US Military Aid to Israel: The cost and the victims
Report denounces weapons to Israel as AIPAC assembles
by News Sources on March 5, 2012
The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation just released its first policy paper, “U.S. Military Aid to Israel: Policy Implications & Options,” [PDF] which calls for the United States to end military aid to Israel.
The paper highlights the following facts, among others:
- From 2000 to 2009, the United States appropriated $24.1 billion of military aid to Israel, transferring more than 670 million weapons, rounds of ammunition, and related equipment.
- From 2000 to 2009, Israel killed at least 2,969 unarmed Palestinians, including 1,128 children, often with U.S. weapons in violation of the Foreign Assistance Act and Arms Export Control Act.
- From 2009 to 2018, the United States is scheduled to give Israel $30 billion in military aid, a 25 percent annual average increase over previous levels of military aid, despite its negative political and strategic ramifications.
- From the Eisenhower to Bush, Sr. Administrations, at least 10 times the United States conditioned aid to Israel, threatened to cut off aid to Israel, or sanctioned Israel for violating U.S. laws and/or working against foreign policy objectives.
- Since 2000, Members of Congress and/or the State Department have investigated or requested investigations into Israel’s potential misuse of U.S. weapons at least five times; however, no public action has been taken to hold Israel accountable for its violations of U.S. laws.
- With the same amount of money that the United States gives each year to fund weapons for Israel, the federal government could instead fund affordable housing vouchers for 350,000 low-income families, or green jobs training for 500,000 unemployed workers, or early reading programs for 900,000 at-risk students, or primary health care to 24 million people without insurance.
Source: War in Context
Apartheid is a Crime, Not an Analogy
[It may be that most war criminals do not talk much about war crimes and international law, for obvious reasons. But this is not true for imperialists, who, along with their dictatorial friends and Zionist allies, carry out the largest crimes against humanity, yet arrogantly claim the mantle of "humanitarian" wars and occupations "to spread democracy and justice." The US and Israel do not submit to the authority of international law, or of the International Criminal Court, which they nevertheless invoke against defiant warlords, bullies, and petty criminals who refuse to serve imperial designs. In fact, the Iraqi regime, however much their roots were as puppets of the US occupation, were unwilling to further extend the immunity of US soldiers from prosecution for war crimes, under Iraqi law. And this was the reason for the withdrawal of US troops--and why the "democratic" claims of the US ring hollow, around the world. So, too, are the claims of Israel to be "the only democracy in the middle east"--far too many know the history of the removal of Palestinians from historic Palestine--ethnic cleansing--and of Israeli's apartheid "double standard" toward Palestinians, to even consider that phony, arrogant, and racist claim. This article by Joe Catron in Ma'an breaks this down. -- Frontlines ed.]
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Palestinians being searched by Israeli troops at one of the countless "check-points" that block the movement of Palestinians across historic Palestine
By Joe Catron, Ma’an | March 4, 2012
As Israeli Apartheid Week unfolds around the world, apologists for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people scramble to defend their chosen regime’s system of racism, ethnic cleansing, and occupation, against the charge of apartheid.
“The apartheid analogy is fatally flawed,” the Jerusalem Connection’s Shelley Neese writes. The David Project’s David Bernstein says, “The apartheid analogy is specious and absurd.” The Anti-Defamation League has even circulated an old report: “The Apartheid Analogy: Wrong for Israel.”
These commentators are right, but not for the reasons they claim. An apartheid ‘analogy’ is fatally flawed, specious, absurd, and wrong for Israel because apartheid is not an analogy, but a crime as well-defined in law as embezzlement or kidnapping.
The most relevant statute, the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, perhaps muddies the waters by stating that “the term ‘the crime of apartheid’ … shall include similar practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa.”
But it goes on to define exactly what those and other “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them” are.
Most will sound familiar to anyone who follows news from Palestine. The ban on “arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups” should bring to mind Hana Shalabi, Khader Adnan, and 307 other administrative detainees held indefinitely without charges, evidence, or trials. This is further to the 4,078 Palestinian political prisoners sentenced by military courts or facing the imminent prospect, all under occupation laws no Jew will ever face.
The prohibition of “measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country” could have been meant to describe discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel. Read more »
The Guardian (UK): “If the Libyan War Was About Saving Lives, It Was a Catastrophic Failure”
[Those who were encouraged by the Arab Spring extending from country to country early this year--including into Libya, against the corrupt and brutal Gaddafi regime--have been sobered by the apparent suppression of the most democratic and revolutionary currents among the rebels, and the growing power of former Gaddafi officials, gangs, and neo-compradors in leading ranks of the rebel military fighters. We can hope the revolutionary forces driven underground will surface again, and soon, and struggle to put Libya on course for truly revolutionary transformations. But today, our hearts go out to the vast numbers who have suffered untold tragedies at the hands of vindictive, non-democratic, and non-revolutionary forces. -- Frontlines ed.]
Oct 27 2011
by Seumas Milne
As the most hopeful offshoot of the “Arab spring” so far flowered this week in successful elections in Tunisia, its ugliest underside has been laid bare in Libya. That’s not only, or even mainly, about the YouTube lynching of Qaddafi, courtesy of a NATO attack on his convoy.
The grisly killing of the Libyan despot after his captors had sodomised him with a knife, was certainly a war crime. But many inside and outside Libya doubtless also felt it was an understandable act of revenge after years of regime violence. Perhaps that was Hillary Clinton’s reaction, when she joked about it on camera, until global revulsion pushed the US to call for an investigation.
As the reality of what western media have hailed as Libya’s “liberation” becomes clearer, however, the butchering of Qaddafi has been revealed as only a reflection of a much bigger picture. On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch reported the discovery of 53 bodies, military and civilian, in Qaddafi’s last stronghold of Sirte, apparently executed – with their hands tied – by former rebel militia.
Its investigator in Libya, Peter Bouckaert, told me yesterday that more bodies are continuing to be discovered in Sirte, where evidence suggests about 500 people, civilians and fighters, have been killed in the last 10 days alone by shooting, shelling and Nato bombing. Read more »
Gaddafi And Western Hypocrisy
By Reza Pankhurst, Countercurrents.org
21 October, 2011
David Cameron’s statement regarding the killing of Moammar al-Gaddafi will go down as another piece of brash hypocrisy, which would be breathtaking if it was not so expected from the British premier. He mentioned that he was “proud of the role that Britain has played” in the uprising – intending of course the support given by NATO once it was clear that the Libyan people had risen up against the man en masse.
However he neglected to mention some of the other roles that Britain previously played with the Gaddafi regime which have undoubtedly had an effect on the events:
· Many of the weapons used by Libyan dictator’s regime were in fact purchased from Britain. According to the AP: “Britain sold Libya about $55 million worth of military and paramilitary equipment in the year ending Sept. 30, 2010, according to Foreign Office statistics. Among the items: sniper rifles, bulletproof vehicles, crowd control ammunition, and tear gas”
· The notorious Khamis brigade troops (Libya’s elite forces under the direct command of one of the Gaddafi son’s) contracted an £85 million command and control system from General Dynamics UK – one of the deals cut with the personal backing of the then British PM Tony Blair .
· Not only did the British arm the forces of the Gaddafi regime, they also trained them. The Khamis brigade troops were also trained by the SAS as well as being armed by British companies.
Cameron also stated that today was “a day to remember all of Colonel Gaddafi’s victims”. However, he neglected to mention those victims who were kidnapped and rendered to the Gaddafi regime by the British intelligence service such as Sami al Saadi who is now suing the British government for not only being complicit in his rendition and torture, but actually actively organizing it as highlighted by documents unearthed in Libya. Read more »
Twisting the News: the New York Times says US’ torture policy and practice is accidental
NYT’s Misleading Rendition of the Reason for Rendition
09/06/2011 by Peter Hart, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)
Documents discovered in Libya suggest a close relationship between the Libyan government and the CIA. The New York Times described it this way on September 3:
TRIPOLI, Libya — Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya’s former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the Libyan intelligence service — most notably suggesting that the Americans sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite that country’s reputation for torture.
And then today (9/6/11) the Times put it this way:
The cooperation appeared to be far greater with the American intelligence agency, which sent terrorism suspects to Libya for questioning at least eight times, despite the country’s reputation for torture. Britain sent at least one suspect, according to the documents.
As Glenn Greenwald pointed out on Twitter (in fewer characters), the whole point of rendition was to send prisoners to countries the United States knew would treat them a certain way. It wasn’t a series of accidents. In other words, the CIA used Libya not despite its reputation for torture, but because of it.
CIA, MI6 under scrutiny after secret files reveal Gadhafi rendition deals
The CIA struck rendition deals with Libya as early as 2002
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15365413,00.html
With the Gadhafi regime in tatters and the Libyan leader on the run, secret files in Tripoli have come to light which detail the depth of cooperation between the US and UK with Libya on the rendition of terror suspects.
