Should the U.S. put solving Israel’s budget problems ahead of its own?

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Is U.S. going above and beyond for Israel?

Walter Pincus

Washington Post

Should the United States put solving Israel’s budget problems ahead of its own?

When it comes to defense spending, it appears that the United States already is.

Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, will meet Thursday in Washington with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta to finalize a deal in which the United States will provide an additional $680 million to Israel over three years. The money is meant to help pay for procuring three or four new batteries and interceptors for Israel’s Iron Dome short-range rocket defense program. The funds may also be used for the systems after their deployment, according to the report of the House Armed Services Committee on the fiscal 2013 Defense Authorization bill.

The Iron Dome funds, already in legislation before Congress, will be on top of the $3.1 billion in military aid grants being provided to Israel in 2013 and every year thereafter through 2017. That deal is part of a 10-year memorandum of understanding agreed to in 2007 during the George W. Bush presidency.

“Those funds are already committed to existing large-ticket purchases, such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, C-130J transport planes and other items,” according to George Little, spokesman for Panetta. He also said the Israelis had increased their own spending on Iron Dome this year and the U.S. funds are to “augment” their funding.

And there’s more money involved. The House committee version of the defense authorization bill, up for debate on the House floor this week, includes another $168 million “requested by [the] Government of Israel to meet its security requirements,” according to the panel’s report. This money is to be added to three other missile defense systems that have been under joint development by the United States and Israel. The $168 million is in addition to another $99.9 million requested by the Obama administration for those programs.

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So here is the United States, having added to its own deficit by spending funds that it must borrow, helping to procure a missile defense system for Israel, which faces the threat but supposedly can’t pay for it alone.

To add insult to injury, Pentagon officials must ask the Israeli government-owned company that is profiting from the weapons sales — including Iron Dome — if the United States can have a piece of the action.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/2012/05/16/gIQAJhikUU_story.html

[mawilson 2,133]

Should the U.S. put solving Israel’s budget problems ahead of its own?

$3.1 billion is less than the amount of money this government adds to our national debt every single day, day in and day out. Foreign aid truly is a drop in the bucket.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

This article may be yet more of the reaction from the U.S. military intelligence community to Israel's ongoing push for a military strike on Iran.

Walter Pincus' connections with the U.S. intelligence sector are long-standing and well-known, beginning in the 1950s with his work for Army Counterintelligence, and including various foreign missions he has admitted the CIA paid him to do. According to the Washington Times, people in the CIA refer to him as the agency’s “house reporter.”

It looks like there is a lot of discussion regarding Israel going on within the national security sector, on several levels.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Walter Pincus was special investigator on Sen. J. William Fulbright's staff during the investigation of foreign agents in the U.S. The investigation was launched over concerns about "Lavon-stye" Israeli operations to influence U.S. policy.

As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [Fulbright] investigated compliance — or lack of it — with the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, passed in 1938 to counteract foreign propaganda and subversion. After intensive investigations by the Senate staff, Fulbright held public bearings in 1963 to spotlight violation by agents of foreign governments.

The intent of the act was clear: Americans have the right to know when fund-raising or political lobbying, however well cloaked, is undertaken by an agent of a foreign government, on behalf of that government. This would be particularly applicable to fund-raisers in the U.S. who had tax-free status with the Internal Revenue Service but whose policies were controlled from abroad through agents here, and whose funds were channeled through conduits to governments overseas for other than charitable purposes. Such contributions earned for donors and recipients tax-free status from the IRS.

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Fulbright quietly authorized the examination of the Jewish Agency-American Section as an unregistered foreign agent. The JA was the American arm of the Jewish Agency for Israel, formerly the World Zionist Executive. That, in turn, was directly linked to the government of Israel.

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When Fulbright returned to Arkansas to take part in a state-wide political campaign he was harassed at his fund-raiser. Zionists badgered him over his "anti-Israel" views. The decision to expose the Israeli lobby, according to Fulbright’s biographer Randall Bennett Woods, "was not Fulbright’s but [staffer Walter] Pincus’s, who was himself Jewish." His investigation, writes Woods, "had revealed clearly that agents of the Jewish Agency and other American Zionists had violated provisions of the Foreign Agents Registration Act."

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Fulbright immediately came under severe pressure to suppress the information which Pincus had gathered on American Zionists. Several prominent American Jews asked to testify, but made conditions. They demanded that they not testify under oath, that no transcript would be kept of the meeting, and that nothing concerning the meeting would be made public. The committee rejected the demand, and Jewish Agency representatives testified. The committee announced the meeting to the press, but withheld a transcript of the closed-door session. The Executive Director of the Jewish Agency and his deputy testified in executive session because the White House intervened.

Fulbright next planned to read portions of the two men’s testimony on the floor of the Senate as part of the effort to modify the Foreign Agents Registration Act. But, writes Woods, "a last-minute appeal by [President] Lyndon Johnson stopped [Fulbright]." In their testimony, says Woods, "the representatives of the Jewish Agency admitted that they had paid the expenses of Johnson and his entourage at the 1960 Democratic National Convention."

The Fulbright-Pincus investigation resulted in a major improvement in the Foreign Agents Registration Act. It thereafter outlawed political contributions by foreign governments or corporations through their agents, required registration by agents of foreign interests with the Justice Department, and full disclosure of their financial dealings. The revision also required agents to declare for whom they were working when they lobbied legislators.

These changes caused the Jewish Agency to alter its fund-raising structure, but not its fundamental ties to the government of Israel. The structure became more intricate and difficult to trace.

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The Senator proposed in 1970 that America should guarantee Israel’s security in a formal treaty, protecting her with armed forces if necessary. In return, Israel would retire to the borders of 1967. The UN Security Council would guarantee this arrangement, and thereby bring the Soviet Union — then a supplier of arms and political aid to the Arabs — into compliance. As Israeli troops were withdrawn from the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank they would be replaced by a UN peacekeeping force. Israel would agree to accept a certain number of Palestinians and the rest would be settled in a Palestinian state outside Israel.

The plan drew much favorable editorial support in the United States. The proposal, however, was flatly rejected by Israel. "The whole affair disgusted Fulbright," writes Woods. "The Israelis were not even willing to act in their own self-interest," he adds.

http://www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_detail.aspx?id=83

Some of Pincus' investigative work is still classified at the National Archives, but is supposedly going to be released in full in 2013. It seems something has lifted and he feels free to speak out again.