Lawsuit aims to block U.S. foreign aid to Israel as clandestine nuclear power

A lawsuit filed Monday in the D.C. federal district court challenges U.S. foreign aid to Israel. IRmep’s Center for Policy and Law is holding a conference call briefing about the lawsuit August 11 at 10 AM EST (details below). IRmep Press Release:

Grant F. Smith, Director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep)
Grant F. Smith, Director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep)

The U.S. is finalizing a ten-year memorandum of understanding which will reportedly boost aid to $4-5 billion per year. Grant F. Smith, Director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep), in the suit challenges the authority of the president and U.S. federal agencies to deliver such foreign aid to Israel. Such aid violates longstanding bans on aid to non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) with nuclear weapons programs. Since the bans went into effect, U.S. foreign aid to Israel is estimated to be $234 billion.

The lawsuit reveals how in the mid-1970s during investigations into the illegal diversion of weapons-grade uranium from U.S. contractor NUMEC to Israel, Senators Stuart Symington and John Glenn amended the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act to ban any aid to clandestine nuclear powers that were not NPT signatories. Symington clarified the legislative intent of the amendments: “…if you wish to take the dangerous and costly steps necessary to achieve a nuclear weapons option, you cannot expect the United States to help underwrite that effort indirectly or directly.”

The Obama administration follows precedents established since the Ford administration by ignoring internal agency and public domain information that should trigger Symington & Glenn cutoffs and waiver provisions governing foreign aid. The administration has gone further in criminalizing the flow of such information from the federal government to the public.

In 2012 the Department of Energy under U.S. State Department authority passed a secret gag law called “Guidance on Release of Information relating to the Potential for an Israeli Nuclear Capability.” The gag law and related measures promote a “nuclear ambiguity” policy toward Israel. The primary purpose of the gag law is to unlawfully subvert Symington & Glenn arms export controls, the suit alleges.

IRmep won unprecedented release of a Pentagon report about Israel’s nuclear weapons program through a 2014 lawsuit. A 2015 IRmep lawsuit dislodged CIA files about the NUMEC diversion.

IRmep’s Center for Policy and Law is holding a conference call briefing about the lawsuit August 11 at 10 AM EST. Register online here to receive the conference call phone number, access code and briefing materials. Registration closes 9 PM on August 10.

IRmep is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit researching U.S. Middle East policy formulation.

 

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THAT lawsuit WILL throw the cat amongst the Zionists!

Grant Smith amazing work.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/05/01/the-kennedys-vs-israel%E2%80%99s-lobby-how-israel-gained-control-of-american-foreign-policy/

Kennedy last President to challenge Israel on their nuke program.

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.715741

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/FRUS7_4_63.html

http://mondoweiss.net/2015/07/president-inspections-facility/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/28/AR2006042801326.html

Efforts to convince Israel to sign NPT

https://www.iaea.org/About/Policy/GC/GC43/Documents/gc43-8.html

DRAFT EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM ON
ISRAELI NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES AND THREAT
SUBMITTED BY THE MEMBER STATES IN THE LEAGUE OF ARAB STATES

An item on Israeli nuclear capabilities and threat was on the agenda of the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency for a number of years, and the Conference repeatedly adopted resolutions calling upon Israel to place its nuclear installations under Agency safeguards.

In 1992 the Conference endorsed the President’s statement that “… in view of the peace process already under way in the Middle East, the aim of which was to conclude a comprehensive and just peace in the region, and which included in particular discussions on the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East, it would be desirable not to consider the present agenda item at the thirty-sixth regular session.”

The policies of the present Israeli Government have obstructed the peace process in the Middle East and all initiatives to free the region of the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction, and in particular of nuclear weapons, have failed.

https://www.iaea.org/About/Policy/GC/GC42/GC42Documents/English/gc42-8_en.pdf

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/israel-nuclear-weapons-secret-united-states/380237/

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-nuclear-treaty-idUSTRE64S1ZN20100529

http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-nuclear-free-zone-in-the-middle-east-why-israel-will-not-join-the-non-proliferation-treaty/5351738

http://www.un.org/en/conf/npt/2010/statements/pdf/qatar_en.pdf

http://www.cfr.org/israel/israels-nuclear-program-middle-east-peace/p9822

Dear friends,

I wanted to let you know about a new petition I created on We the People, a new feature on WhiteHouse.gov, and ask for your support.

Here’s some more information about this petition: U.S. aid to Israel should be tied to settlement freeze, progress in peace process, and respect for Palestinian rights.

The Obama administration is reportedly close to providing Israel with up to $40 billion in funding over 10 years, making it the biggest U.S. military aid package ever given to any country. However, if American taxpayers are going to foot the bill for financing the Israeli military, which continues to occupy 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, then conditions must be put on the deal. The proposed military deal comes at a time when Israel’s oppressive and discriminatory settlement policies in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem continue unabated. The Obama administration should make it clear that there are strings attached to U.S. aid and that Israel’s failure to comply with a settlement freeze will have financial penalties.

Will you add your name to mine? If this petition gets 99,999 signatures by September 09, 2016, the White House will review it and respond!

You can view and sign the petition here:

https://wh.gov/iFAE4

Thanks for this report on an important effort. I hope to read about it in the MSM, and to hear about it on network TV and NPR, but I don’t expect that to happen. It would be easy to be cynical about the effort’s chances, but it is good that some people at least try to uphold the law. After all, it is a good law, and failure to follow it has had bad effects on the U.S. and on the non-Jewish people of the region who have suffered continuing oppression and dispossession enabled by the U.S.

PS: Normally I don’t approve of those who pick nits about grammar or diction in the language other people use in posts here, but it is relevant that a “gag order” is not a “law.” Neither the President nor any executive branch agency can “pass a law.” An executive order or regulation established pursuant to law is sometimes said to have the force of law, and perhaps that is the case here. In some cases, therefore, the distinction may not be important, but in this case precision of language may be important.

@Gregkin
Not a US citizen so not entitled to sign a petition to the US Govt. I appreciate your good intentions but the wording IMO , specifically the “strings attached ” and “will have financial penalties” are a little too weak and vague .It seems to me that they invite a carry on as normal finger wagging routine from the White House. Perhaps it would have been better to simply request that the deal be suspended completely or cancelled altogether if JSIL does not comply with the current US Obama Administration stated policy on illegal settlements viz:

http://www.cfr.org/israel/us-position-regarding-legality-israeli-settlements/p31730

“More recently, the official U.S. attitude has been more critical. In 2011, the Obama administration vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling the settlements “illegal” but former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice then denounced “the folly and illegitimacy” of continued Israeli settlement activity. “The United States of America views all of the settlements as illegitimate,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in August 2013.”