[News] Why Obama's military aid to Israel is breaking all records

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-obamas-military-aid-israel-breaking-all-records* 



  Why Obama's military aid to Israel is breaking all records

Ali Abunimah <https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> Lobby 
Watch <https://electronicintifada.net/blog/lobby-watch> 15 February 2016

The Obama administration is offering Israel “the largest single pledge 
of military assistance to any country in US history,” an American 
official has confirmed.

This is a remarkable fact when set against the persistent claims of an 
ongoing “rift” between the US president and his Israeli counterpart 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The assurance was given to /Defense News/, in a report on Saturday 
<http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/international/mideast-africa/2016/02/13/obama-israel-aid-package-netanyahu-iran/80265988/> 
outlining details of the package.

While the US hasn’t publicly confirmed specifics – which are still being 
negotiated – an Israeli cabinet minister told /Defense News/ that the 
Obama package would see US military aid jump to more than $40 billion 
over the 10-year period beginning in 2018, from the $30 billion in the 
program that began in 2008.

Israel is the largest recipient of US military aid, according to 
/Defense News/, taking about 55 percent of the total. Aid from the US 
accounts for a quarter of Israel’s military budget.

Israel will also retain sweeteners that are denied other countries 
<https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf>: the self-declared 
Jewish state receives its billions as a lump-sum payment at the 
beginning of each fiscal year, while other countries get installments.

While other countries are required to spend their US aid on American 
weapons and services, Israel is free to spend about a billion dollars 
each year subsidizing its own arms makers and research, developing 
technologies that may eventually compete against US companies.

But an unnamed, recently retired senior Israeli official told /Defense 
News/ that there is a catch: under the Obama weapons deal, Israel won’t 
be able to ask for annual “plus-ups” – extra gifts from the US Congress 
that have amounted to as much as an extra $1.9 billion per year on 
average – except in “extreme emergency cases.”

That is hardly a catch, however. There’s nothing that the Obama 
administration can agree to with Israel that can effectively bind any 
future Congress.

What can stop Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill from continuing 
their practice of giving Israel annual top-ups that exceed even the 
requests put in for Israel by the Pentagon?


    “Realistic offer”

As the Palestine Liberation Organization ought to have learned from 
decades of the so-called “peace process,” Israel’s negotiating strategy 
is to pocket any concessions from the other side, then start negotiating 
anew for more as if it had received nothing.

There is every indication that this is Israel’s approach. Despite 
Obama’s unprecedented largesse, Israel is publicly complaining that the 
US president is not being generous enough.

Last week, Israeli cabinet minister Zeev Elkin, a member of Netanyahu’s 
Likud Party, said 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-usa-defense-idUSKCN0VH1Z9> 
that Israel was still waiting for a “realistic offer” from the Obama 
administration.

Elkin was only taking a lead from his boss.

“Iran’s going to get about $100 billion now,” Netanyahu claimed at the 
World Economic Forum 
<http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/2016/Pages/PM-Netanyahu-at-the-WEF-event-hosted-by-Fareed-Zakaria-21-Jan-2016.aspx> 
in Davos last month, referring to the country’s own money that is being 
unfrozen due to the lifting of sanctions.

“The American assistance to Israel is about $3.1 billion and we’re 
talking about a bigger package. But remember that even over a 10-year 
period, it pales in comparison to the enormous funds Iran gets,” the 
Israeli leader added.

Netanyahu last week told his ministers 
<http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.701959> that if Israel 
didn’t extract what it wanted from Obama, “perhaps we will not manage to 
come to an agreement with this administration and will need to come to 
an agreement with the next administration.”

The White House responded 
<http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.701993> – no doubt 
sincerely – that Israel could wait if it preferred, but that it “will 
certainly not find a president more committed to Israel’s security than 
is President Obama.”


    Israel and its lobby

Israel is conducting itself as if it is an equal to the US, and as if it 
is engaged in a “negotiation” in which two sides have something 
substantial to offer and substantial to receive from each other.

That’s what Israel and its lobby want people to believe. The lobby 
boasts of the benefits Israel supposedly brings to its US bankroller – 
particularly in technology.

But these benefits are marginal compared with the vast military, 
industrial and scientific complex of the US, whose $600-billion-a-year 
global military machine would barely notice if Israel disappeared.

A glance at the Israeli arsenal makes clear that it is Israel that is 
completely dependent on US technology, not the other way around.

The fact is that Israel is a very small and barely significant US client 
state. Its importance is inflated by several factors, including its 
outsize domestic lobby and the ideological commitments of US leaders 
like Obama who openly embrace the “shared values 
<http://www.alternet.org/world/racist-policing-and-mass-incarceration-shared-values-america-and-israel>” 
between America’s settler-colonial history and Zionism.

But Israel lobby power is not and has never been absolute. Rather, as 
Joseph Massad has argued 
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/03/25/blaming-the-israel-lobby/>, its 
influence is proportional to how closely aligned Israel is with US 
imperial and hegemonic interests.

When these clash – as in the case of the ongoing US rapprochement with 
Iran – the US establishment, even Obama, has no problem defying the lobby.

But where US leaders have no substantial disagreements with Israel’s 
actions – such as Israel’s killing of Palestinians and stealing of their 
land – there is no benefit, but there is a high cost to confronting the 
lobby.

Indeed, Palestinian rights and lives have been the currency Obama has 
used 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/obama-buries-gaza-under-iran-nuclear-deal> 
to “compensate” Israel over the Iran deal.

The new, bigger-than-ever Obama arms package will not be used by Israel 
to attack Iran, and therefore does not interfere with any US hegemonic 
interest.

The weapons Obama is giving Israel will be used to maintain and fuel 
Israel’s occupation, apartheid and settler-colonialism in Palestine, not 
to mention its regular massacres in Gaza.

That is why Obama is so determined to conclude this record-breaking 
weapons giveaway before his term ends.


      Tags

  * Barack Obama <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/barack-obama>
  * US aid to Israel <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/us-aid-israel>
  * Israel Lobby <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/israel-lobby>
  * US Congress <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/us-congress>
  * Iran nuclear agreement
    <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/iran-nuclear-agreement>
  * Joseph Massad <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/joseph-massad>
  * Defense News <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/defense-news>
  * Zeev Elkin <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/zeev-elkin>

  * Ali Abunimah's blog <https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah>

  * Facebook
    <https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A//electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-obamas-military-aid-israel-breaking-all-records>
  * Google+
    <https://plus.google.com/share?url=https%3A//electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-obamas-military-aid-israel-breaking-all-records>
  * Twitter
    <http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Why%20Obama%27s%20military%20aid%20to%20Israel%20is%20breaking%20all%20records&url=https%3A//electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-obamas-military-aid-israel-breaking-all-records>

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20160216/e51cd658/attachment.htm>