Obama postured “the more we can work together to encourage the parties involved. . . to have constructive dialogue and try to negotiate out of the current impasse, the better off Lebanon will be, the better off the world will be.” His face and his folded hands, however, said otherwise. He offered the rhetoric on the 14th, gave Israel billions of dollars in weapons on the 16th, and then on the 19th presented Israel an additional $202 million in weapons.
As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency explains, the extra $202 million is “considered separately from Israel's defense assistance package, which was in the foreign operations bill also signed in recent days [the 16th], because it [the extra $202 million] is not purely assistance; it is considered an investment in systems used by U.S. troops and that are profitable for the American companies involved.”
Well, at least the JTA admits there is something more than altruism happening here. The Whitehouse has repeatedly voiced its support of Lebanese independence. The Western media and the general populace have nodded approval of this fundamentally noble status. Independence, after all, seems the bedrock of the free-enterprise system that ribbons around the Western world. Yet the idea of an independent Israel . . . unthinkable. It is a standing joke that Israel is the 51st state. But the mafia appears child’s play when compared to the systematic oppression and murder bought with a package salary of billions of dollars in weapons, together with a bonus of absolute political protection from international law. The yoke of dependence between the US and Israel is pulling the world into a military maelstrom.
*note the non-parallel reference here. Obama refers to “Israel,” a state, and to the “Palestinians,” a people, not to “Palestine” a state, as though the latter were not under consideration.
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