U.S. government: aiding and abetting a terrorist state

The United States and Israel have signed a memorandum that pledges US$38 billion in military aid to Israel over the next decade. The deal, which will increase current military aid to the colonial settler state by US$700 million per year from 2019, is the “single largest pledge of bilateral military assistance in US history”, according to the US State Department.

In a US presidential election campaign dominated by debate about which candidate has a plan to fight terrorism, no major figure in US politics is prepared to question the US government’s blank cheque to Israel, which stands accused of war crimes for its collective punishment of Palestinians.

On 16 September, Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump told Fox News that the US should emulate apartheid Israel’s policy of racially profiling Palestinians to thwart terrorism. “You know in Israel, they profile”, he said. “They’ve done an unbelievable job – as good as you can do.”

Israel is the beacon of freedom and liberty in the Middle East. – Christopher Pyne

Over the last year, Israeli occupation forces have killed nearly 230 Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank. Many Palestinian victims have been shot dead in what Israel alleges were “terror” attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers.

Democratic Party presidential candidate and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has similarly attempted to paint Israel as the victim of terrorism. Last March, Clinton told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, “The United States and Israel must be closer than ever, stronger than ever and more determined than ever to prevail against our common adversaries and to advance our shared values”.

“This is especially true at a time when Israel faces brutal terrorist stabbings, shootings and vehicle attacks at home”, she told the staunchly pro-Israel audience.

Clinton later reiterated her support following a shooting in a Tel Aviv shopping district that left four dead. “I stand in solidarity with the Israeli people in the face of these ongoing threats, and in unwavering support of the country’s right to defend itself”, she said.

Yet the reality for Palestinians living under military occupation is day-to-day collective punishment. Earlier this year, according to the online news and analysis site Electronic Intifada, Israel imposed a curfew on Hebron and surrounding villages, restricting the movement of some 700,000 people.

In August, Israeli defence minister Avigdor Lieberman announced a “carrot and stick” policy to force Palestinians in the occupied West Bank to submit to Israeli military rule. Under the policy, villages deemed home to alleged Palestinian assailants are dealt “heavy security”, while areas deemed free of “terrorism” are allowed to build (or rebuild) basic infrastructure, such as hospitals and kindergartens.

Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinians is tantamount to war crimes, observes Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah.

Since Israel’s 1967 invasion of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories has made been possible by American largesse. According to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of The Israeli lobby and US foreign policy, Israel has been the largest annual recipient of direct US economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War Two. Over that time, military aid as a proportion of Washington’s total aid budget to Israel has steadily risen to 100 percent, and amounts to more than US$10 million per day.

Such aid has allowed Israel to launch devastating military offensives against the Gaza Strip. Israel’s 2008/09 Operation Cast Lead and 2014 Operation Protective Edge killed more than 3,500 Palestinians, of whom at least two-thirds were civilians and a quarter children, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Gaza Health Ministry. Today Gaza City remains in ruins, unable to rebuild due to a gruelling, decade-long Israeli economic blockade.

Since Israel was founded in 1948, following the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland, successive Australian governments have, like Washington, pursued close and enduring ties with Tel Aviv. Numerous governmental trade delegations have visited Israel and missed no opportunities to expound the virtues of Israel’s apartheid state and colonialist policy.

In 2014, then education minister Christopher Pyne lavished praise on Israel, telling an Australia-Israel-UK leadership dialogue forum in Jerusalem, “Israel is the beacon of freedom and liberty in the Middle East”. Last December, attorney-general George Brandis told a subsequent forum, also held in Jerusalem, “Societies [such as Israel] based on liberalism and democracy and freedom and respect for the individual are not the rule, they are the exception”.

Earlier this month, Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop was in Tel Aviv inviting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Canberra on a state visit. “I want to take this opportunity to reaffirm our absolute enduring commitment to the state of Israel and our friendship, and invite you to come to Australia”, Bishop told the Israeli prime minister.

Netanyahu’s visit to Australia, expected early next year, will be the first by a sitting Israeli prime minister. It will also provide a valuable opportunity to protest Israel’s state terrorism and voice our solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle.