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<h1 id="reader-title">Why Obama's military aid to Israel is
breaking all records</h1>
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<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ali Abunimah</a></span>
<span class="field field-blog"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blog/lobby-watch"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lobby Watch</a></span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2016-02-15T20:06:32+00:00">15 February 2016</span></span><br>
<br>
</p>
<p>The Obama administration is offering Israel “the
largest single pledge of military assistance to any
country in US history,” an American official has
confirmed.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The assurance was given to <em>Defense News</em>, in a
<a
href="http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/international/mideast-africa/2016/02/13/obama-israel-aid-package-netanyahu-iran/80265988/">report
on Saturday</a> outlining details of the package.</p>
<p>While the US hasn’t publicly confirmed specifics –
which are still being negotiated – an Israeli cabinet
minister told <em>Defense News</em> 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.</p>
<p>Israel is the largest recipient of US military aid,
according to <em>Defense News</em>, taking about 55
percent of the total. Aid from the US accounts for a
quarter of Israel’s military budget.</p>
<p>Israel will also retain sweeteners that are <a
href="https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf">denied
other countries</a>: 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>But an unnamed, recently retired senior Israeli
official told <em>Defense News</em> 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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<h2>“Realistic offer”</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Last week, Israeli cabinet minister Zeev Elkin, a
member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-usa-defense-idUSKCN0VH1Z9">said</a>
that Israel was still waiting for a “realistic offer”
from the Obama administration.</p>
<p>Elkin was only taking a lead from his boss.</p>
<p>“Iran’s going to get about $100 billion now,” Netanyahu
<a
href="http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/2016/Pages/PM-Netanyahu-at-the-WEF-event-hosted-by-Fareed-Zakaria-21-Jan-2016.aspx">claimed
at the World Economic Forum</a> in Davos last month,
referring to the country’s own money that is being
unfrozen due to the lifting of sanctions.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>Netanyahu last week <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.701959">told
his ministers</a> 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.”</p>
<p>The White House <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.701993">responded</a>
– 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.”</p>
<h2>Israel and its lobby</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>A glance at the Israeli arsenal makes clear that it is
Israel that is completely dependent on US technology,
not the other way around.</p>
<p>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 “<a
href="http://www.alternet.org/world/racist-policing-and-mass-incarceration-shared-values-america-and-israel">shared
values</a>” between America’s settler-colonial history
and Zionism.</p>
<p>But Israel lobby power is not and has never been
absolute. Rather, as Joseph Massad has <a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/03/25/blaming-the-israel-lobby/">argued</a>,
its influence is proportional to how closely aligned
Israel is with US imperial and hegemonic interests.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Indeed, Palestinian rights and lives <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/obama-buries-gaza-under-iran-nuclear-deal">have
been the currency Obama has used</a> to “compensate”
Israel over the Iran deal.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>That is why Obama is so determined to conclude this
record-breaking weapons giveaway before his term ends.</p>
<h3 class="field-label field field-tag">
<span>Tags</span>
</h3>
<ul class="field field-tag">
<li>
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/barack-obama">Barack
Obama</a> </li>
<li>
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/us-aid-israel">US
aid to Israel</a> </li>
<li>
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/israel-lobby">Israel
Lobby</a> </li>
<li>
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/us-congress">US
Congress</a> </li>
<li>
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/iran-nuclear-agreement">Iran
nuclear agreement</a> </li>
<li>
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/joseph-massad">Joseph
Massad</a> </li>
<li>
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/defense-news">Defense
News</a> </li>
<li>
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/zeev-elkin">Zeev
Elkin</a> </li>
</ul>
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title="Read Ali Abunimah's latest blog entries."
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah">Ali
Abunimah's blog</a></li>
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