The U.S. and Israeli presidents publicly affirmed their ‘special, unbreakable bond’ and sought to justify Israel’s nuclear proliferation, Patty Culhane reported today at Al Jazeera English (2:41):

The presidents of the U.S. and Israel, Barack Obama and met Tuesday at the White House for a photo-op and to confirm what any objective observer has already concluded—that the U.S. will continue to enable Israel’s war crimes and nuclear proliferation, no matter what the government does or threatens to do.

Pres. Obama called the bond “unbreakable” and justified not taking a stance against the Israeli government’s active nuclear program, citing what he calls its “size” and “unique security requirements”. Documents reported today by Israel’s Army Radio reveal a nuclear partnership between the Obama and Netanyahu Administrations that includes the U.S. participating in supplying Israel’s covert program.

He didn’t mention that Iran is larger, has the U.S. military surrounding it and nuclear-armed Israeli warships off its border to justify Iran’s non-militant nuclear program. He also failed to mention that the Israeli government actually has hundreds of nuclear weapons while Iranian has zero, but elsewhere continues to threaten Iran and enable threats by the Israeli government.

An interesting talking point for Pres. Obama’s strongest political opponents is that the president is not pro-Israel enough, though he’s actually not done anything to support the allegation. Why do American politicians compete for the perception as being the most ‘pro-Israel’?

Investigative journalist at The New Yorker and prolific author Seymour Hersh doesn’t beat around the bush, saying it’s simply “a lot of Jewish money”, in reference to the rhetoric of then-candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination and current-secretary of state in the Obama Administration, Hillary Clinton, in 2007 (2:08):

Last October, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice “promised that the United States will continue to stand by Israel as a loyal friend in the fight against the Goldstone Report”, Johnathan Lis reported at Ha’aretz. The watered-down 575-page report found Israel “terrorized” Palestinians, “used disproportionate force, deliberately targeted civilians and used Palestinian civilians as human shields” during the Gaza Massacre early last year.

That same month, Eli Lake at The Washington Times reported that in May 2009, the Obama Administration “reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections, three officials familiar with the understanding said”.

Late in May, the Israeli Navy aggressively hijacked a flotilla of activists seeking to break the government unlawful blockade of the Gaza Strip by delivering 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid, killing at least nine—including a U.S. citizen—and the Obama Administration refused to support an independent investigation, though it occurred in international waters.

In June, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—the international nuclear watchdog regulators of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (N.P.T.), signed by all nuclear nation-states except Israel, India and Pakistan—mentioned Israel’s arsenal at a meeting and was rebuked by the Obama Administration for doing so, consistent with the aforementioned “secret understanding”.

Israel’s Army Radio reports today that a “secret document”, as reported by Ha’aretz, from the Administration to Tel Aviv confirming the nuclear partnership. It shows the U.S. “pledged to sell Israel materials used to produce electricity, as well as nuclear technology and other supplies”, though it is not an N.P.T. signatory and “there has been increasing international pressure for Israel to be more transparent about its nuclear arsenal”, making the U.S. a nation-state proliferating nuclear technology to a rogue government.

Meanwhile, Iran—a signatory to the N.P.T. with an IAEA- Safeguarded civilian nuclear program, enriching uranium at levels exponentially below weapons-grade and possessing no nuclear arsenal—opened up its program to even more international transparency, but was collectively sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council in the effort spearheaded by Washington and Tel Aviv, as well as unilateral sanctions by the U.S., and Israel recently prepared to station three nuclear-armed submarines off of the Iranian coastline.

Avigdor Lieberman, foreign minister of Israel, recently ruled out lifting the occupation and allowing for Palestinian self-determination any time soon. “I’m an optimistic person, but there is absolutely no chance of reaching a Palestinian state by 2012,” he said.

Non-governmental organizations have identified “transgenerational trauma” inflicted on the Palestinians by the Israeli government. “The idea” of the Gaza blockade, according to an adviser to then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2006, “is to put the Palestinians on a diet”. His quote was confirmed by government documents recently obtained by McClatchy that doesn’t describe the blockade as a “unique security requirement”, but as “economic warfare”.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said last month the blockade is illegal. Israeli human rights group B’Tselem points to it as leading to “the collapse of the economy” in Gaza as part of the Israeli government’s “widespread” abuse of human rights toward the Palestinians.

Professors Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky have both been vilified as ‘self-hating Jews’ for their objective criticism of U.S.-Israeli policy—not as Jews, but as principled scholars and activists.

“There is no question here that we have a serious humanitarian problem, there is no question here that Israel is purposely creating a serious humanitarian problem,” Prof. Finkelstein recently said on a panel. “This is not an accident. Israel is not trying to avoid a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Israel wants a humanitarian crisis in order to encourage the people of Gaza to dispose of a regime it doesn’t like—and Israel has not made any secret of this [calling the blockade] ‘economic warfare’.”

Prof. Chomsky wrote shortly after the flotilla hijacking: “Israel assumes that it can carry out such crimes with impunity because the U.S. tolerates them and Europe generally follows the U.S. lead.”