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Israel's Worldwide Role in Repression
http://israelglobalrepression.wordpress.com/download/http://israelglobalrepression.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/israels-worldwide-role-in-repression-footnotes-finalized.pdf Publisher: International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network Year Published: 2012 Pages: 28pp Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX15255 Researched, written, and edited by members of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, this pamphlet focuses on the role of Israel’s government, its military, and related corporations and organizations in a global industry of violence and repression. The states most involved with this industry profit from perpetual war and occupation across the globe while maintaining vastly unequal societies of their own. Abstract: This pamphlet focuses on the role of Israel's government, its military, and related corporations and organizations in a global industry of violence and repression. The states most involved with this industry profit from perpetual war and occupation across the globe while maintaining vastly unequal societies of their own. Israel exports weapons, technologies, training, and techniques of violence for use by governments and corporations against populations around the world. The expertise on which it relies has been developed through its occupation of Palestine and parts of Lebanon, Syria and Egypt as well as its repression of and military aggression against the people living there. The colonization of Palestine was once part of the British and French assault on the movement for Arab unity and independence that threatened European control of the region’s resources. The state of Israel is now a junior partner in the U.S.-allied1 strategy for the same control of the region’s resources.2 For Israel, this partnership has enabled the imposition and maintenance of a settler colonial state3 in Palestine. For its Western partners Israel has ensured control of what F.D.R.’s administration once described as "the greatest prize in human history" – Arab oil. The importance of Israel to the U.S. is a reflection of the growing significance of both oil and the arms trade to the world economy. The United States, the main arbiter of power worldwide, is Israel’s largest funder. The majority of U.S. aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance. The U.S. government gives Israel approximately 3 billion U.S. dollars per year in financial aid and several billion more per year in military assistance and contracts.5 The U.S. provides 18% or nearly a fifth of Israel’s military budget. From 1949 until 2011, the estimated cumulative total in U.S. direct aid to Israel is between 115 and 123 billion U.S. dollars. In 2009 Israel’s military spending accounted for an additional 15.1% of the country’s overall budget. It was the biggest defense spender as a percentage of GDP. It also spent the greatest amount of its overall budget on the military out of all developed countries. Israel uses U.S. aid to fund its ongoing occupation of Palestine and Syria and its military campaigns, which in turn serve as an laboratory to develop weapons, surveillance technology, and tactics of population control that are then marketed across the globe. Subject Headings |