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Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land
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US Help: The Lifeblood of Occupation
By: Matt Bowles, www.wrmea.com/html/usaidtoisrael0001.htm
Israel has maintained an illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Palestinian territories) for 35 years, entrenching an apartheid regime that appears remarkably like the former South African regime.
Palestinians into modest, noncontiguous bantustans, imposing closures and curfews to manage where they go and when, although keeping manage over the natural sources, exploiting Palestinian labor, and prohibiting indigenous economic improvement.
The Israeli military (IDF)—the third or forth most effective army in the world—routinely makes use of tanks, Apache helicopter gunships, and F-16 fighter jets (all subsidized by the U.S.) against a population that has no military and none of the protective institutions of a modern day state.
All of this, Israel tells its citizens and the international neighborhood, is for "Israeli safety." The reality, not surprisingly, is that these policies have resulted in a drastic boost in attacks on Israel. These attacks are then utilized as a pretext for additional Israeli incursions into Palestinian places and much more violations of Palestinian human rights which tends to make Israeli civilians much more safe all of which additional entrenches Israelÿs colonial apartheid regime. Most Americans do not realize the extent to which this is all funded by U.S. aid, nor do they realize the specific financial connection the U.S. has with Israel and how that differs from other countries.
The help pipeline
There are at least 3 approaches in which aid to Israel is diverse from that of any other country. Initial, because 1982, U.S. aid to Israel has been transferred in one particular lump sum at the beginning of every single fiscal year, which immediately starts to gather interest in U.S. banks. Aid that goes to other nations is disbursed throughout the year in quarterly installments.
Second, Israel is not necessary to account for distinct purchases. Most countries get help for extremely specific purposes and need to account for how it is spent. Israel is permitted to place US aid into its common fund, successfully eliminating any distinctions between kinds of help. Therefore, U.S. tax-payers are helping to fund an illegal occupation, the expansion of colonial-settlement projects, and gross human rights violations against the Palestinian civilian population.
A third distinction is the sheer amount of aid the U.S. provides to Israel, unparalleled in the history of U.S. foreign policy. Israel generally receives roughly one particular third of the whole foreign aid budget, regardless of the truth that Israel comprises much less than .001 of the world’s population and currently has a single of the world’s higher per capita incomes. In other words, Israel, a nation of roughly 6 million folks, is at the moment getting far more U.S. aid than all of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean combined when you take out Egypt and Colombia.
This year, the U.S. Congress approved .76 billion in its annual aid package for Israel. The total quantity of direct U.S. help to Israel has been continual, at around billion (typically 60% military and 40% economic) per year for the last quarter century. A new plan was not too long ago implemented to phase out all financial help and give corresponding increases in military aid by 2008. This year Israel is receiving .04 billion in military help and million in economic aid there is only military aid.
In addition to almost billion in direct aid, Israel usually gets one more billion or so in indirect aid: military support from the defense price range, forgiven loans, and specific grants. Whilst some of the indirect help is hard to measure precisely, it is secure to say that Israel’s total help (direct and indirect) amounts to at least five billion dollars annually.
On top of all of this aid, a group from Israel’s finance ministry is slated to meet with U.S. government officials this month about an extra million aid package which the Clinton administration promised Israel (and the Bush administration later froze) as compensation for the fees of its withdrawal from Lebanon. The U.S. also managed to discover an additional million in the 2001 Pentagon price range to give Israel to obtain "counter terrorism equipment."
According to the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), from 1949-2001 the U.S. has provided Israel a total of ,966,300,000. The direct and indirect aid from this year ought to place the total U.S. aid to Israel given that 1949 at over one hundred billion dollars. What is not extensively recognized, however, is that most of this aid violates American laws. The Arms Export Manage Act stipulates that US-supplied weapons be utilized only for "legitimate self-defense."
Moreover, the U.S. Foreign Help Act prohibits military help to any nation "which engages in a constant pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights." The Proxmire amendment bans military assistance to any government that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to allow inspection of its nuclear facilities, which Israel refuses to do. To realize why the U.S. spends this much money funding the brutal repression of a colonized individuals, it is required to examine the positive aspects for weapons producers and, particularly, the function that Israel plays in the expansion and upkeep of U.S. imperialism.
A extremely special connection
In the fall of 1993, when many had been supporting what they hoped would become a viable peace procedure, 78 senators wrote to former President Bill Clinton insisting that aid to Israel remain at existing levels. Their reasons had been the "massive procurement of sophisticated arms by Arab states." Yet the letter neglected to mention that 80 % of these arms to Arab nations came from the U.S. itself.
