerous individuals, activities, or
experiences can contribute to an extremist’s
radicalization,” the report says. “It can be
difficult, if not impossible, to predict for
any given individual what factor or
combination of factors will prompt that
individual’s radicalization or mobilization
to violence.”
The
report is titled “Homegrown Violent
Extremists: Survey Confirms Key Assessments,
Reveals New Insights about Radicalization.”
It is dated December 20, 2012. An FBI unit
called the “Americas Fusion Cell” surveyed
agents responsible for 198 “current and
disrupted [homegrown violent extremists],”
which the report says represented a fraction
of all “pending, U.S.-based Sunni extremist
cases” at the time. The survey seems
designed to look only at Muslim violent
extremism. (The FBI declined to comment.)
Agents were asked over 100 questions about
their subjects in order to “identify what
role, if any,” particular factors played in
their radicalization — listed as “known
radicalizers,” extremist propaganda,
participation in web forums, family members,
“affiliation with religious, student, or
social organization(s) where extremist views
are expressed,” overseas travel, prison or
military experience, and “significant life
events and/or grievances.”
Among the factors that did not
“significantly contribute” to
radicalization, the study found, were prison
time, military service, and international
travel. Although, the report notes, “the FBI
historically has been concerned about the
potential for prison radicalization,” in
fact, “survey results indicate incarceration
was rarely influential.” The report ends
with recommendations that agents focus their
attention on web forums, social media, and
other online interactions, and step up
surveillance of “known radicalizers” and
those who contact them.
The
study echoes previous findings, including a
2011 FBI intelligence assessment, recently
released to MuckRock through a public
records request, which concluded that “a
broadening U.S. military presence overseas”
was a motivating factor for a rise in
plotted attacks, specifically the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan. That study also found
“no demographic patterns” among the
plotters.
“Insofar as there is an identifiable
motivation in most of these cases it has to
do with outrage over what is happening
overseas,” says John Mueller, a senior
research scientist with the Mershon Center
for International Security Studies at Ohio
State University and author of “Chasing
Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism.”
“People read news reports about atrocities
and become angry,” Mueller said, adding that
such reports are often perceived as an
attack on one’s own in-group, religion, or
cultural heritage. “It doesn’t have to be
information from a jihadist website that
angers someone, it could be a New York Times
report about a drone strike that kills a
bunch of civilians in Afghanistan.”
Perpetrators of more recent attacks have
latched onto U.S. foreign policy to justify
violence. The journals of Ahmad Rahami,
accused of bombings in Manhattan and New
Jersey last month, cited wars in Iraq,
Syria, and Afghanistan. In a 911 call, Omar
Mateen, who killed 49 people in an Orlando
nightclub earlier this year, claimed he
acted in retaliation for a U.S.
airstrike on an ISIS fighter. Tamerlan
Tsarnaev
told investigators that the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan motivated his and his
brother’s attack on the Boston Marathon.
In
many of these cases,
pundits and politicians focus on the
role of religion, something Marc Sageman, a
former CIA officer and author of “Leaderless
Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First
Century,” describes as a “red herring,”
citing a history of shifting ideologies used
to justify terrorist acts.
The
U.S. government has announced plans to spend
millions of dollars on “Countering Violent
Extremism” initiatives, which are supposed
to involve community members in spotting and
stopping would-be extremists. These
initiatives have been criticized
as discriminatory, because they have focused
almost exclusively on Muslim communities
while ignoring political motivations behind
radicalization.
“Politicians try very hard not to talk about
foreign policy or military action being a
major contributor to homegrown terrorism,”
Sageman says, adding that government
reticence to share raw data from terrorism
cases with academia has hindered analysis of
the subject.
The
limits of the CVE focus on community
involvement are clear in cases of
individuals like Rahami, whose behavior did
raise red flags for those around them;
Rahami’s own father referred him to the FBI.
In his case, authorities did not find enough
concerning evidence ahead of the attack to
arrest him, underscoring the difficulty of
interdicting individuals who may be inspired
by organized terror groups despite having no
obvious actual connection to them.
Sageman
says that the shortcomings of CVE models
reflect a misapprehension of what drives
political violence.
“Terrorism is very much a product of
individuals identifying themselves with a
group that appears to be the target of
aggression and reacting violently to that,”
he says. “Continued U.S. military action
will inevitably drive terrorist activities
in this country, because some local people
here will identify themselves with the
victims of those actions abroad.” |
