Friday, August 5, 2016

The Extortion Racket Goes On and On

From Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept:

For all the chatter about animosity between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, The Washington Post reports that “a senior Israeli official will arrive in Washington next week for a final round of negotiations involving the largest military aid package the United States has ever given any country and that will last more than a decade after President Obama leaves office.” The U.S. already transfers $3.1 billion in taxpayer money every year to Israel – more than any other country by far – but the new agreement Obama is set to sign “significantly raises” that amount, and guarantees it for 10 years.

CNN
In response to this massive windfall, Netanyahu is angry that he is not getting even more. For some time, “Netanyahu was holding out for as much at $5 billion a year.” Also, Israel has been opposed to efforts to direct more of that aid to U.S. military contractors rather than Israeli ones (so this “aid” package is as much a transfer of U.S. taxpayer money to weapons manufacturers in both countries as it is to Israel itself). Moreover, “Israelis are also said to be displeased with a U.S. position that whatever amount of money they agree on will be final and that Israel will not go to Congress requesting more money.”
Usually, when someone hands you billions of dollars in aid, you’re not in much of a position to demand more. But the rules for Israel when it comes to U.S. policy, as is so often the case, are simply different. Even as Israel has aggressively expanded settlements of the West Bank (often in a way designed to most humiliate the U.S.) and slaughtered civilians in Gaza, U.S. aid simply increases more and more. What’s particularly fascinating about all of this is that Netanyahu originally intended to wait until the “next administration” to finalize the deal because, assuming that would be Hillary Clinton, he believed (with good reason) he would get an even better deal, but is now worried about an “unpredictable” Donald Trump, who has spouted standard pro-Israel rhetoric before AIPAC (and worse) but had previously espoused the need for “neutrality” on the Israel/Palestine question and has made “America First” the rhetorical centerpiece of his campaign.


Read the whole article.

Editor's Note:  Not to be indelicate, but why does it take a Jewish homosexual like Glenn Greenwald to speak the truth about this never-ending rape of US taxpayers?

More here:  http://news.antiwar.com/2016/08/04/officials-us-close-to-finalizing-record-military-aid-deal-with-israel/

Your tax dollars at work:

Gaza, 2014 (I could have picked a more grisly photo)

No comment

4 comments:

CJ said...

Gruesome photo indeed but I never trust a photo like this when everybody and their granny is conveniently present with cameras in hand. Too many have been exposed as staged photos in order to sway public opinion. The tee shirt photo however, if not photoshopped is beyond disgusting.

Aged parent said...

Alas, CJ, there are many, many photographs available of the Gaza atrocities (curiously absent from the US media), most of which are simply too heartbreaking to look at let alone publish here. The tee shirt is all too real as well, I'm afraid.

Thanks for the comment.

Anonymous said...

And if we think that Obama gave them a lot of money just wait until Hillary gets in there. She and the husband have been bowing and scraping toward the "elder brothers" their whole political life.
Trump has been haggling with this bunch all of his adult life. Businessman... in New York ??? Oh, yeah! He knows Jews, inside and out.
However,they probably have so much dirt on his personal life that he will be signing over the deed to the White House.
I can't wait to see the display in the Smithsonian of Melania's Inaugural Ball gown. It will be a naked mannequin.
There is no good choice this election. It is "Trash #1" vs. "Trash #2".

Anonymous said...

Carla Bruni also was a (naked) model before being First Lady of France.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...