Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > The U.S. Has an Israel Problem, and Taxpayers Are Footing the Bill
________________________________________
The U.S. Has an Israel Problem, and Taxpayers Are Footing the Bill
By Vijay Prashad [1] / AlterNet [2]
September 15, 2016
The United States government, led by President Barack Obama, has pledged
Israel $38 billion over ten years in military assistance. This money will
include Israeli purchase of American missile defense systems-a shield
against attack. But this is not what defines the deal. The money will mainly
go to Israel's offensive military capacity that includes weapon systems used
against Palestinians-particularly in the frequent attacks by Israel on Gaza.
The 'aid' package is not only for Israel-which benefits greatly from this
largess-but it will be a massive boondoggle for US arms manufacturers. The
United States taxpayer will pay Israel $38 billion so that Israel has to
turn around and buy weapons systems from the US weapons monopoly firms. This
is a cozy agreement, which benefits Israel and the weapons dealers but not
the US taxpayer and not the Palestinians. They are the ones who lose.
For the record, each US taxpayer will be paying over $300 per head to the
Israelis and the arms industry. Scare resources in this country will go,
essentially, towards the illegal Occupation of the Palestinians.
No other country has ever received such an enormous 'aid' package from the
United States. Israel's previous deal was for $3.1 billion per year-now
raised to $3.8 billion. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted the
US to give Israel $4.5 billion per year. Obama's people resisted that
amount, although both the Israelis and the arms industry lobbied his
administration. His resistance is not evidence of balance towards the
Palestinians. There is no such balance on display here.
Over the ten months that the US, the Israelis and the arms industry worked
on this deal, Netanyahu has shown nothing but contempt for the US president
and for the tepid concerns of the US over Israel's illegal settlement
program in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Netanyahu's animosity to Obama
goes back to the first term of the President, and was underscored by his
embarrassingly partisan speech to a joint session of Congress before Obama's
2012 re-election. The public posturing against the Iran deal and the disdain
for the US statements over the illegal settlement policy are part of a
long-standing lack of concern by Netanyahu and the Israeli leadership for
American policy. In 2011, Netanyahu went to a settlement where he said
[3]-candidly-'I know what America is. American can be easily moved. Moved to
the right direction.' In other words, America's criticisms are not serious.
The $38 billion deal is proof that Netanyahu is correct.
Impact of BDS
What the Israeli political elite fear more than anything else is the shift
in public perception in the United States. It is the
Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement that gives the political class
and its US-based Israel lobby sleepless nights. They can 'move' Obama, but
they can't so easily 'move' civil society. Evidence for a pro-Palestinian
stance can be found in the Movement for Black Lives endorsement of BDS, in
the connections between the Standing Rock struggle and the Palestinian Youth
Movement, and in other social movements-including sections of the US labor
movement. On college campuses, Students for Justice in Palestine continue to
thrive. New books by mainstream authors provide a richer understanding of
the Israeli occupation and have received attention from the chattering
classes (most recently Ben Ehrenreich's The Way to the Spring, which I had
reviewed here [4] in June). Pulitzer Prize winning writer Michael Chabon and
Ayelet Waldman-both celebrated American writers-are editing an anthology on
the 1967 War, when Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
After a trip to the Occupied Territories, Chabon told [5] Naomi Zeveloff
that what he had experienced was 'the most grievous injustice I have ever
seen in my life.' Chabon, Waldman and Ehrenreich were born between 1961 and
1972-they are the generation that has known nothing other than the
Occupation and US complicity in it.
Bans on BDS continue-most recently in New Jersey, where the state pension
system has been banned from any BDS action on Israeli firms, and in
California, where the legislature wishes to penalize firms that boycott
those complicit in the Israeli occupation. The US Congress has put on the
table the 'Combating BDS Act of 2016.' It is unlikely to pass only because
it is blatantly unconstitutional. In 1966, the NAACP called for a boycott of
white businesses in Clairborne County, Mississippi, as a tactic to force the
community to comply with equal rights provisions. The businesses went to the
courts seeking relief against the boycott. Finally, in 1982, the Supreme
Court found [6] that the tactic of boycott came under the protection of free
speech. It was a constitutionally protected action. The Justices quoted from
Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, where the Frenchman extolled
the right of association. 'No legislator can attack it without impairing the
foundations of society,' wrote de Tocqueville; this is a sentence that
members of the Congress should bear in mind.