Stephen Zunes has argued that the Aerospace Business Association (AIA), which promotes these massive arms shipments, is even much more influential in determining U.S. policy towards Israel than the notorious AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) lobby. AIA has offered two instances far more cash to campaigns than all of the pro-Israel groups combined. Zunes asserts that the basic thrust of U.S. policy would be fairly considerably the same even if AIPAC did not exist: "We did not want a pro-Indonesia lobby to assistance Indonesia in its savage repression of East Timor all these years."
The "special relationship" in between the U.S. and Israel have to be understood within the general American imperialist project and the quest for global hegemony, starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. For example, 99% of all U.S. help to Israel came following 1967, in spite of the fact that Israel was comparatively much more vulnerable in earlier years (from 1948-1967). Not coincidentally, it was in 1967 that Israel won the Six Day War against a number of Arab countries, establishing itself as a regional superpower. Also, in the late 1960s and particularly in the early 1970s (this was about the time of the Nixon Doctrine), the U.S. was searching to establish "spheres of influence"-regional superpowers in each and every important location of the globe to help the U.S. police them.
The principal U.S. interest in the Middle East is, and has constantly been, to maintain control of the oil in the region, mostly because this is the supply of power that supplies the industrial economies of Europe and Japan. The U.S. purpose has been to insure that there is no indigenous threat to their domination of these energy resources. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the U.S. created the strategic choice to ally itself with Israel and Iran, which were referred to as "our two eyes in the middle east" and the "guardians of the gulf." It was at this point that aid increased drastically, from million in 1967 (before the war), to 4 million in 1971, to a staggering .6 billion in 1974, exactly where it has remained fairly consistent ever since.
Israel was to be a military stronghold, a client state, and a proxy army, defending U.S. interests in the Middle East and all through the world. Subsidized by the CIA, Israel served U.S. interests properly beyond the quick region, setting up dependable client regimes (normally military-primarily based dictatorships) to manage nearby societies. Noam Chomsky has documented this extensively: Israel was the major force that established the Mobutu dictatorship in Zaire, for example. They also supported Idi Amin in Uganda, early on, as properly as Haile Selasse in Ethopia, and Emperor Bokassa in the Central African Republic.
Israel became particularly helpful when the U.S. came below well-known human rights stress in the 1970s to stop supporting death squads and dictatorships in Latin America. The U.S. started to use Israel as a surrogate to continue its support. Chomsky documents how Israel established close relations with the neo-Nazi and military regimes of Argentina and Chile. Israel also supported genocidal attacks on the indigenous population of Guatemala, and sent arms to El Salvador and Honduras to assistance the contras. This was all a secondary function, nonetheless.
The principal function for Israel was to be the Sparta of the Middle East. Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. especially required Israel as a proxy army due to the fact direct intervention in the area was too harmful, as the Soviets had been allied with neighboring states. More than the final thirty years, the U.S. has pursued a two-track strategy to dominating the area and its sources: It has turned Israel into a military outpost (now almost certainly the most militarized society in the globe) that is economically dependent on the U.S. even though propping up corrupt Arab dictatorships such as those in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. These regimes are afraid of their personal people and, therefore, are very insecure. As a result, they are inclined to collaborate with the U.S. at any price.
Prospects for activism
Since the end of the Cold War, the nuclear threat linked with direct intervention in the Middle East has disappeared and the U.S. has started a gradual and direct militarization of the area. This started with the Gulf War—putting U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia (the principal supply of oil), among other places—and has continued by way of the current ‘war on terrorism.’
Although U.S. aid has not decreased yet, there have been other observable shifts. The initial clear a single is the mainstream media reporting on the conflict. Even though there is still, of course, an anti-Palestinian bias, the coverage has shifted substantially in comparison to ten years ago. This has been noticeable in each journalistic accounts of Israeli human rights abuses and the publication of pro-Palestinian op-eds in key papers such as the Washington Post and the Boston Globe.
There are also some stirrings in the U.S. Congress. Representative John Conyers (D-MI) requested that President Bush investigate whether or not Israel’s use of American F-16s is violating the Arms Export Control Act. Additional, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) not too long ago complained about providing help with out situations: "There are no strings on the income. There is no requirement that the bloodshed abate just before the funding is released." Other elected representatives are gradually starting to open up to the issue as properly, but there is a lengthy way to go on Capital Hill.
