XPost: or.politics, alt.usage.english, alt.society.liberalism   
   XPost: nyc.politics   
   From: void@invalid.noy   
      
   Israel's nuclear weapons render it ineligible for US aid   
      
   by Grant Smith Posted onSeptember 24, 2012   
      
      
   The Israel lobby’s biggest and longest-running Washington boondoggles   
   are the massive annual weapons and economic packages to Israel.   
   Tightly coordinated campaign contributors (both individuals and   
   political action committees) and the Israeli government’s own quiet   
   demands manifest themselves within AIPAC-drafted foreign aid   
   legislation. The U.S.-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012   
   forces Americans to fork hard-earned tax dollars over to Israel’s   
   coffers on the pretext that it is in eminent danger. Yet declassified   
   documents reveal that even the current prime minister once worked   
   inside the state’s clandestine nuclear arms smuggling rings.   
   Transferring foreign aid to the Middle East’s sole nuclear weapons   
   state — which can obviously take care of itself — is not just unseemly   
   and unnecessary. It is illegal.   
      
   AIPAC’s publicly available tax return [.pdf] reveals it has now become   
   as seamlessly linked to its foreign principal as its parent   
   organization — the American Zionist Council — was when it was finally   
   ordered by the Kennedy administration to openly register as an Israeli   
   foreign agent in 1962. AIPAC spent $1,541,572 maintaining its   
   Jerusalem office. The office, led by Wendy Senor Singer, is described   
   as the official location for daily meetings with senior Israeli   
   government officials. It is also used to coordinate the visits of   
   supplicant U.S. politicians with funding from a mysterious captive   
   charity of no employees claiming to be an educational organization   
   [.pdf]. The Israeli government’s desires are seamlessly transcribed   
   into legislation at AIPAC’s headquarters in Washington — raising the   
   perennial question why AIPAC is not registering as Israel’s foreign   
   agent.   
      
   In relation to the sheer volume of American taxpayer dollars it   
   transfers to Israel, on paper AIPAC is a rather thinly-funded and   
   top-heavy organization. In its latest schedule of contributors, filed   
   in late April and just obtained by special request from the IRS, AIPAC   
   reported that only 1,949 individual contributors provided 61% of its   
   $64 million in total contributions and grants.* The top-tier donors   
   each gave on average $20,206, with the top donor chipping in an   
   impressive $6,610,181. Although contributions to 501(c)(4)   
   organizations like AIPAC are not tax-deductible, corporations and   
   partnerships can write off contributions as a business expense. One   
   AIPAC donor, an attorney in New York City whose confidential data the   
   IRS didn’t successfully scrub, presumably paid AIPAC with funds from   
   his law partnership, which AIPAC listed as the contributor’s address.   
      
   AIPAC claims in mandatory disclosures filed with the clerk of the   
   House of Representatives over the same time period that it spent   
   approximately 4% of its total budget on actual lobbying. AIPAC’s core   
   lobbying mission hasn’t changed much since AIPAC’s founder left his   
   Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs post in New York in 1951. Isaiah   
   Kenen’s mission was to obtain U.S.-taxpayer-funded weapons and aid by   
   lobbying from a Jewish Agency funded front group of “concerned   
   Americans” rather than working openly as Israel’s officially   
   registered foreign agent. In Kenen’s day, Israel first obtained   
   massive amounts of surplus WWII conventional weapons simply by   
   stealing or purchasing [.pdf] them to be scrapped and instead   
   smuggling them from the United States in violation of the Arms Export   
   Control and Neutrality Acts. The smuggling networks were established   
   and funded by small numbers of wealthy Zionists who were curiously   
   immune from criminal prosecution. When less enfranchised citizens   
   later demanded warranted prosecutions, the Justice Department simply   
   ignored them, establishing a policy that has held fast to the present   
   day.   
      
   The AIPAC-sponsored U.S.-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of   
   2012, signed into law by President Obama on July 27, 2012, makes   
   unprecedented demands on U.S. taxpayers and diplomats. It mandates   
   American economic largess to Israel via high technology, agriculture,   
   medicine, health, pharmaceutical, and energy transfers. It demands   
   funding for Israel Aerospace Industries (a corporation only recently   
   linked to Israeli espionage activities against the U.S.)   
   missile-defense programs and air-refueling tankers and munitions   
   Israel could use to unilaterally set off a wider war with Iran. Israel   
   even won a detour of used weapons from U.S. forces departing Iraq. The   
   aid law extends already generous loan guarantees to Israel.   
      
   However, the package also requires the U.S. president to issue to the   
   Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and House Committee on Foreign   
   Affairs a report on the status of Israel’s “qualitative military edge”   
   by Jan. 23, 2013. It is finally time for some hard truths. An honest   
   presidential response to this AIPAC-mandated reporting rider would   
   wipe clean all current and future U.S.-taxpayer-funded obligations to   
   Israel. A truthful presidential assessment would finally tell the   
   American people the following: “Israel has deployed a clandestine   
   nuclear arsenal with some components and materials stolen from the   
   United States. Our foreign aid laws therefore make Israel ineligible   
   for further taxpayer dollars.”   
      
   Such a truthful declaration would turn the tables on AIPAC and its   
   small group of donors now pushing Americans to steal from themselves   
   by systematically violating the Symington and Glenn amendments to U.S.   
   foreign aid laws. Ending aid would disentangle unwitting Americans   
   from Israel’s unending conflicts, illegal settlements, systematized   
   abuse of Palestinians, and clandestine nuclear proliferation in the   
   Middle East.   
      
   *As reported in 2011, in previous years AIPAC filed contributor   
   schedules with the IRS that improperly listed only two donor entries.   
   After numerous complaints were made to the IRS, AIPAC has apparently   
   been forced to again file proper schedules listing every contributor   
   donating more than $5,000.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)