The United States and Britain face embarrassing questions after reams of confidential documents discovered in Libya’s External Security agency headquarters exposed the depth of cooperation between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the UK’s foreign intelligence service MI6 and fugitive dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s secret service.
The documents, uncovered by officials from the Libyan transitional authority and researchers from Human Rights Watch during a sweep of government buildings, show that both the US and British intelligence services developed very close relations with Gadhafi. This cooperation took place even before the former Libyan leader was rehabillitated in the wake of his pledge to help in the war on terror and his renouncing of nuclear-weapons in 2004. Read more »
Oil imperialists scrambling for mega-deals in the new Libya
[Of course, US and EU petrodollar imperialists have had a firm hold on Libyan resources for a number of years. But the end of Gaddafi will open the door for some to get into the lucrative holdings, or to expand those they already have--at the expense of others untied to the NTC. Here is the latest speculative prospecting among the petrobanks and petrocorporates. -- Frontlines ed.]
Unseemly Scrabble for Libya’s Post-Gaddafi Oil Assets Underway |
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| While NATO members, led by France, piously proclaimed at the onset of their military offensive in Libya that their concerns were solely humanitarian, a covert tussle to gain a commanding lead in developing the country’s energy riches in light of Colonel Gaddafi’s departure is well underway.The Libyan economy depends primarily upon revenues from the oil sector, which contribute about 95 percent of export earnings, 25 percent of GDP, and 80 percent of government revenue.
Prior to the outbreak of conflict, Libya was exporting about 1.3-1.4 million barrels per day from production estimated at roughly 1.79 million barrels per day, of which approximately 280,000 barrels per day were indigenously consumed. But analysts believe that with reconstruction Libya could soon be exporting 1.6 million barrels per day of high-quality, light crude. Read more » |
When Gaddafi was a cash cow for the US and EU
[A description, written in February 2011, of US-Gaddafi relations during the period 2003-February 2011, when the people's rebellion destabilized Gaddafi's reliability as an ally and partner--and the US began searching for new, more reliable brokers for Libyan oil. -- Frontlines ed.}
Libya: How Gaddafi became a Western-backed dictator
Italy’ President Silvio Berlusconi and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
By Peter Boyle
Updated February 25, 2011 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/Green Left Weekly — On February 22, Muammar Gaddafi was boasting on state TV that the Libyan people were with him and that he was the Libyan revolution, even while his dwindling army of special guards and hired mercenaries attempted to drown a popular revolution in blood.
Civilians were strafed and bombed from helicopters and planes. Snipers with high-powered rifles fired into unarmed crowds. Two pilots flew their fighter jets to Malta rather than bomb their own people and another two are reported to have crashed their jets rather than attack civilians. Sections of the armed forces, several diplomats and a couple of ministers have abandoned the regime and, at the time of the writing, the east of Libya was in the hands of popular revolutionary committees.
And as more sections of his armed forces stared to go over to the people, Gaddafi ordered troops who refused to shoot their own people to be executed.
Gruesome footage of the carnage was revealed to the world despite the Gaddafi regime’s desperate attempts to seal the country by blocking the internet and locking out journalists. Read more »
When the US was out-sourcing torture jobs to Qaddafi
“When Qaddafi Was Our Friend“
With Muammar Qaddafi’s ignominious disappearance to who knows where, fast on the heels of President Obama’s proclamation that “Qaddafi’s rule is over,” it is easy to think of the United States as the dictator’s stubborn, persistent, and ultimately triumphant foe.
One remembers Reagan’s efforts to confront Qaddafi decades ago: the 1986 missile strikes, the skirmishes in the Gulf of Sidra, the labeling of Libya’s leader as the “mad dog of the Middle East,” and of Libya as a rogue state.
But the line that one is tempted to draw between U.S./Libyan relations then and U.S./Libyan relations now isn’t straight. While Qaddafi is now despised as an enemy, for much of the past decade he was treated as a friend. Read more »
Libya: Better Not Be Black
[The pro-US/EU interventionist media has routinely failed to provide news coverage to the widespread attacks on African migrants and black residents and citizens of Libya, other than to characterize, falsely, that all such black Africans have been mercenary soldiers for the fallen Gaddafi regime. The history of sub-Saharan migration to Libya--and by way of north Africa, to Europe--has not been told in non-xenophobic or non-racist terms, nor have the imperialist efforts to foster divisions and antagonisms between Africans and the Arab world been exposed. Genuine revolutionary and anti-imperialist forces must challenge such xenophobia and manufactured antagonisms. -- Frontlines ed.]
