Nothing about American arms policy toward Israel makes sense
JVL Introduction
Supplying arms to Israel has been inserted into the US political system’s DNA since the late 1960s. The privileges accorded to Israel are really quite extraordinary.
So when Biden recently delayed a shipment of arms to Israel he had no intention of wanting to interfere with US arms supplies in general. The aim was minimal: to signal to Netanyahu, “that his willingness to be treated like a pawn by Israel’s leader is not limitless, although, so far, it’s been pretty close”.
That about sums it up. Here according to Alterman, is the current reality:
“As of last October, the U.S. had 599 “active” cases of foreign military sales for Israel, meaning sales that had been approved by the administration and notified to Congress — a number that we know has increased substantially during the course of war. The State Department has valued the totality of these pre-war sales at just under $24 billion.
“So, when Netanyahu has blustered that Israel “will stand alone” if it has to in its war with Hamas, well, don’t believe him. He’s going to stand with pretty much the full backing of the U.S., regardless of how Biden may or may not feel about it.”
RK
PS: SEe also Amnesty International’s Arpil 2024 press release and report “U.S.-Made Weapons Used by Government of Israel in Violation of International Law and U.S Law“
This article was originally published by Forward on Tue 4 Jun 2024. Read the original here.
Nothing about American arms policy toward Israel makes sense
President Biden tried to use military aid to pressure Israel, and instead found himself in a political void — one Israel has exploited time and again
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Turning matters on their head, nothing about ISRAEL’s dealings with the USA or its few other allies (UK and Germany, for example) makes much political sense either.
The medium-term future – driven in part by the horrors we’ve seen in Gaza – is of US disengagement from Israel when the cohort of American 18 – 39 years old takes over from the older generation of business, political and community leaders. There’s also the rise of the Arab American political influence and its emerging alliances with the US’s black, Hispanic, non-Zionist Jewish and youth demographics.
The UK and other European countries are likely to follow the American lead as the US disengages from Israel (in stages over the next 20 years).
In these circumstances, why doesn’t Israel do everything it CAN do to keep the USA as a friend for as long as is possible? And to create closer, better relationships with any states it can win over?
Instead, fading regional power Israel continues to act as if it holds “coercive control” over superpower America and uses that supposed power at whim.
Israeli society and Israel’s government haven’t taken on board how much the world has changed towards them since the first weeks of Oct 2023. Critically, much of the suffering Palestinians have experienced at Israel’s hands is now on record online, as are the ICJ and ICC cases, the Nakba history from the date of Israel’s foundation as a state to the present day and the global public’s reactions to Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. There is now – for the first time ever in recent history – a tiny minority of respectable opinion within the international public querying Israel’s legitimacy as a STATE. The view of Israel as a pariah, genocidal state is widely held.
US Christian Zionists, (such as Biden), providing arms to Israel with which they can “re”- colonise all of “Palestinian Zion” thus fulfilling a prophesied condition for the Second Coming, makes PERFECT sense!
After listening to Naftali Bennet’s drivel, I’ve concluded that all of this makes sense if you are a low brow supremacist that imagines he has a free pass, armed with the Ladybird Book of what terrible people other people are (esp if you want their land and to get rid of them). Better still if you threaten hysteria whenever anyone challenges your bullshit. Don’t try the patience of a patient planet. Supremacism, in every repulsive form it takes, is a cancer. Cut it out before it pops up everywhere.