Who's Arming Israel?

By Frida Berrigan and William D Hartung

07/27/06 "Foreign Policy In Focus " -- -- Much has been made in the US media of the Syrian- and Iranian-origin weaponry used by Hezbollah in the escalating violence in Israel and Lebanon. There has been no parallel discussion of the origin of Israel's weaponry, the vast bulk of which is from the United States.

The US is the primary source of Israel's far superior arsenal. For more than 30 years, Israel had been the largest recipient of US foreign assistance, and since 1985 Jerusalem has received about

US$3 billion in military and economic aid each year from Washington. US aid accounts for more than 20% of Israel's total defense budget.

Over the past decade, the US has transferred more than $17 billion in military aid to this country of just under 7 million people.

Israel is one of the United States' largest arms importers. Between 1996 and 2005 (the last year for which full data are available), Israel took delivery of $10.19 billion in US weaponry and military equipment, including more than $8.58 billion through the Foreign Military Sales Program, and another $1.61 billion in direct commercial sales.

During the administration of US President George W Bush, from 2001 to 2005, Israel received $10.5 billion in foreign military financing - the Pentagon's biggest military aid program - and $6.3 billion in US arms deliveries. The aid figure is larger than the arms-transfer figure because it includes financing for major arms agreements for which the equipment has yet to be fully delivered. The most prominent of these deals is a $4.5 billion sale of 102 Lockheed Martin F-16s to Israel.

Given the billions of dollars of aid it provides to Israel every year and the central role of US-supplied weaponry in the Israeli arsenal, the US has considerable leverage that it could use to promote a ceasefire in the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah before more Israeli and Lebanese civilians are killed and displaced.

President Bush needs to go beyond vague calls for "restraint" to demands for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, bringing in other key actors in the region, including Iran and Syria.

William D Hartung is author of Tangled Web 2005: A Profile of the Missile Defense and Space Weapons Lobbies and a senior research fellow at the New School, where Frida Berrigan is a senior research associate. Both are Foreign Policy In Focus scholars.

http://www.fpif.org/

Stop U.S. Aid to Israel!

The Palestinian people's unconquerable resistance to U.S.-Israeli aggression is bringing all of progressive humanity to its feet.

The whole world has witnessed the war crimes of Bush and Sharon who have invaded Palestine and are trying to put the people under direct military occupation. In the Jenin refugee camp alone, the U.S.-Israeli aggressors killed hundreds of civilians, razing whole neighborhoods to the ground. Major cities and towns throughout the West Bank are occupied by the Israeli military and the Palestinian Authority remains under siege. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed and wounded and thousands more have been imprisoned. Whole towns have been deprived of vital necessities, including food, medicine, water and electricity for days at a time.

Peoples everywhere have come out in demonstrations and political movements to support the Palestinian liberation struggle and demand the complete cutoff of U.S. aid to the aggressors, an end to Israeli occupation and recognition of the sovereign right of the Palestinians to organize their own independent state.

These actions are not only a powerful support for the Palestinian liberation struggle. They are expressing the conscience of humanity and opening a new front in the international struggle against U.S. imperialism's program of fascism and war.

In the U.S., broad sections of the people, including a new generation of anti-war activists, have already gone into action and have again put the political demand for an immediate cutoff of U.S. aid to Israel on the political agenda.

The immediate task is to keep this demand in the forefront and carry the struggle through to the end.

As recent events have again proven, U.S. imperialism -- the capitalist class and capitalist government -- will commit any crime in order to maintain Israel as its military outpost in the strategic Middle East.

From day one, it was Bush who gave Sharon the green light to invade the West Bank. It is Bush and U.S. imperialism who condemn the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority as "terrorist" for resisting Israeli aggression and occupation. It is Bush and U.S. imperialism who sponsor Israel's state-terrorism to the tune of $14 million/day.

For fifty years, U.S. imperialism has sponsored and relied on Israeli zionism as its military outpost in the oil-rich and strategic Middle East. Over these years, the U.S. has sent more than $100 billion in economic and military aid to Israel and supported Israeli aggression and annexation of Palestine. At its very founding Israel usurped, by force of arms, 80% of Palestine -- murdering and exiling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. In the 1967 war, Israel grabbed the rest of the West Bank and Gaza and has repeatedly declared its intention to annex more Palestinian land, including Jerusalem. Already over 400,000 Israeli settlers have established themselves in the West Bank while the Palestinian people remain under military rule.

Today, Bush and U.S. imperialism are again talking about "negotiations" and trying to present themselves as "neutral peacemakers." But these are only empty words designed to divert the attention of the peoples from the fact that Israeli zionism is nothing but the creature of U.S. imperialism and that it is U.S. imperialism which is waging war against Palestine.