Banning BDS actions by firms is an important thrust, but US history shows
that it is of little consequence. US firms have routinely gone around
sanctions barriers from the days of trading with Nazi Germany to the
present. The history of US corporations and South African apartheid is a
telling one-and documented at the time by Ann Seidman and Neva Seidman in a
series of important articles and books (now sadly quite forgotten). At the
urging of Congressman Ron Dellums, an Anti-Apartheid bill went before the
Senate, where Republicans filibustered it. When the Act was passed,
President Ronald Reagan vetoed it. He called the bill 'economic warfare.'
Congress passed an override, but the Reagan administration did not enforce
the act. 'Punitive sanctions,' Reagan said, 'are not the best course of
action.' At the same time, Reagan's administration pushed for and won the
right to garrote Libya with an economic sanctions regime. Principle was not
the issue here. It was politics (Hillary Clinton, for instance, is against
BDS since she says sanctions are bad, but she is in favor of sanctions
against North Carolina, Iran, and Syria).
If firms are not reliable, more dangerous for the Israel lobby is the turn
on college campuses toward a fair discussion of the occupation of the
Palestinians. The mere existence of a Students for Justice in Palestine club
is occasion for hyperventilation. The most recent example of scandalous
behavior by college administrations is at the University of
California-Berkeley. An undergraduate-Paul Hadweh-planned to teach a course
on Tuesday evenings called 'Palestine: A Settler-Colonial Analysis.' Hadweh
is no stranger to controversy. Last year, he was interviewed by the New York
Times' Ronnie Cohen about pro-Palestinian activism at Berkeley. The article
that came out suggested that campus activism for Palestinian rights was
anti-Semitic. Indeed, Hadweh, at that time, said that the reporter kept
pressing him to admit that BDS is anti-Semitic. Hadweh's course alerted the
sentinels of the Israel lobby. Forty-three Jewish organizations wrote to
Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, suggesting that the course 'meets our
government's criteria for antisemitism and are intended to indoctrinate
students to hate the Jewish state.' Dirks, who will step down at the end of
the year because of corruption charges, suspended the course.
A student designs a course. It has a faculty sponsor (Hatem Bazian) and
another faculty member (Keith Feldman) has agreed to come speak to the
class. It goes through the formal process for the acceptance of the course.
All that takes place. Then an outside group says that the course is
distasteful to it and the senior administration suspends the course. When
BDS activists call for the academic boycott of Israeli institutions that are
complicit in the occupation of the Palestinians, they are charged-often by
these very organizations-for the violation of academic freedom. In this
case, there is no protection of academic freedom.
The United States government donates scarce taxpayer money to finance the
Israeli occupation of Palestine. Criticism inside the United States of the
occupation itself grows-whether on college campuses, in religious
institutions or in labor unions. Unprincipled attempts by the Israel
lobby-helped on by the US and Israeli political elite-to change the tide
will not be successful. Sure, one class was cancelled. Others will be
taught. Hadweh's guest speaker-Keith Feldman-has written a wonderful book (A
Shadow Over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America), which unravels
the US-Israeli 'special relationship.' Voices such as Feldman's will not be
easy to silence. Hadweh is a student. He will graduate. He will continue to
be part of the conversation. That is the tide. It cannot be dammed. This $38
billion deal represents yesterday's consensus. The emerging consensus will
not be prepared to underwrite the illegal Israeli occupation of the
Palestinians.
Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in
Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of 18 books, including Arab Spring,
Libyan Winter (AK Press, 2012), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of
the Global South (Verso, 2013) and The Death of a Nation and the Future of
the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016). His columns
appear at AlterNet every Wednesday.
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [7]
[8]
Stay Ahead of the Rest
Sign Up for AlterNet's Daily Newsletter
EMAIL:
+ sign up for additional lists
[x]
Select additional lists by selecting the checkboxes below before clicking
Subscribe:
Rights & Liberties
Education
Drugs
Economy
Environment
Labor
Food
World
Politics
Investigation
Personal Health
Water
Media
________________________________________
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/world/us-israel-problem
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/vijay-prashad
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrtuBas3Ipw
[4] http://www.alternet.org/world/psychological-impacts-israeli-occupation
[5]
http://forward.com/culture/books/339119/qa-michael-chabon-talks-occupation-i
njustice-and-literature-after-visit-to/
[6] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/458/886
[7] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on The U.S. Has an Israel
Problem, and Taxpayers Are Footing the Bill
[8] http://www.alternet.org/
[9] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > The U.S. Has an Israel Problem, and Taxpayers Are Footing the Bill
The U.S. Has an Israel Problem, and Taxpayers Are Footing the Bill
By Vijay Prashad [1] / AlterNet [2]
September 15, 2016
AddThis Sharing Buttons
Share to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to Google+Share to More1Share to
Email
The United States government, led by President Barack Obama, has pledged
Israel $38 billion over ten years in military assistance. This money will
include Israeli purchase of American missile defense systems-a shield
against attack. But this is not what defines the deal. The money will mainly
go to Israel's offensive military capacity that includes weapon systems used
against Palestinians-particularly in the frequent attacks by Israel on Gaza.
