[News] Obama gives $1.9 billion in weapons as welcome gift to Israel’s racist government

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Obama gives $1.9 billion in weapons as welcome gift to Israel’s racist
  government

Submitted by Rania Khalek on Fri, 05/22/2015
*http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/obama-gives-19-billion-weapons-welcome-gift-israels-racist-government*

The Obama administration approved a $1.9 billion arms sale to Israel in 
recent days as “compensation 
<http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.657276>” for 
the US nuclear deal with Iran, which the Israeli regime staunchly opposes.

Among the tens of thousands of bombs 
<http://defense-update.com/20150519_israel_ordnance.html#.VV5GKOuN72g> 
included in the weapons package are 3,000 Hellfire missiles, 12,000 
general purpose bombs and 750 bunker buster bombs that can penetrate up 
to twenty feet, or six meters, of reinforced concrete.

This generous weapons gift comes in the wake of Israel’s most ferocious 
attack on the Gaza Strip to date, in which the Israeli army deliberately 
targeted civilians, including children 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-directly-targeted-children-drone-strikes-gaza-says-rights-group>, 
as a matter of policy 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/patrick-strickland/israeli-soldiers-ordered-kill-civilians-gaza-says-breaking-silence>.

The degree of firepower Israel unleashed on Gaza was so extreme 
that senior US military officials who participated in the 
illegal invasion and criminal destruction of Iraq were left stunned 
<http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/8/26/israel-bombing-stunsusofficers.html>. 


Even the Pentagon and State Department were forced to acknowledge that 
Israel did not do enough 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/atrocities-mount-gaza-us-approves-israeli-request-more-bombs> 
to avoid civilian deaths. But this did not prevent the Obama 
administration from rushing to provide Israel with the means to carry 
out more atrocities.


    Bunker busters

Sadistically nicknamed the “Saddamizer 
<http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-04-08/news/the-saddamizers/full/>,” the bunker 
buster bomb was originally developed by the US military during the first 
Gulf war to penetrate Iraqi command centers buried deep underground.

In recent years, these earth-shattering explosives have been repeatedly 
deployed against besieged and largely defenseless Palestinians trapped 
in the Gaza Strip.

Israel pounded <http://www.wired.com/2008/12/israeli-jets-dr/> Gaza with 
US-supplied bunker buster bombs during Operation Cast Lead, the 
three-week assault in the winter of 2008-2009 that killed 1,400 
Palestinians, including nearly 400 children.

Obama quietly transferred dozens more 
<http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/why-did-obama-bunker-buster-bombs-israel-145927712.html> 
bunker buster bombs to Israel in 2009 in an effort to prevent it from 
obstructing negotiations with Iran.

The Obama administration replenished that stockpile after yet another 
Israeli attack on Gaza in 2012 with a $647 million arms package 
<http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/u-s-to-sell-israel-munitions-to-renew-stock-after-operation-pillar-of-defense.premium-1.484114> 
that included thousands of bunker buster bombs.

Israel used those bunker buster munitions to pummel Gaza’s high rise 
towers 
<http://mondoweiss.net/2014/10/protective-destruction-professional> and 
wipe out entire families 
<http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-outraged-israel-s-use-gbu-28-missile-1699621250> 
as they sheltered in their homes during Operation Protective Edge, the 
2014 Israeli assault that ultimately killed over 2,200 Palestinians, 
most of them civilians, including over 500 children.

If the past is any indication, Obama’s weapons package will enable 
Israel to intensify its unspeakable atrocities against civilians in 
Gaza, and possibly Lebanon if Israel’s saber-rattling 
<http://mondoweiss.net/2015/05/shameless-propagandist-civilians> about 
Hizballah <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/hizballah> is to be believed.

Asked whether the Pentagon is concerned that its weapons might be used 
to harm innocent people, a spokesperson, Roger Cabiness II, offered the 
following vague statement: “As with any security cooperation activity, 
the United States assesses requests from its partners on a case-by-case 
basis, taking into account political, military, economic, arms 
control and human rights conditions in making decisions on the provision 
of military equipment and the licensing of direct commercial sales to 
any country, in accordance with the Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, 
the Arms Export Control Act and relevant international agreements.”


    Rewarding hate

Ever since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted an 
invitation by the Republican opposition to trash Obama’s diplomatic 
maneuvering on Iran in a speech to Congress, analysts have warned of a 
growing rift in US-Israel relations, insisting that the so-called 
special relationship has reached its lowest point 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/01/binyamin-netanyahu-congress-speech-us-israeli-relations> 
in recent memory.