Thus the peoples must not let the U.S.-Israeli aggressors gain any respite. The Palestinian people will surely continue their struggle until they regain all their inalienable human and national rights, including the right to their own independent state. The demand for Palestinian self-determination is on the agenda -- is a problem taken up for immediate solution.

The American people must do their duty and carry through the struggle to cut off all U.S. aid to Israel.

The Palestinian liberation struggle is calling forth the humanity of all of us. The Palestinian people, like every nation, are asserting their inalienable right to self-determination and independence. This right will be won through the path of struggle against imperialism and in taking up this struggle, the peoples are moving closer to that new world without colonialism, racism, and war -- a world of peace and friendship based on the sovereign equality of all peoples.

Stop U.S. Aid to Israel!

1 Israel Is Illegally Occupying Palestine
Under UN Resolution 242, Israel is required by international law to withdraw from all the territories occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem. The United Nation's General Assembly has repeatedly condemned Israel's occupation of the territories as illegal (see UN resolutions 338, 1397, and 1402, among others). Israel's continued occupation of Palestine, sanctioned and maintained by the US, is one of the most serious obstructions to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.
"You must end the illegal occupation."

Kofi Annan, addressing Israel in a meeting of the UN Security Council, March 12, 2002

Key Articles:

We Bought and Paid for Carnage of Palestinians
by Robert Jensen
Professor of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin

America can Persuade Israel to Make a Just Peace
by Jimmy Carter
Chairman of the Carter Center and former US President

US Aid to Israel: Feeding
the Cuckoo
by Paul de Rooij
Economist living in London

Thou Shalt Not Kill
by Steven Feuerstein
Founder of Jewish peace group
Not in My Name

Heavy Words or Heavy Actions: Stop US Military
Aid to Israel
by Frida Berrigan
Senior Research Associate with the Arms Trade Resource Center, a project of the World Policy Institute

The Strategic Function of US
aid to Israel
by Stephen Zunes
Associate Professor, Department of Politics, University of San Francisco

2 Israel Systematically Violates the Human Rights of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories
Each day, Israeli security forces in the West Bank and Gaza violate articles of the 4th Geneva Convention on Human Rights, an agreement that governs wartime rules of engagement and to which Israel is a signatory. Palestinian homes and agriculture fields are routinely demolished to make way for illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli soldiers regularly arrest and detain--often for years-- Palestinians without due process. According to Amnesty International, members of the Israeli security forces regularly use torture and prolonged incommunicado detention against Palestinians.

3 Israel is an Apartheid State
Israel has developed an elaborate system of racial discrimination, embedded in its legal system, rivaling Apartheid South Africa's laws. These laws include the Law of Entry, the Law of Return, the Citizenship Law, the Military Service Law, and a host of legally sanctioned, discriminatory rabbinical rulings. Palestinians are denied various welfare benefits, access to many jobs, and the leasing of homes and land controlled by government bodies. Electricity, sewerage, and roads are provided free to Israeli households, whereas many Palestinian communities in Israel, and especially in the Occupied Territories, have existed for decades without adequate services. Laws governing land ownership such as the Law of Acquisition of Absentee Property and the Law for Acquisition of Land blatantly discriminate against Palestinians. Indeed, land ownership in Palestine is more unjust than it ever wasin South Africa; at the height of apartheid, black people nominally `controlled' 13 percent of the land, whereas in Israel the Palestinians control only 2 percent of the land.
"I am a black South African, and if I were to change the names, a description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and West Bank could describe events in South Africa."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Blockades which allow settlers free movement but restrict Palestinians have lost 100,000 workers their jobs. The Israeli government issues identification cards and car number-plates, color coded, which restrict travel for non-Jews. Palestinians in the West Bank are routinely prevented from travelling to the Gaza Strip because they have to travel through `Israeli' territory. No significant industry has been permitted to develop in the West Bank or Gaza. Consequently, Palestinians are concentrated in the lowest paying jobs and form a super-exploited labour force for Israeli capital. The occupied territories import 93% of goods but export a mere 7% of what they produce. Palestinian exports to Western Europe are banned so as not to compete with Israeli exports. Ninety percent of Palestinian workers must travel to Jewish towns for employment.

4 US Military Aid to Israel Violates US Law
The US Arms Export Control Act (AECA) strictly forbids the government from giving military assistance to any country that violates internationally recognized human rights. The State Department's 2001 human rights report states: "Israeli security units often used excessive force against Palestinian demonstrators including live fire ... impeded the provision of medical assistance to Palestinian civilians by their strict enforcement of internal closures, which reportedly contributed to at least 32 deaths. Israeli security forces harassed and abused Palestinian pedestrians and drivers who were attempting to pass through the more than 130 Israeli- controlled checkpoints ..." Under the AECA, "the President is required to report to Congress promptly upon the receipt of information that a substantial violation of AECA may have occurred." The US government is fully aware of the Israeli army's human rights violations, as the above quote from the State Department shows. The US government has eroded its own credibility as an impartial mediator by continuing to arm Israel without restriction and allowing these weapons to be used against civilian populations in violation of US law.

