T. Belman. This article attempts to answer the question raised today by me. Why did Bibi sign? The author suggests that Netanyahu is afraid of what a Trump presidency would mean for Israel. I don’t buy it . Remember, Newsweek is not a friend of Israel/
They say revenge is a dish best served cold.
It’s clear that President Obama got his revenge on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week. Netanyahu was forced to hail the new memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between Washington and Jerusalem as a historic achievement for Israel.
It is nominally the largest commitment of aid that the United States has ever given to any country. Politically, Netanyahu can’t afford to admit that the agreement is far from perfect, and his spokesman constantly repeated what an excellent agreement it is.
Obama, too, hailed the agreement, stating, “The new MOU constitutes the single largest pledge of military assistance in U.S. history, totaling $38 billion over 10 years, including $33 billion in FMF [United States Foreign Military Financing] funds and an additional $5 billion in missile defense funding. Both Prime Minister Netanyahu and I are confident that the new MOU will make a significant contribution to Israel’s security in what remains a dangerous neighborhood.”
Critics of the agreement, led by former prime minister Ehud Barak, point out that the numbers are misleading. The agreement is the largest amount of aid ever only in nominal terms. Adjusted for inflation, the agreement is actually smaller that the previous MOU signed 10 years ago.
The critics, who also include Amos Yadlin, the former commander of military intelligence, posit that if Netanyahu had not addressed Congress in opposition to the Iran agreement, Israel would have been given better terms. They assert that Israel would have received more money and without the two restrictions in the deal that may prove harmful to Israel.
The first condition agreed to in the memorandum eliminates the long-standing practice of allowing Israel to use 25 percent of the aid for local purchases. The second is Israel’s commitment not to ask for any supplemental money from the Congress. Israel has further sent a letter committing to return any extra money if Congress were to allocate it.
It’s with this provision that Obama gets revenge on his three major opponents simultaneously without him nor his preferred successor paying any price.
By putting a provision in the agreement that Israel will not lobby Congress for additional funds and will return any it receives, Obama has undermined the very existence of the American Israeli Public Affair Committee. AIPAC made a fatal mistake when it decided to publicly fight the Iran accord.
If Israel cannot request and will in fact return any funds allocated to it by Congress, one of the key functions of AIPAC is eliminated. Furthermore, one of AIPAC’s key achievements of the past few decades was Israel’s ability to use part of the assistance to fund local purchases. This has been eliminated.
Lastly, Obama gets to reassert the primacy of the executive branch in the making of foreign policy. For decades, Congress has “interfered” in U.S. relations with Israel by allocating additional funds that various administrations have been reluctant to give. By forcing Israel to sign a letter stating that it will return any additional money, Obama has removed Congress’s ability to interfere in the process.
Finally, by getting Netanyahu to sign the agreement, Obama has given ammunition to some of Netanyahu’s biggest critics. Ehud Barak, the former prime minister and defense minister, has dominated the news cycle in Israel for the past two days after he published a scathing op-ed in The Washington Post in which he criticized Netanyhu for using the new agreement as a club against him.
Obama accomplished all this by wrapping the more problematic aspects of the agreement into a $38 billion package of assistance. Who can possibly criticize Obama for not being supportive of Israel after all he just allocated $38 billion for its defense?
So why did Netanyahu sign this agreement, instead of waiting for the next president? Until he writes his memoirs, we will never be sure. The best explanation is that he is petrified by what might happen if Donald Trump is elected.
While Trump is popular among many right-wing Israelis, Netanyahu has a much more sophisticated understanding of the world Israel lives in. A Trump victory would introduce a level of uncertainty into the world that Israel fears. Nobody has any idea what Trump might do as president and that is something new in international relations.
The same goes for foreign aid. As the biggest recipient of American foreign aid, not to mention diplomatic support, nothing makes the Israeli security establishment as nervous as Trump’s comments that America has to worry about America first.
Israel, like the rest of the world, has greatly benefited from the U.S. being the benign hegemon in the world. The possibility that a Trump presidency could change that is troubling to most of the Israeli leadership.
Netanyahu probably decided to sign the current agreement instead of gambling with Israel’s future that he could do better with a President Trump or a President Clinton. By signing the agreement, Netanyahu is effectively helping Clinton, since this agreement takes the questions of the Democratic Party’s commitment to Israel off the table.
For President Obama, this is an amazing personal political achievement. For Netanyahu, he will never know if he made the right decision.
Marc Schulman is the editor of Historycentral.com.
There is nothing to stop both parties to the MOU, namely Israel and the USA, from cancelling or amending the MOU.
It is clear to me that this article is contrived to scare all friends of Israel to vote for Hillary rather than Trump.
With an executive order DT will change all this! Believe ME!
LOL…… he is not afraid of Trump nor the GOP…. it is only the democrats who display an increasing anti Israel and anti Jewish tendency in the last 8 years. BB probably figures that he cannot depend on future democratic party govs and a 20% increase is better than he had and is in the bag. If Trump gets in it can be changed for the better and if the dems get in, whoever it might be, its best not to take chances as the future will bring increasing pressure for the anti jews on the dem party.
the dems need to portray it as a victory for their anti semites and as pro israeli for their remaining jew hanger ons. The jewish future in the dem party is bleak.
this fairy tale is quite laughable
Israel is guaranteed by his enemy party, who is bound to stick with it, to an increase of 8billion smackeroos which amounts to a 20% increase over the last MOU at a time when America is in financial difficulty and any succeeding dem pres will be under great pressure by his leftist muslim constiuency to reduce aid to Israel.
