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WaPo’s Walter Pincus says US is ‘going above and beyond for Israel’

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Last year, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus said the US must reevaluate aid to Israel in light of our country’s economic woes. Yesterday he revisited the issue and is aghast at the largess being thrown Israel’s way while the US economy continues to struggle.

Pincus:

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.

Pincus goes on to outline how Israel’s own economic troubles have led it to cut defense spending and raise taxes while our government continues to pump money in. Pretty sweet deal for Israel. In addition, he is upset the US is underwriting technology that it won’t even have access to. He finishes:

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.

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RE: “WaPo’s Walter Pincus says US is ‘going above and beyond for Israel’”

ALSO SEE: US Charity Secretly Funds Israeli Nukes, by Grant Smith, Antiwar.com, 5/18/12

(excerpt) Newly declassified FBI files are shining an inconvenient light on Israel’s nuclear weaponization research program and how it has been secretly funded from the United States. . .
. . . what the FBI uncovered in the 1990′s about the Weizmann Institute clearly documents that it was both involved in nuclear weapons development and fundraising through a US non-profit charity. That pile of evidence has only deepened in intervening years. . .
. . .In 1987 the Department of Defense contracted a study titled “Critical Technology Issues in Israel” led by Dr. Edwin S. Townsley, Deputy Director of the Science and Technology Division of the Institute for Defense Analyses. According to leaks to the press, the IDA study documented Weizmann scientists developed a cutting-edge high-energy physics and hydrodynamics program “needed for nuclear bomb design.” Weizmann also worked on advanced methods for enriching uranium to weapons-grade through the use of lasers. As US foreign aid for Israeli conventional weapons purchases and development surged, so too did Weizmann’s US charitable funding for secret weapons development.
The American Committee for the Weizmann Institute added $50 million in US tax-deductible charitable contributions to its half billion in net assets according to its latest public tax filing. In 2009 it dispatched $43 million for “program services” in the “Middle East and North Africa” at the Weizmann Institute. AIPAC, which features Weizmann programs at its annual policy events and is intertwined through chairman emeritus Robert Asher’s ties to both organizations, would no doubt muster the full might of its 50-plus executive committee organizations to derail any attempt at overdue regulation of Weizmann during the current showdown with Iran. . .
. . . By knowingly turning a blind eye on Weizmann’s assistance to Israel’s clandestine nuclear program and refusing to hold Israel and its US collaborators responsible for NUMEC diversions, the US has violated Article 1 of the NPT. It states, “Each nuclear-weapons state undertakes not to transfer, to any recipient, nuclear weapons, or other nuclear explosive devices, and not to assist any non-nuclear-weapon state to manufacture or acquire such weapons or devices.” It is clear that the Justice Department did not follow the Weizmann investigation through to its logical conclusion, even after discovering the US weapons-funding front. The key conclusion of a recently declassified General Accounting Office report is that the US government similarly failed to properly investigate the NUMEC uranium diversions. Taxpayers, who must pay extra revenue to the US Treasury because of the Weizmann Institute’s unjustifiable tax deductible status, have long been made involuntary accomplices in Middle East nuclear proliferation. Given these tragic US failures to uphold rule of law, it is now time for the International Atomic Energy Agency to take notice of the true violators of the NPT. . .

ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2012/05/17/us-charity-secretly-funds-israeli-nukes/

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This column is particularly interesting because, as Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
put it, “Connections between Walter Pincus and the intelligence sector are longstanding and well-known,” starting from his work in the 1950s for Army Counterintelligence and including various foreign missions he has admitted the CIA paid him to do. The Washington Times once wrote that people in the CIA refer to him as the agency’s “house reporter.”

One conclusion I think it’s fair to draw from this piece: Behind the universal groveling to Israel, there are some real differences within U.S. ruling circles about policy toward Israel.

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I have an idea, how about if we cut the 3 billion we give to Israel, and since we are trying to save money, cut the billion we give to the Palestinians, and the money we give to the UN that funds UNRWA.

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In the past I thought Pincus played a role in keeping roadblocks against reporting honestly about the I/P issue up in which ever media outlets he was working for.

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Henry Norr,
You are absolutely right when you say that Walter Pincus represents a significant current within the ruling class that is unhappy with the wholehearted US embrace of Israel. (Not your exact words).

The same can be said for Jimmy Carter’s book, Peace not Apartheid. Carter knew perfectly well that he would receive a smear attempt by the Israel Lobby. Retired Presidents don’t normally run these risks. Carter must have believed the US to be on the wrong track.

And for that matter, Walt and Mearshimer are card-carrying members of the foreign policy Establishment, who normally do not court public controversy.

So that’s three public criticisms of the excessive US dependence on Israel, and I think it’s fair to say that they represent a significant current within ruling-class opinion.

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