Relations apparently deteriorated further following Netanyahu’s election 
day campaigning, when, in a last ditch appeal to the worst inclinations 
of his rightwing base, he summoned the spirit of George Wallace 
<http://digital.archives.alabama.gov/cdm/singleitem/collection/voices/id/2952/rec/5>, 
warning, “Arab voters are coming out in droves 
<http://http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/election-day-israeli-leaders-step-anti-arab-incitement> 
to the polls. Left-wing organizations are busing them out.”

In an interview 
<http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/05/obama-interview-iran-isis-israel/393782/> 
with former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg, Obama insultingly 
equated the creation of a Jewish settler state in historic Palestine 
with the African American civil rights movement, while at the same time 
emphasizing the importance of “preserving” Israel’s Jewish majority. He 
went on to criticize Netanyahu’s anti-Arab electioneering, claiming to 
have enacted “foreign policy consequences” against Israel as a result.

Nevertheless, the pundits’ handwringing over cracks in the special 
relationship has been largely unfounded.

In reality, the only penalty Obama has imposed on Israel is 
tepid disapproval of Netanyahu’s overt racism, which is rendered 
meaningless by Obama’s ongoing material support for Israel’s crimes.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has assembled the most racist government 
<http://www.alternet.org/world/prime-sinister-new-faces-netanyahus-new-israeli-government> 
in Israel’s history, with unabashed genocide enthusiasts occupying the 
most senior level positions.

Israel’s new education minister is Naftali Bennett, leader of the 
religious ultra-nationalist Habeyit Hayehudi 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/habeyit-hayehudi> (Jewish Home) 
party who famously bragged 
<http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Bennett-under-fire-for-comments-about-killing-Arabs-321467>, 
“I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life — and there’s no problem with 
that.” In response to international outrage at the Israeli massacre of 
four children playing soccer on the beach in Gaza last summer, Bennett 
accused Palestinian resistance fighters of “conducting massive 
self-genocide 
<http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/hasbarapocalyse-committing-genocide>” to 
make Israel look bad.

Israel’s new justice minister is Ayelet Shaked, the lawmaker who last 
June endorsed a call to genocide 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-lawmakers-call-genocide-palestinians-gets-thousands-facebook-likes>, 
which declared “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” and demanded 
the slaughter of Palestinian mothers to prevent them from birthing 
“little snakes.”

Israel’s new culture minister is Miri Regev, who in 2012 helped incite a 
violent anti-African riot 
<http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel/demonstrators-attack-african-migrants-in-south-tel-aviv-1.432262> 
when she stood before a racist mob and labeled non-Jewish African asylum 
seekers a “cancer”, a statement that 52 percent 
<http://www.timesofisrael.com/most-israeli-jews-agree-africans-are-a-cancer/> 
of Israeli Jews agreed with. Regev later apologized 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-lawmaker-miri-regev-heaven-forbid-we-compare-africans-human-beings>, 
not to Africans but to cancer survivors for likening them to Black people.

Israel’s new deputy defense minister is Eli Ben-Dahan, who proudly 
proclaimed 
<http://972mag.com/next-head-of-civil-administration-said-palestinians-are-sub-human/106533/>, “[Palestinians] 
are beasts, they are not human,” and, “A Jew always has a much higher 
soul than a gentile, even if he is a homosexual.”

Citing a combination of religious text and the writings of far rightwing 
Israeli figures, Israel’s new deputy foreign minister Tzipi Hotovely 
asserted Jewish ownership over all of historic Palestine, declaring, 
“This land is ours 
<http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.657520>. All 
of it is ours. We did not come here to apologize for that.”

Earlier this month, Moshe Yaalon, who will continue to serve as Israel’s 
defense minister in Netanyahu’s new governing coalition, threatened 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israeli-defense-minister-promises-kill-more-civilians-and-threatens-nuke-iran> 
to nuke Iran and promised to kill civilians, including children, in any 
future conflict with Lebanon or Gaza.

Unlike Obama’s hollow threats, this is not empty rhetoric. We saw this 
incitement play out last summer, from the burning of Muhammad Abu 
Khudair <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/muhammad-abu-khudair> by 
Jewish extremists and “death to Arabs” mobs hunting Palestinians 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/merciless-israeli-mobs-are-hunting-palestinians> in 
the streets of Jerusalem, to the sadistic conduct 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israeli-officer-admits-ordering-lethal-strike-own-soldier-during-gaza-massacre> 
and eliminationist 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/killing-40-civilians-one-go-reasonable-says-israel-army-ethicist> 
chauvinism 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israeli-government-promotes-rape-advocate-expert-palestinians> exhibited 
by Israel’s military in Gaza.

With Israeli Jewish society submerged in anti-Palestinian racism from 
the top down, the Obama administration has guaranteed Israel’s capacity 
to carry out its most destructive ambitions.

-- 
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