The most critical development, however, has been the increasing tide of concern and activism about the Palestinian problem in the US left. The desperate plight of the Palestinians is gaining increasing prominence in the movement against Bush’s "war on terrorism," and it is gradually getting into into the movement against corporate globalization.
For years the Palestinian trigger was marginalized by the left in America. Since this intifada broke out 17 months ago, that began to shift considerably and has moved even additional since September 11. With the new "anti-war" movement, there has come a deeper understanding of U.S. policy in the Middle East and how the query of Palestine fits into progressive organizing.
In Durban, South Africa final September, at the UN International Conference Against Racism, 1 of the most pressing issues on the international agenda was the Palestinian struggle against Israel’s racist policies. 30,000 individuals from South Africa and about the globe demonstrated against Zionism, branding it as a type of apartheid no different than the method that blacks suffered by means of in South Africa. Shortly following, the U.S. and Israel stormed out of the conference.
In Europe and America, a range of organizations have risen in opposition to Israeli apartheid and in assistance of Palestinian human rights and self-determination. Just over the final year or two, organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine, primarily based at the University of California at Berkeley, have begun organizing a divestment campaign, modeled after the campaign that helped bring down South African apartheid. SUSTAIN (Cease U.S. Tax-funded Aid to Israel Now!) chapters in a quantity of cities have focused their efforts on stopping U.S. help to Israel, which is the lifeblood of Israeli occupation and continued abuses of Palestinian rights.
Several Jewish organizations have emerged as effectively, such as Not in My Name, which counters the popular media assertion that all Jewish individuals blindly support the policies of the state of Israel. Jews Against the Occupation is one more organization, which has taken a stand not only against the occupation, but also in help of the proper of Palestinian refugees to return. These movements, and specifically their newfound connection with the larger anti-war, anti-imperialist, and anti-corporate globalization movements, are where the possibilities lie to advance the Palestinian struggle.
The hope for Palestine is in the internationalization of the struggle. The developing of a massive, international movement against Israeli apartheid appears to be the most powerful and promising form of resistance at this time. The demands need to be that Israel comply with international law and implement the relevant UN resolutions. Particularly, it must recognize that all Palestinian refugees have the correct to return, right away end the occupation, and give all citizens of Israel equal treatment under the law.
We have to demand that all U.S. aid to Israel be stopped till Israel complies with these demands. Only when the Palestinians are afforded their rights beneath international law, and are respected as human beings, can a genuine procedure of conflict resolution and healing begin. For all the hype more than peace camps and dialogue initiatives, until the structural inequalities are dealt with, there will be no justice for Palestinians and, therefore, no peace for Israel.
Matt Bowles is a member of SUSTAIN—Stop US Tax Funded Help to Israel Now.
(The above write-up was initially published in the March/April problem of Left Turn magazine.)
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Israel’s fait accompli in Gaza
By: Eric S. Margolis, Al Jazeera
UPDATED ON: Monday, January 05, 2009, 12:43 Mecca time, 09:43 GMT
There are two totally various versions of what is currently taking place in Gaza.
In the Israeli and North American press version, Hamas – ‘Islamic terrorists’ backed by Iran – have in an unprovoked attack fired deadly rockets on innocent Israel with the intent of destroying the Jewish state. North American politicians and the media say Israel "has the appropriate to defend itself".
True sufficient. No Israeli government can tolerate rockets hitting its towns, even though the casualty totals have been less than the automobile crash fatalities registered in the course of a single holiday weekend on Israel’s roads.
The firing of the feeble, home-produced al-Qassam rockets by Palestinians is each useless and counter-productive.
It damages their image as an oppressed people and gives right-wing Israeli extremists a best purpose to launch far more attacks on the Arabs and refuse to talk about peace.
Israel’s supporters insist it has the absolute appropriate to drop hundreds of tonnes of bombs on ‘Hamas targets’ inside the 360sq km Gaza Strip to ‘take out the terrorists’.
Civilians suffer, says Israel, because the cowardly Hamas hide among them.
Really, it is much more like shooting fish in a barrel.