The 'aid' package is not only for Israel-which benefits greatly from this
largess-but it will be a massive boondoggle for US arms manufacturers. The
United States taxpayer will pay Israel $38 billion so that Israel has to
turn around and buy weapons systems from the US weapons monopoly firms. This
is a cozy agreement, which benefits Israel and the weapons dealers but not
the US taxpayer and not the Palestinians. They are the ones who lose.
For the record, each US taxpayer will be paying over $300 per head to the
Israelis and the arms industry. Scare resources in this country will go,
essentially, towards the illegal Occupation of the Palestinians.
No other country has ever received such an enormous 'aid' package from the
United States. Israel's previous deal was for $3.1 billion per year-now
raised to $3.8 billion. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted the
US to give Israel $4.5 billion per year. Obama's people resisted that
amount, although both the Israelis and the arms industry lobbied his
administration. His resistance is not evidence of balance towards the
Palestinians. There is no such balance on display here.
Over the ten months that the US, the Israelis and the arms industry worked
on this deal, Netanyahu has shown nothing but contempt for the US president
and for the tepid concerns of the US over Israel's illegal settlement
program in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Netanyahu's animosity to Obama
goes back to the first term of the President, and was underscored by his
embarrassingly partisan speech to a joint session of Congress before Obama's
2012 re-election. The public posturing against the Iran deal and the disdain
for the US statements over the illegal settlement policy are part of a
long-standing lack of concern by Netanyahu and the Israeli leadership for
American policy. In 2011, Netanyahu went to a settlement where he said
[3]-candidly-'I know what America is. American can be easily moved. Moved to
the right direction.' In other words, America's criticisms are not serious.
The $38 billion deal is proof that Netanyahu is correct.
Impact of BDS
What the Israeli political elite fear more than anything else is the shift
in public perception in the United States. It is the
Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement that gives the political class
and its US-based Israel lobby sleepless nights. They can 'move' Obama, but
they can't so easily 'move' civil society. Evidence for a pro-Palestinian
stance can be found in the Movement for Black Lives endorsement of BDS, in
the connections between the Standing Rock struggle and the Palestinian Youth
Movement, and in other social movements-including sections of the US labor
movement. On college campuses, Students for Justice in Palestine continue to
thrive. New books by mainstream authors provide a richer understanding of
the Israeli occupation and have received attention from the chattering
classes (most recently Ben Ehrenreich's The Way to the Spring, which I had
reviewed here [4] in June). Pulitzer Prize winning writer Michael Chabon and
Ayelet Waldman-both celebrated American writers-are editing an anthology on
the 1967 War, when Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
After a trip to the Occupied Territories, Chabon told [5] Naomi Zeveloff
that what he had experienced was 'the most grievous injustice I have ever
seen in my life.' Chabon, Waldman and Ehrenreich were born between 1961 and
1972-they are the generation that has known nothing other than the
Occupation and US complicity in it.
Bans on BDS continue-most recently in New Jersey, where the state pension
system has been banned from any BDS action on Israeli firms, and in
California, where the legislature wishes to penalize firms that boycott
those complicit in the Israeli occupation. The US Congress has put on the
table the 'Combating BDS Act of 2016.' It is unlikely to pass only because
it is blatantly unconstitutional. In 1966, the NAACP called for a boycott of
white businesses in Clairborne County, Mississippi, as a tactic to force the
community to comply with equal rights provisions. The businesses went to the
courts seeking relief against the boycott. Finally, in 1982, the Supreme
Court found [6] that the tactic of boycott came under the protection of free
speech. It was a constitutionally protected action. The Justices quoted from
Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, where the Frenchman extolled
the right of association. 'No legislator can attack it without impairing the
foundations of society,' wrote de Tocqueville; this is a sentence that
members of the Congress should bear in mind.
