Missing from the Debate: U.S. Aid to Israel Israel’s grandiose demands for more aid from Israel.

Missing from the Debate: U.S. Aid to Israel

Some Yiddish words will live forever, and chutzpah is one of them. What better word could describe Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand for more U.S. aid after he tried to obstruct President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran with a personal appeal to the Senate? But don’t expect aid to Israel to be a campaign topic. Both candidates favor it.

The U.S. and Israel have been bargaining since early July over a proposed ten-year U.S. aid package to Israel. The U.S. is offering Israel $40 billion in aid over that period, an increase of $10 billion a year, which the White House called “the largest pledge of military assistance to any country in U.S. history.” But that amount is not enough for the Israelis, who are demanding more.

For a recipient to bargain with a donor over the size of a handout is unusual enough, but Israel has received more U.S. aid over the years than any other nation in the world, despite having one of the highest per capita incomes in the Middle East. Israel has also benefited from its exemption from the rule that recipients of U.S. military aid must spend the money on American-made weapons.

The Israelis have nevertheless felt free to reject requests from Washington whenever it suits them. Every president since Jimmy Carter has asked Israel to freeze settlement construction, saying the settlements were an obstacle to peace. Israel has continued to build and expand settlements while objections from Washington have faded into silence. As long as this situation remains, however, there can be no peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

A powerful effort by the U.S. and its allies is needed to change the current situation, but Israel’s well-funded American supporters have so far been able to stave off any attempt to pressure Israel. Defenders of what President Obama calls America’s “special relationship” with Israel frequently describe the Jewish state as the only democracy in the Middle East, and claim it is surrounded by potential enemies. Today, 50 years after Israel’s establishment, that description no longer fits the facts.

With the fifth largest military in the Middle East, and firm backing from the U.S., Israel no longer faces danger from its Arab neighbors. For the 2 million or so Palestinians who make up some 40 percent of the population, Israel is a flawed democracy at best, one in which they are second-class citizens. For the more than 4 million Palestinians living in Israeli-occupied Gaza and the West Bank, Israel is an oppressor nation.

After capturing the West Bank from Jordan, and Gaza from Egypt, in the 1967 war, Israel proceeded to build Jewish settlements in the newly occupied territories despite the fact that the Geneva Conventions of 1945 specifically forbid a conquering nation to build civilian settlements on captive territory. Since then the U.N. Security Council has passed numerous resolutions condemning Israel’s continued settlement construction and calling for its withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza. The U.S. cast a veto each time.

At Oslo in 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed an agreement with Palestinian president Yasir Arafat in which he pledged to freeze settlement building in the occupied territories and make it easier for Palestinians to travel between Gaza and the West Bank. The agreement held out a promise that the Palestinians could soon establish an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza.

But the Oslo agreement was never implemented. The massacre of 29 Palestinians in Hebron by a Jewish settler in February 1994, followed by a round-the-clock curfew on Palestinians in that city, ignited often violent Palestinian resistance. Israel’s response was harsh and indiscriminate, involving pre-dawn house raids and arrests on the West Bank, targeted assassinations, border closings, travel restrictions and the placing of hundreds of new check points throughout the West Bank. Rabin’s assassination by a right-wing Israeli in November 1995 marked the effective end of Oslo.

Since then the cycle of Israeli oppression and Palestinian violence has continued, with periods of violence alternating with periods of uneasy calm. Several negotiating sessions between Israel and the Palestinians brokered by the U.S. have faltered, doomed by the great imbalance of power between the two sides and by Washington’s refusal to intervene in behalf of the Palestinians.

Gaza meanwhile has endured repeated Israeli air strikes and three full-scale invasions by Israel troops, along with a nine-year blockade that Israel imposed in 2007 after the Gazans elected a Hamas-led government. As a result of Israel’s actions, that densely populated territory has seen the collapse of its economy and a broken infrastructure. Homes, schools and public buildings destroyed or damaged by Israel bombing have yet to be rebuilt, and a majority of Gazans now rely on United Nations handouts to survive.

On the West Bank, meanwhile, hundreds of new homes for Israelis are under construction. Earlier this month, State Department spokesman John Kirby described Israel’s latest authorization of new settler housing as “fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution.” In fact, the prospects for a two-state solution had already faded. The number of settler homes has steadily increased over the years, so that today 600,000 Israelis live in the West Bank, and thanks to government subsidies more are moving in.

The territory is criss-crossed by highways intended for settler-use only and barred to Palestinians. Netanyahu declared after Israel’s last election that there would be no Palestinian state on his watch, and several members of his government  have openly declared their opposition to a two-state solution. According to Deputy Prime Minister Tsipi Hotovely, “God willed all of Palestine to Israel. This land is ours.”