The New Libya
Tripoli, August 30, 2011–Yassin Bahr, a tall thin Senegalese in torn blue jeans, volubly denies that he was ever a mercenary or fought for Muammar Gaddafi.
Speaking in quick nervous sentences, Mr Bahr tries to convince a suspicious local militia leader in charge of the police station in the Faraj district of Tripoli, that he is a building worker who has been arrested simply because of his color. “I liked Gaddafi, but I never fought for him,” Mr Bahr says, adding that he had worked in Libya for three years laying tiles.
But the Libyan rebels are hostile to black Africans in general. One of the militiamen, who have been in control of the police station since the police fled, said simply: “Libyan people don’t like people with dark skins, though some of them may be innocent.” Read more »
United Nations Libya plans ‘revealed in report’
[In the Libyan "transition" from Gaddafi to new power relations, this report on the UN's transition plan may indicate how the US/EU/NATO forces may direct--(and camoflage, if the history of the US-controlled UN-MINUSTAH force occupation of Haiti is applied to Libya)--their role in the reconstruction. And while major countries throughout the imperialist system are apparently approving the plan as it takes shape, there are also reports of Libyan opposition to it. It deserves close attention by all friends of the Libyan people. -- Frontlines ed.]
Video: Leaked UN report outlines plan for Libya
AlJazeeraEnglish on Aug 29, 2011
A leaked document apparently detailing United Nations preparations for its role in post-Gaddafi Libya reveals plans for the world body to deploy military observers and police officers to the North African country.
The document was obtained and published by Inner City Press, the UN watchdog website.
Al Jazeera spoke to Matthew Russell Lee, a journalist who runs the Inner City Press.
Libya protest against moves to establish rebel power with superficially retro-fitted Gaddafi-ites
[It is important to note that former Gaddafi-regime officials, now in the NTC, are urging the NATO forces to continue. These same officials, and others in the Gaddafi regime, had maintained the friendly and collaborative US-Gaddafi relationship in recent years until the emerging revolt six months ago crippled Gaddafi's dependability as a deal-maker with the US, then the US turned its attention to controlling the rebel forces instead. Some of the Gaddafi officials who had kept the regime's relations with the US, jumped off the sinking Gaddafi ship and joined the rebel forces, often in commanding positions. -- Frontlines ed.]
Dissent in Libya against NTC nominations
AlJazeeraEnglish on Aug 28, 2011
The NTC has been nominating members for a new government, but there is public resistance to the appointments. Libyans have held protests within the country accusing the NTC of not being transparent enough.
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from a protest in Misrata, said: “They [the protesters] say the old guard of the Gaddafi regime are far too prominent in the list of people issued so far.
“They are also insisting there should be new faces for a new Libya.”
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons reporting from Misrata.
Libya: In desperation, the people cry for relief from vultures who have stolen the struggle against the oppressive Gaddafi
[It will be a long, difficult uphill climb for the people of Libya. As they rose in rebellion against the dictator Gaddafi, there were few and paltry democratic and revolutionary instruments to organize, unite, and lead their struggle. Now, the Gaddafi family is on the run, but opportunist and oppressive vultures--both domestic and imperialist-- are unleashing their own reign of terror on the very people who have challenged Gaddafi with such high hopes, and on African migrants subjected to racist stereotypes. The people have the challenge to seize back the struggle that has been taken from them, and to begin the remaking of a society in great pain. In this, the struggle is complex and difficult, but similar in some important ways to the challenge in the other countries of the Arab Spring. -- Frontlines ed.]
Evidence of Libya massacres?
Channel4News
Alex Thomson witnesses the terror of black Africans accused by rebels of being
mercenaries and evidence of alleged massacres by Gaddafi forces.
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Mass graves of people opposed to Gaddafi
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Now fears of disease rise as bodies pile up on the streets
Taking away dead is a priority as Tripoli struggles with a shortage of medicine, water, fuel and food
The Wall of Martyrs in Benghazi yesterday
By Kim Sengupta in Tripoli
Sunday, 28 August 2011
The shots came from two of the high-rise buildings, long bursts of Kalashnikov fire which made the rebel fighters on the ground scatter in alarm. The stubborn resistance at Abu Salim hospital, the last redoubt of the Gaddafi loyalists in Tripoli, was not yet over.