Omitting information
As usual, this cartoon-like version of events omits a fantastic deal of nuance and background. Although firing rockets at civilians is a crime so, as well, is the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which is an egregious violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions. According to the UN, most of Gaza’s 1.five million Palestinian refugees subsist near the edge of hunger. Seventy per cent of Palestinian youngsters in Gaza suffer from serious malnutrition and psychological trauma. Medical facilities are critically brief of medical doctors, personnel, gear, and drugs. Gaza has quite literally turn into a human garbage dump for all the Arabs that Israel does not want. Gaza is 1 of the world’s most-densely populated areas, a vast outdoor prison camp filled with desperate folks. In the past, they threw stones at their Israeli occupiers now they launch house-produced rockets. Call it a prison riot, writ massive.
Eyeing the elections
When the so-called truce between Tel Aviv and Hamas expired on December 19, Israeli politicians have been in the throes of preparing for the February 10 national elections. Israeli politics are playing a essential function in this crisis. Ehud Barak, the defence minister and leader of the Labour celebration, and Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and leader of the Kadima party, are trying to prove themselves tougher than Benjamin Netanyahu’s challenging-line Likud party – and a single yet another. Israel’s elections are only six weeks away, and Likud was top until the air raids on Gaza started. Kadima and Labour are now up in the polls. The heavy attacks on Gaza are also created to intimidate Israel’s Arab neighbours, and make up for Israel’s humiliating 2006 defeat in Lebanon, which still haunts the country’s politicians and generals.
A fait accompli
When the air raids on Gaza began, Barak mentioned: "We have entirely changed the guidelines of the game." He was correct. By blitzing Hamas-run Gaza, Barak presented the incoming US administration with a fait accompli, and neatly checkmated the newest player in the Middle East Excellent Game – Barack Obama, the US president-elect – prior to he could even take a seat at the table.
The Israeli offensive into Gaza now looks probably to short-circuit any plans Obama might have had to press Israel into withdrawing to its pre-1967 borders and sharing Jerusalem.
This has pleased Israel’s supporters in North America who have been cheering the war in Gaza and have been backing away from their earlier tentative support for a land-for-peace deal.
Israel’s successes in obtaining Western media portray the Gaza offensive as an ‘anti-terrorist operation’ will also diminish hopes of peace talks any time soon.
Obama inherits this mess in a few weeks. During the elections, Obama bowed to the Israel lobby, offering a new US carte blanche to Israel and even accepting Israel’s permanent monopoly of all of Jerusalem.
As he concludes forming his cabinet, his Middle East group looks like it may possibly be top-heavy with buddies of Israel’s Labour party.
Obama keeps saying he should stay silent on policy troubles until George Bush, the outgoing US president, leaves workplace, but his employees seem happy to steer clear of obtaining to make statements about Gaza that would antagonise Israel’s American supporters.
Obama will take office facing a Middle East up in arms more than Gaza and the whole Muslim globe blaming the US for the carnage in Gaza.
Unless he moves swiftly to distance himself from the policies of the Bush administration, he will soon find himself facing the same difficulties and anger as the Bush White Home.
Photo: jaffa48 -"Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Hebron"
Arab deal killed
Israel’s Gaza offensive is also probably to torpedo the current Saudi-sponsored peace strategy, which had been backed by all members of the Arab League.
The plan, now probably defunct, had referred to as for Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders and share Jerusalem in exchange for complete recognition and normalised relations with the Muslim world.
Arab governments will now be unable to sell the deal as they face a storm of criticism from their personal folks over their powerlessness to support the Palestinians of Gaza.
Egypt, in particular, is being widely accused of collaborating with Israel in additional sealing off and isolating Gaza. It appears hugely unlikely they will be able to advance a peace strategy with Israel for now.
This is a bonus for right-wing Israelis, who have often been dead set against any withdrawal and strongly supported the attack on Gaza.
Other Israeli factions who have been always lukewarm about the Saudi peace plan are now unlikely to reconsider it.
Israel’s safety establishment is committed to stopping the creation of a viable Palestinian state, and refuses to negotiate with Hamas. Unable to kill all of Hamas’ males, Israel is slowly destroying Gaza’s infrastructure about them, as it did to Yasser Arafat’s PLO.
Israel’s hardliners point to Gaza and claim that any Palestinian state on the West Bank would threaten their nation’s safety by firing rockets into Israel’s heartland.
Mighty info machine
Israel is confident that its mighty details machine will permit it to weather the storm of worldwide outrage more than its Biblical punishment of Gaza. Who remembers Israel’s flattening of components of the Palestinian city of Jenin, or the US destruction in Falluja, Iraq, or the Sabra and Shatilla massacres in Beirut?