5 US Military Aid to Israel threatens US Security and Global Stability
US funding of Israel's human rights abuses fuels resentment towards the US. While the rest of the world strongly condemns Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories, our government provides the political, diplomatic and material means for the occupation to continue. Such actions by the US government provoke anti-US sentiment throughout the world, ultimately jeopardizing the safety of people living in the US. The US can build its own security only by gaining the trust and respect of the international community.

Isn't it true that Palestinians never had either a state, nor any distinct culture or language of their own? (Typcial zionist assertion)



For the moment, let's assume that the Palestinian people should not have a country of their own because they have never had a state, then why should the peoples of Salvador, Guatemala, Congo, Algeria, ... etc. have the right of self determination?

It should be noted that none of these countries had a state prior to gaining independence, nor a distinct language or culture that set them apart from their neighboring states. In other words, even if it's true that the Palestinian people had neither a state, nor a distinct culture or language:

* Is that a good reason to confiscate their homes, farms, and businesses?
* Is that a good reason to block their return to their homes?
* Is that a good reason to nullify their citizenship in the country in which they were born?

According to historical facts, Zionism, as an ideology, evolved in response to the rise of Europe's nationalism and anti-Semitism in the late 19th century, especially in Tsarist Russia (Pale States), France during the Dreyfus affair, and Germany after WW I.

Similarly, Palestinian nationalism evolved in response to the presence of Zionism in Palestine, and most importantly because of the British intention to turn Palestine into a "Jewish National Home," see the Balfour Declaration for further details. These central facts were well articulated by David Ben-Gurion (Israel's 1st Prime Minister) and Moshe Sharett (Israel's 1st Foreign Minister) on many occasions. For example:

* A few months before the peace conference convened at Versailles in early 1919, Ben-Gurion expressed his opinion of future Jewish and Arab relations:

"Everybody sees the problem in the relations between the Jews and the [Palestinian] Arabs. But not everybody sees that there's no solution to it. There is no solution! . . . The conflict between the interests of the Jews and the interests of the [Palestinian] Arabs in Palestine cannot be resolved by sophisms. I don't know any Arabs who would agree to Palestine being ours---even if we learn Arabic . . .and I have no need to learn Arabic. On the other hand, I don't see why 'Mustafa' should learn Hebrew. . . . There's a national question here. We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want the country to be theirs." (One Palestine Complete, p. 116)

*

On May 27, 1931, Ben-Gurion recognized that the "Arab question" is a

"tragic question of fate" that arose only as a consequence of Zionism, and so was a "question of Zionist fulfillment in the light of Arab reality." In other words, this was a Zionist rather than an Arab question, posed to Zionists who were perplexed about how they could fulfill their aspirations in a land already inhabited by a Palestinian Arab majority. (Shabtai Teveth, p. xii, Preface)

*

As the number of Jews in Palestine (Yishuv) doubled between 1931-1935, the Palestinian people became threatened with being dispossessed and for Jews becoming their masters. The Palestinian political movement was becoming more vocal and organized, which surprised Ben-Gurion. In his opinion, the demonstrations represented a "turning point" important enough to warrant Zionist concern. As he told Mapai comrades:

". . . they [referring to Palestinians] showed new power and remarkable discipline. Many of them were killed . . . this time not murderers and rioters, but political demonstrators. Despite the tremendous unrest, the order not to harm Jews was obeyed. This shows exceptional political discipline. There is no doubt that these events will leave a profound imprint on the [Palestinian] Arab movement. This time we have seen a political movement which must evoke the respect of the world. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 126)

*

But Ben-Gurion set limits. The Palestinian people were incapable by themselves of developing Palestine, and they had no right to stand in the way of the Jews. He argued in 1918, that Jews' rights sprang not only from the past, but also from the future. In 1924 he declared:

"We do not recognize the right of the [Palestinian] Arabs to rule the country, since Palestine is still undeveloped and awaits its builders." In 1928 he pronounced that "the [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to close the country to us [Jews]. What right do they have to the Negev desert, which is uninhabited?"; and in 1930, "The [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to the Jordan river, and no right to prevent the construction of a power plant [by a Jewish concern]. They have a right only to that which they have created and to their homes." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 38)

In other words, the Palestinian people are entitled to no political rights whatsoever, and if they have any rights to begin with, these rights are confined to their places of residence. Ironically, this statement was written when the Palestinian people constituted 85% of Palestine's population, and owned and operated over 97% of its lands!