Such statements issuing from a close ally of the West undoubtedly arouse anger in the Arab world and may even influence the handful of young Arab immigrants to Europe who turn to violence. Yet Israel’s continuing occupation is seldom mentioned in public discourse, and it’s a safe bet that it won’t be a prominent issue in the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Consequently, an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement based on two independent states will remain a distant hope, and American taxpayers will continue subsidizing a military occupation that deprives millions of
Palestinians of their freedom.

Rachelle Marshall is a former editor and writer and a member of Mill Valley Seniors for Peace, a Jewish Voice for Peace, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

U.S.-Led Anti-ISIS Joke Coalition Snubs Kurds At Major Political Conference In DC; Foreign Policy Wisdom From Donald Trump; Proof That Coup Plotters In Turkey Were More Nuts Than They Appeared

http://disquietreservations.blogspot.ro/2016/07/us-led-anti-isis-joke-coalition-snubs.html

Dr Partizan @DrPartizan_

Global coalition meeting to counter ISIS excludes YPG and Pêşmerga who have given thousands of martyrs in the war.

The U.S. will back stab the Kurds as they have in the past. Snubbing them at this major political conference is only one example of their record of treachery. Those who have studied history know that the devils who rule in Washington don’t keep their word with people they consider to be militarily useful but politically expendable. There are so many instances. In 2011 they used the Al-Qaeda terrorists in Libya to squash Gaddafi, calling them rebels, but when their objectives were met they immediately went back to calling them terrorists and targeting them in airstrikes.

The U.S.-led anti-ISIS joke of a coalition will use the YPG and Peshmerga to roll back ISIS, but, in the end, when the time comes for negotiations and politics, they’ll pretend that they don’t even exist. They’ll credit the battlefield victories to the Gulf-backed Arab racists in the Syrian opposition, who have made no contribution to defeating ISIS, as well as the Iran-backed Shiite sectarian government in Baghdad, whose policies have only created resentment and discord in Iraqi society since the illegal US invasion in 2003.

An excerpt from, “Transcript: Donald Trump on NATO, Turkey’s Coup Attempt and the World” The New York Times, July 21, 2016:

TRUMP: I’m only saying this. We’re spending money, and if you’re talking about trade, we’re losing a tremendous amount of money, according to many stats, $800 billion a year on trade. So we are spending a fortune on military in order to lose $800 billion. That doesn’t sound like it’s smart to me. Just so you understand though, totally on the record, this is not 40 years ago. We are not the same country and the world is not the same world. Our country owes right now $19 trillion, going to $21 trillion very quickly because of the omnibus budget that was passed, which is incredible. We don’t have the luxury of doing what we used to do; we don’t have the luxury, and it is a luxury. We need other people to reimburse us much more substantially than they are giving right now because we are only paying for a fraction of the cost.

Trump is speaking words of wisdom in this interview. But the evil press still portrays him as an idiot who doesn’t understand the world, NATO, or US foreign policy. But the stats, facts, and figures that Trump regularly cites speak for themselves.

U.S. leaders should focus on rebuilding their own broken country, not the broken Middle East. Donald Trump gained popularity because he catered to American interests and concerns, not the desires of foreign lobbies, the corrupt interests of the military-industrial complex, and stupid fantasies of world hegemony. The leaders of North Korea and Russia respect Trump because they see in him a sane and logical leader who is not out for war.

An excerpt from, “Turkish coupists planned to charge Erdogan with overly gentle treatment of Kurds – report” RT, July 21, 2016:

The document that was addressed to chief public prosecutor’s office in Inegol, Bursa province, accused the Turkish leadership of“supporting” the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, (PKK), considered terrorist in Turkey.

In particular, it accused Erdogan, Interior Minister Efkan Ala, National Intelligence Organization chief Hakan Fidan, provincial governors as well as former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and former deputy prime ministers Besir Atalay and Yalcin Akdogan of conducting peace talks with the PKK leadership between 2009 and 2015.

The charges against Erdogan seem to be ironic as the Turkish president has on a number of occasions promised to “neutralize”the Kurds after a two and a half year ceasefire between the PKK and Ankara was shattered last July, which led to a massive army crackdown in the southeast of the country.

The militarization of the ethnic conflict in Turkey has done the country no good for several decades. The fact that the pro-coup plotters would’ve doubled down on a failed policy against the Kurds and the PKK, and prosecute the war even more harshly than Erdogan has, shows that Erdogan remaining in power saved Turkey from greater disasters.

As hard as it is to stomach, Erdogan is the lesser evil in Turkey. The CIA-backed Gulenists who wanted to take over the country are more Islamic, more anti-Russian, more anti-Kurdish, more anti-Syrian, and more pro-war. They would’ve done more damage to Turkey and its relationships with the Kurds, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia, you know, all the people in their neighbourhood.

Erdogan has shown the ability to compromise with the PKK in the past, and continues to make peaceful gestures towards his neighbours. Turkey under his totalitarian rule will be a nightmare, but at least he has inclinations to sit down and make peace with his enemies.