The scale of the fighting is now much reduced, but the bodies keep piling up – civilians caught up in the crossfire during the fierce violence of the past few days; fighters from both sides killed in action; those summarily executed, black men by the rebels for being alleged mercenaries, and political prisoners by the regime.
Outside Bab al-Aziziyah, Muammar Gaddafi’s fortress stormed last week, the dead, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, many with their hands tied behind their back, some gagged, have been left on display on the roadside by the revolutionaries. Inside Abu Salim, the dead from the mortuary, some with marks of manacles on their wrists, spill into other rooms at the hospital. Read more »
Did Wikileaks just reveal the US blueprint for Libya?
[Documents released by Wikileaks have revealed that, since 2003, the US had high hopes for Gaddafi's collaboration with US/EU economic and military power and designs. These hopes were based on expectations that Gaddafi's control of Libya was entrenched and unshakable--but this was sharply challenged and undermined by the 2011 Arab Spring-inspired revolt among the Libyan people. As a result, imperialism sought to preserve its position by cutting the now-unreliable US-Gaddafi relationship, and sought to influence, buy, and usurp control of the rebel forces, as the way to keep Libya as a dependable resource for the imperialist world. -- Frontlines ed.
An excerpt from the following document: "Nothing in the leaked documents reviewed here suggests that the NATO-backed removal of the Gaddafi regime was premeditated. On the contrary, the documents show that the United States was more enthusiastic about working with Gaddafi than perhaps Gaddafi was with the Americans – though clearly both stood to gain…..The Americans sought to expand their military presence in Africa and Gaddafi wanted to secure his regime against external threats....
...The documents support the view that the decision to go to war against Gaddafi – in the name of “protecting civilians” was more opportunistic – riding on the back of the “Arab Spring.”……It is likely that after the toppling of the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents by popular uprisings in January and February respectively, top American and NATO decision makers believed that once protests started against it, the Gaddafi regime would be too unstable and unreliable to deal with....
....But just as the Americans were happy to work with Gaddafi, they will be as keen to work with his successors, who now owe their positions to foreign intervention……]
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former US Secretary of State Rice and Muammar Gaddafi
by Ali Abunima, Electronic Intifada, August 26, 2011
The US administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were set on developing deep “military to military” ties with the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi, classified US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks on 24 August reveal.
The United States was keen to integrate Libya as much as possible into “AFRICOM,” the American military command for Africa which seeks to establish bases and station military forces permanently on the continent.
“We never would have guessed ten years ago that we would be sitting in Tripoli, being welcomed by a son of Muammar al-Qadhafi,” Senator Joseph Lieberman (Ind.-CT) said during an August 2009 meeting, which also included Senators John McCain and Susan Collins.
John McCain promising US weapons to Gaddafi in a time of collaboration
The records confirm that McCain, the Republican presidential candidate in 2008, strongly supported US arms sales to Libya and personally pledged to Muammar Gaddafi (also spelled “al-Qadhafi”) and his son Muatassim that he would push to get such transfers approved by Congress. McCain also revealed that the United States was training officers in Gaddafi’s army.
While the Americans pursued the relationship vigorously, they met with a cautious and sometimes “mercurial” response from the Libyans. In particular, the mistrustful Libyans wanted security guarantees that the Americans appeared reluctant to give.
“We can get [equipment] from Russia or China,” Muatassim told the visiting senators, “but
UK's Prime Minister Tony Blair played a major role sealing the 2003 relations with Gaddafi
we want to get it from you as a symbol of faith from the United States.”
In hindsight, given the US support for the NATO war against the Gaddafi regime, it is not difficult to understand why the Libyans wanted these guarantees.
Nevertheless, Gaddafi received high praise for his “counterterrorism” credentials from US officials.
The documents also reveal that the United States was keen to court Gaddafi’s sons, flying them to the United States for high level visits.
And, notably, none of the cables regarding high level meetings quoted in this post made any mention of American concerns about “human rights” in Libya. The issue never appeared on the bilateral agenda.
Does the removal of the Gaddafi regime now clear the way for the United States to pursue the plans for integrating Libya into AFRICOM under what the Americans must hope will be a pliable regime? Read more »
Libyan political prisoners set free
AlJazeeraEnglish on Aug 26, 2011
With Muammar Gaddafi on the run, many political prisoners who opposed him have been set free by Libyan rebel forces and are returning home.
At least 107 political prisoners held in the Abu Salim prison have returned home to the eastern city of Benghazi. Many families are scanning lists of those freed from prison, anxiously looking for the names of their loved ones.
Al Jazeera’s Scott Heidler reports from Benghazi.
