This past week, despite a reported personal rift between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the US and Israel signed a pact that contains the largest pledge of military assistance to a single country in US history. The ten-year agreement will provide $3.8 billion of aid yearly to Israel — up from the $3.1 billion awarded to Israel in the countries’ previous decade-long deal.
In justifying the largesse, commentators and officials have pointed to the threat of a resurgent Iran and ISIS. The deal, National Security Advisor Susan Rice said at a press conference, “will ensure that Israel has the support it needs to defend itself.”
Yet the diplomatic platitudes are less illuminating than a statement Netanyahu made a year ago at the Knesset: “I am asked if we will forever live by the sword,” the prime minister said, then gave his answer: “Yes.”
Israel is in a constant state of military action, largely enabled by the US. In one twenty-four-hour period during negotiations over the new aid package, Israel bombed Gaza, announced new settlements in the West Bank city of Hebron, and attacked Syrian rebels from their position in the occupied Syrian Golan heights. Each of these acts was at once a show of strength and an outgrowth of US support. [...]
The US dispenses its aid in the form of vouchers for American defense companies’ weapons — an effective transfer of public money to Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and the like. This enrichment of US weapons companies will only increase with the new deal: the package gradually removes a stipulation under which the Israeli government was allowed to convert 26 percent of the aid to shekels and subsidize its own defense industries. [...]
But the defense industry giveaways only sweeten the deal. Fundamentally, the glue that binds the US and Israel together is their shared commitment to maintaining the current balance of power in the Middle East.
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