*

In February 1937, Ben-Gurion was on the brink of a far reaching conclusion, that the Arabs of Palestine were a separate people, distinct from other Arabs and deserving of self-determination. He stated:

"The right which the Arabs in Palestine have is one due to the inhabitants of any country . . . because they live here, and not because they are Arabs . . . The Arab inhabitants of Palestine should enjoy all the rights of citizens and all political rights, not only as individuals, but as a national community, just like the Jews." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 170)

* In 1936 (soon after the outbreak of the First Palestinian Intifada), Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary:

"The Arabs fear of our power is intensifying, [Arabs] see exactly the opposite of what we see. It doesn't matter whether or not their view is correct.... They see [Jewish] immigration on a giant scale .... they see the Jews fortify themselves economically .. They see the best lands passing into our hands. They see England identify with Zionism. ..... [Arabs are] fighting dispossession ... The fear is not of losing the land, but of losing homeland of the Arab people, which others want to turn it into the homeland of the Jewish people. There is a fundamental conflict. We and they want the same thing: We both want Palestine ..... By our very presence and progress here, [we] have matured the [Arab] movement." (Righteous Victims, p.136)
* In 1938, Ben-Gurion also stated against the backdrop of the First Palestinian Intifada:

"When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend ourselves ---- that is ONLY half the truth. As regards our security and life we defend ourselves. . . . But the fighting is only one aspect of the conflict, which is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves." (Righteous Victims, p. 652)
*

In 1936, Moshe Sharett spoke in a similar vein:

"Fear is the main factor in [Palestinian] Arab politics. . . . There is no Arab who is not harmed by Jews' entry into Palestine." (Righteous Victims, p.136)

So if the causes of Zionism had not risen, meaning European anti-Semitism, then Palestinian nationalism might not have evolved into what it is today. It's worth noting that the Palestinian people, prior to WW I, always identified themselves as being part of "The Great Syria" (Suriyya al-Kubra), however, that drastically changed when Britain intended to turn Palestine into a "Jewish National Home", see the Balfour Declaration for more details.

This declaration, which was made to the Zionist Movement in 1917, signaled the future dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people because it did not address their political rights. On the other hand, the declaration recognized the political rights of the "Jewish people" around the world, despite the fact that the Jews in Palestine were under 8% of the total population as of 1914 (Righteous Victims, p. 83). In that respect, Lord Balfour, who was the British Foreign Secretary and a self-professed Christian Zionist, stated in 1919:

"Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder importance than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 [Palestinian] Arabs who now inhabit the ancient land." (Righteous Victims, p. 75)

In response to this declaration, the Palestinian people started to collectively oppose the British Mandate, Jewish immigration, and land sales to the Zionist movement.

Rather than dealing directly with the issues, sadly many Israelis and Zionists have chosen to ignore the existence of the Palestinians as a people. It should be emphasized that the hawk of all Israeli hawks, Ariel Sharon, has accepted the existence of a Palestinian state, in principle, in a portion of historic Palestine. Whether Israelis and Zionists like it or not, Palestine now exists as a postal code, international calling code, internet domain name, ...etc. in the heart of "Eretz Yisrael". The 8.5 million Palestinians are not going away, and the sooner Israelis and Zionists understand this simple message, the faster they shall start dealing with core issues of the conflict in a pragmatic way.

Finally, applying such logic is very dangerous since it would eliminate half United Nations' members overnight. It is simply not just to suppress the political, economic, and civil rights of the Palestinian people by claiming that they never previously had a state, distinct language, and distinct culture. Ironically, the Zionist movement has been encouraging Jews from all corners of the world to emigrate to "Eretz Yisrael", so that there is no real common denominator between all of these immigrants such as a common language, culture, country of origin, or even a unified interpretation of "who is a Jew".

If you want a Thug to do your Dirty Work you Arm him First. And when the time is Right you Sick you Pit Bull on your intended victim. Lebanon. With the US Bogged down in Iraq Bush called on his Ace in the Hole to do what America could not.

Zionist did kill UN peace keeper = criminal act
Zionist did kill children = criminal act
Zionist bombed ambulance = criminal act
Zionist utilise US tax payer to demolish civillian infrastructure = criminal act
Zionist utilise Boeing made warplane to invade legimate country = criminal act
Zionist successfully made US citizens targets for terrorist = criminal act
Zionist use child as human shield (www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/child-shield.html) = criminal act.

No zionist = no problem

You still think Syria Killed Harari last year ? Think again. The Hariri Killing was the first of Bushco.'s acts for Regime change in Lebanon. Followed by the Withdrawl of Syrian Troops and a series of Assassinations and Terrorist acts by Bushco. Black Ops. Now that Bush has Sicked his Pit Bull Israel on Lebanon let the Mid East beware. He has other Imperial Designs beyond Lebanon. Iran and Syria anyone?