Though the torment of Gaza is seen across the horrified Muslim planet as a contemporary version of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising by Jews against the Nazis for the duration of Globe War Two, Western governments nevertheless seem bent on taking no action.
Though Israel’s use of American weapons against Gaza violates the US Arms Export Handle and Foreign Assistance Acts, the docile US Congress will stay mute.
Israel’s assault on Gaza was clearly timed for America’s interregnum between administrations and the year-finish holidays, a well-utilised Israeli tactic.
Hamas refuses to recognise Israel as long as Israel refuses to recognise Hamas and the rights of millions of homeless Palestinian refugees.
It calls for a non-religious state to be produced in Palestine, which means an end to Zionism. Ironically, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and late leader of Hamas, had spoken of a compromise with Tel Aviv shortly just before he was assassinated by Israel in 2004.
An inherited mess
Israel’s hopes that it can bomb Gazans into rejecting Hamas are as ill-conceived as its failed attempt in 2006 to blast Lebanon into rejecting Hezbollah.
The Fatah regime on the West Bank installed by the US and Israel soon after Yasser Arafat’s suspicious death will be additional discredited, leaving the militants of Hamas as the sole authentic voice of Palestinian nationalism.
Hamas, the militant but nevertheless democratically elected government of Gaza, is even much less most likely to compromise.
The Muslim planet is in a rage. But so what? Stalin liked to say "the dogs bark, and the caravan moves on," and as lengthy as the US gives Israel carte blanche, it can do just about something it desires.
The tragedy of Palestine will hence continue to poison US relations with the Muslim globe.
Those Americans who nonetheless do not realize why their nation was attacked on 9/11 need only look to Gaza, for which the US is now being blamed as much as Israel.
Unless Israel can make 5 to 7 million Palestinians disappear, it should discover some way to co-exist with them. Israeli leaders on the centre and correct continue to stay away from facing this reality.
The brutal collective punishment inflicted on Gaza will most likely strengthen Hamas and reverse any hopes of a Middle East peace in the coming years.
Eric S. Margolis is an author, syndicated foreign affairs columnist, broadcaster, and veteran war correspondent. His most recent book is American Raj: America and the Muslim globe.
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Image from page 13 of “The Farm-poultry” (1912)
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Identifier: farmpoultry231unse
Title: The Farm-poultry
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors:
Subjects: Poultry Northeastern States Periodicals Poultry Sector Northeastern States Periodicals
Publisher: Boston, Mass. : I.S. Johnson and Co.
Contributing Library: U.S. Division of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library
Digitizing Sponsor: U.S. Division of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library
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One of the Weak Points in Co=Opera=tive Selling. The Journal of the National PoultryOrganization Society says that a single of the The objection to these foods, which areprincipally ground foods, is that the pricesare usually too high for the good quality of thegoods. The poultry foods of all kindsanalyzed appear, on cursory inspection ofthe tables, to be extremely close to guarantees,and as likely to go above as below them. Some Experiments with Poultry. Beneath this title, Bulletin No. 157, of theMaryland Agricultural Experiment Sta-tion, College Park, Md. treats of: Escalating the Egg Production, byC. L. Opperman. This paper discussesthe relation of age to egg production, pre-senting for this goal the records of aflock of 00 White Leghorn hens kept forthree years at this Station. The initial yearthe flock created an average of 171.3eggs per hen, at a profit, over the expense ofmaintenance, of four.16 or .07 per hen.The second year there was a lower of1,337 eggs, and a decrease of .60 in the
Text Appearing After Image:
View at White Birch Poultry Farm, Bridgewater, Mass. greatest handicaps on the development ofco-operative selling of poultry produce isthe lack of ordinary organization promptitudeon the element of producers. An instance iscited where the enterprise agent of a societycontracted to deliver 1,000 turkeys on acertain date, and made requisitions onmembers accordingly. Only 773 turkeyswere received in time for shipment on thisorder, but the next day 1,729 were sent in. Poultry Meals Mixtures of Excellent Qual=ity. Bulletin No. 340, of the New York Ag-ricultural Experiment Station, Geneva,offers the benefits of the inspection of feed-ing stuffs collected by the Commissionerof Agriculture throughout the fall and winterof 1910 II. The bulletin is devoted al-most exclusively to the bare statement ofresults of analyses, only 3 pages inconclusion being offered to comments. Thegeneral statement is produced that It is notunfair to state that the feeding stuff tradein the State of New York is in a extremely un-satisfactory co
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