Home Sign up for our FREE Daily Email Newsletter 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 Trump’s Opponents See Normal Americans as Deplorables By Paul Craig Roberts November 15, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - I guess we have all noticed that the holier-than-thou groups who whined that Trump wasn’t going to accept the outcome of the election refuse to accept it themselves. Because I was critical of the George W. Bush regime, the liberal-progressive-leftwing and homosexual/transgendered rights groups have me on their mailing lists. And it is unbelievable. The entirety of “the other America” refuses to accept the people’s decision. They think that their concerns are more important than the concerns of the American people, who they regard as nothing but a collection of racist homophobic rednecks. Unless they provoke him beyond reason, Trump is not going to bother any of these people. Trump wants to bring middle class jobs back to Americans, including for all those paid to protest him. In order to avoid nuclear war, Trump wants to restore normal relations between the major nuclear powers. When there are no jobs for Americans that pay enough to support an independent existence, Trump doesn’t see the point of massive legal and illegal immigration. This is only common sense. Yet “the threatened people” see it as fascism. Who are “the threatened people?” As always, the most powerful. Tell me, what lobby is more powerful than the Israel Lobby? You can’t. But the Jewish Lobby, J Street, has sent me a hysterical email at 5:11pm on 14 November. Unless “we all come together and oppose Trump’s appointment of Breitbart editor Stephan Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor” a “wave of hate will sweep across the land,” consuming “Jews, Muslims, African-Americans, LGBT peoople (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered), immigrants, Hispanics, women and other groups.” Really now! So is Trump’s chief strategist, whatever position that is, going to attack the Jews and those with unusual sexual impulses with drones and cluster bombs, like the zionist neoconservatives who controlled the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes did to millions of slaughtered and displaced peoples in 7 countries, and like Israel does to Palestinians? Or is the former Breitbart editor going to round them all up and torture them in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo like Bush and Obama did. And like Netanyahu does in Israel? Or will Trump simply shoot them down in the streets like Netanyahu does to the Palestinian women and children. How come J Street and the Oligarchy-funded fronts are only concerned with nonexistent threats and ignore all of the real threats? According to J Street, the main concern is that Trump has appointed an “Alt-Right” person to advise him. Dangerous tensions between nuclear powers? A collapsing American middle class?

These concerns, if present, are in the peripheral vision of the “threatened people.” According to the front group known as the Southern Poverty Law Center, Trump’s election by fly-over America has resulted in “over 250 reports of hate crimes around the country.” Is the Southern Poverty Law Center including the brutal beating of a white man by a gang of blacks? How many innocents has Trump slaughtered and put into concentration camps? How many countries has he invaded? The corrupt American media and oligarchic front groups have created “the new Hitler” before he is even inaugerated. The Klingon Clintons and neoconed Bush/Cheney and Obama killing regimes have murdered more people and invaded more countries than Hitler, and the holier-than-thou group doesn’t care. Yet, the all-powerful Israeli Lobby thinks a Breibart editor is going to target the Jews, immigrants, the transgendered and homosexuals, women, Muslims, Hispanics, “and other groups.” What a change this will be. Only non-immigrant, white, heterosexual males will be in the protected group known as the “preferred minority.” We must hope that Donald Trump understands the state of moral, cultural, legal, and political collapse that America is in. Two years ago at the Valdai International Discussion Club, Russian President Vladimir Putin said: “Many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilization. They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities, national, cultural, religious, and even secular. They are implementing policies that equate families with same-sex partnerships, worship of God with worship of Satan. I am convinced that this opens a direct path to degradation and primitivism, resulting in a profound demographic and moral crisis.” Ordinary Americans know what he means. They are forced to accept blasphemous films about Jesus Christ and shameless newspaper caricatures of the Virgin Mary, but if one of them calls a homosexual a pervert, he has committed a hate crime. America is a country without an honest media. A country without an honest judiciary. Without an honest government. Without an honest legislature. Without honest schools and universities. A country whose morals are confused by propaganda. A country whose elites believe that they are entitled to all the income and wealth and that normal American people are the “deplorables,” to use Hillary’s term for ordinary Americans. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West , How America Was Lost , and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order . Click for Spanish , German , Dutch , Danish , French , translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load. What's your response? - Scroll down to add / read comments Sign up for our FREE Daily Email Newsletter For Email Marketing you can trust Donate



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