Tuesday, July 28, 2009

US and Israel: Strange Days

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS) the United States has provided approximately $3 billion in grants annually to the state of Israel or roughly one-fifth of the annual foreign aid budget. Overall, Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since WWII. Israel is mandated to use 75% of its military aid from the U.S. to buy materiel from American based companies; a convenient form of corporate-socialism. In addition, Israel, a nation that has the per capita income equal to that of South Korea, receives favorable treatment and special benefits under U.S. assistance programs that may not be available to any other nations.

With such generosity, one would then expect that this client state would be as accommodating to the wishes of its Imperial master as possible. In today's Ha'aretz, protesters including one Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, the head of the Nir yeshiva in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, are stated as saying that Barack Obama is "a Racist" and "If he continues with his actions, he will bring about the disintegration of the American superpower."
The speeches were accompanied by jeers from the protesters at every mention of U.S. special envoy George Mitchell, who is currently in the region in a bid to reach a deal on settlement construction.
Opinion polls conducted within America and Israel point to a historical divergence in thinking. It was found that 79% of American Jews consider Obama pro-Israeli, while only a paltry 6% of Israeli Jews did. In Israel, disenchantment with Obama cuts across political parties, demographics, and social groups. In a poll conducted in mid-June on Americans perceptions of Israel, it was found that only 44% thought the U.S. should support Israel; down from 71% a year ago. Less than half of those surveyed considered themselves supporters of Israel; also down from over two-thirds before the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

A recently published Pew Global Attitudes survey of 25-nations found that the image of the U.S. had skyrocketed with the election of Barack Obama as president. The study determined that the, "Median level of confidence in the U.S. president among the 21 countries surveyed in both 2008 and 2009 shifted from just 17% for Bush in 2008 to 71% for Obama in 2009."

We have arrived at a very strange intersection. George W. Bush, the most loathed American president in the history of the American republic and perhaps the planet, had great support in Israel throughout his miserable reign of incompetence. While Barrack Obama on the other hand, a man who is adored across the world is uniformly loathed in Israel. With Arab states lining up behind Obama, the GCC formalizing a single currency and becoming a single economic union, Iraq a de facto American colony, and Iran in political and societal free-fall, one has to wonder if perhaps those billions in Israeli aid would be better served and appreciated elsewhere?

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