Banning BDS actions by firms is an important thrust, but US history shows
that it is of little consequence. US firms have routinely gone around
sanctions barriers from the days of trading with Nazi Germany to the
present. The history of US corporations and South African apartheid is a
telling one-and documented at the time by Ann Seidman and Neva Seidman in a
series of important articles and books (now sadly quite forgotten). At the
urging of Congressman Ron Dellums, an Anti-Apartheid bill went before the
Senate, where Republicans filibustered it. When the Act was passed,
President Ronald Reagan vetoed it. He called the bill 'economic warfare.'
Congress passed an override, but the Reagan administration did not enforce
the act. 'Punitive sanctions,' Reagan said, 'are not the best course of
action.' At the same time, Reagan's administration pushed for and won the
right to garrote Libya with an economic sanctions regime. Principle was not
the issue here. It was politics (Hillary Clinton, for instance, is against
BDS since she says sanctions are bad, but she is in favor of sanctions
against North Carolina, Iran, and Syria).
If firms are not reliable, more dangerous for the Israel lobby is the turn
on college campuses toward a fair discussion of the occupation of the
Palestinians. The mere existence of a Students for Justice in Palestine club
is occasion for hyperventilation. The most recent example of scandalous
behavior by college administrations is at the University of
California-Berkeley. An undergraduate-Paul Hadweh-planned to teach a course
on Tuesday evenings called 'Palestine: A Settler-Colonial Analysis.' Hadweh
is no stranger to controversy. Last year, he was interviewed by the New York
Times' Ronnie Cohen about pro-Palestinian activism at Berkeley. The article
that came out suggested that campus activism for Palestinian rights was
anti-Semitic. Indeed, Hadweh, at that time, said that the reporter kept
pressing him to admit that BDS is anti-Semitic. Hadweh's course alerted the
sentinels of the Israel lobby. Forty-three Jewish organizations wrote to
Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, suggesting that the course 'meets our
government's criteria for antisemitism and are intended to indoctrinate
students to hate the Jewish state.' Dirks, who will step down at the end of
the year because of corruption charges, suspended the course.
A student designs a course. It has a faculty sponsor (Hatem Bazian) and
another faculty member (Keith Feldman) has agreed to come speak to the
class. It goes through the formal process for the acceptance of the course.
All that takes place. Then an outside group says that the course is
distasteful to it and the senior administration suspends the course. When
BDS activists call for the academic boycott of Israeli institutions that are
complicit in the occupation of the Palestinians, they are charged-often by
these very organizations-for the violation of academic freedom. In this
case, there is no protection of academic freedom.
The United States government donates scarce taxpayer money to finance the
Israeli occupation of Palestine. Criticism inside the United States of the
occupation itself grows-whether on college campuses, in religious
institutions or in labor unions. Unprincipled attempts by the Israel
lobby-helped on by the US and Israeli political elite-to change the tide
will not be successful. Sure, one class was cancelled. Others will be
taught. Hadweh's guest speaker-Keith Feldman-has written a wonderful book (A
Shadow Over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America), which unravels
the US-Israeli 'special relationship.' Voices such as Feldman's will not be
easy to silence. Hadweh is a student. He will graduate. He will continue to
be part of the conversation. That is the tide. It cannot be dammed. This $38
billion deal represents yesterday's consensus. The emerging consensus will
not be prepared to underwrite the illegal Israeli occupation of the
Palestinians.
Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in
Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of 18 books, including Arab Spring,
Libyan Winter (AK Press, 2012), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of
the Global South (Verso, 2013) and The Death of a Nation and the Future of
the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016). His columns
appear at AlterNet every Wednesday.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [7]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[8]
Stay Ahead of the Rest
Sign Up for AlterNet's Daily Newsletter
EMAIL:
+ sign up for additional lists
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/world/us-israel-problem ;
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/vijay-prashad
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrtuBas3Ipw
[4] http://www.alternet.org/world/psychological-impacts-israeli-occupation
[5]
http://forward.com/culture/books/339119/qa-michael-chabon-talks-occupation-i
njustice-and-literature-after-visit-to/
[6] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/458/886
[7] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on The U.S. Has an Israel
Problem, and Taxpayers Are Footing the Bill
[8] http://www.alternet.org/
[9] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