LOL, as for the ridiculous myth that Trump would cut back, Trump has stated exactly the opposite, that he would NOT honor the limititations imposed by obama… and I beleive him wrt Israel more than any democrat. Also, the GOP congressmen are pro Israel.
BB has locked in any future democratic pres and gov if they win and the limitatiions will be meaningless if they dont win.
any agreement can be altered WITH THE APPROVAL OF THE PARTIES TO THE AGREEMENT. Hence if dems win there is a guaranteed minimum 8 billion increase and if Trump and GOP wins the agreement can be considered a point of departure for any desired changes.
If hillary wins no need to ask congress as pres can veto it and if hillary agrees with congress again no need to ask.
BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHA….LOLROFLMAO
this letter will have as much future credibility as the george bush letter to ariel sharon had with Obama.
Even Barak’s new beard do not hide his childish behavior nor the face of the clown who was run out of south lebanon by a bunch of weeping jewish mothers. This is the lunatic who brought hundreds of thousands of iranian missiles to the northern border and now has the audacity to seek to lead Israel again? I dont beleive his new beard will help israel forget his abject idiocy. As for his echo chamber Livni lets just say that these foreign financed moles seek every opportunity to yap their way into relevance but in the end they are irrlevant opportunistic losers and proven failures… representing foreign interests in Israel.
Let us remember that Israel can do without this money as it represents 1% of GDP…. we all thought that there would be a reduction from obama but there is a 20% guaranteed minimum increase. Israel can always spend its own money to build its defense industry on top of this windfall. How about an agressive military which makes profits from its military investments. Israel needs a navy plus greater deterrents so use the same amount again to skyrocket the military. or spend some money on more covert ops which liquidate enemies in their own lands.
There was no shortage of public criticism by respected Israeli figures, who reputedly have had Netanyahu’s ear (e.g., Caroline Glick), of this deal. This article is perfectly legitimate in describing the shortcomings of the deal, but I agree with Eric R. and Austin above that this mainstream liberal/left source has no real credibility, and the reasons given by Mr. Schulman are bogus.
We can only speculate as to why Netanyahu accepted this deal. I would offer three possible reasons, none of which are mutually exclusive.
First, because it cements in Israel’s acquisition of the F-35. Now, many say this airplane is a turkey and a waste of money for Israel, but with this agreement, Israel is not in fact having to pay for it, and what is more, as the first operator of this platform outside of the U.S., Israel is almost certainly being asked behind the scenes by the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin – indeed, being begged – to fix this jet and get it to perform approximately as advertised.
In this way, the American military and related military-industrial complex become dependent on Israel. A lot is riding on this jet; it is intended to be the centerpiece of American tactical airpower for decades to come, and more than a trillion dollars has already been spent on it. This dependence means, in turn, that there is only so far that a future American president is going to push Israel in real terms, diplomatic theatrics aside. So, OK, Israel loses the Congressional lever and loses money for domestic projects, but gains, for free (from Israel’s point of view) ties to the Pentagon and the world’s largest defense contractor that will be very ‘unbreakable’ indeed.
Then, completely contrary to what is said in the article above, it is Hillary Netanyahu may be afraid of, not Trump. Netanyahu is a conservative player, not a risk taker. He tends towards the “conventional wisdom”. Taken together, as an outside observer of the U.S. political scene, he probably expects that Hilary will be the next president, by hook or by crook (just as Obama “won” re-election by hook and mostly by crook). He probably expects that the American voter aside, the “fix” is in, and he better have some kind of deal with the U.S. wrapped up before she gets in, the woman who famously screams at people who piss her off that they are a “f****** Jew b******”. She’d give him a worse deal for sure – if for no other reason than to punish him for behaving as though he expected Trump to win – and again, the “fix” is in, so he better trim his sails accordingly.
Finally, Obama may have blackmailed him into doing this by threatening to go all out against him in the UN, in his last ten weeks in office, if he didn’t sign. Obama wanted him to sign this deal badly, for the reasons enumerated by the author of the article. Obama wanted to eviscerate AIPAC and he wanted to help Hillary win by promoting this deal as “proof” that the Democrats support Israel.
That doesn’t mean Obama won’t go after Israel in the UN after the election anyway, no matter who wins (MOU or no MOU, he will certainly do this if Trump wins in order to sabotage the relationship before Trump takes office – assuming Obama allows this – and he may do it anyway even if Hillary wins because he has proven that he’s that big of an asshole on many occasions). So, even though Netanyahu has personal experience with the fact that Obama’s word has never meant anything, political coward that he sometimes is, he might have flinched anyway, rationalizing this by telling himself, “Why give Obama the excuse?”
I wish this had not happened. Most of us here wish this had not happened. But Netanyahu is in charge, I”m sure he heard all the arguments, and he went ahead and did this. So, we are all left to hope that it turns out OK in the long run. I have not heard that Trump will tear up this MOU, but of course, I hope that is so and that he will if he wins. I have no doubt whatever that despite his flaws, Trump, if elected, will be the most pro-Israel U.S. president in history. That is what Obama & Co. are afraid of more than anything. And that is another reason, from Obama’s point of view, that this deal needed to be signed so bad, and that perhaps Obama went as far as assuring Netanyahu that there’d be no U.S.-led lynching party in the UN in his last months in office if the latter signed. There was urgency on both sides for this bad deal, for bad reasons all around.
Perhaps if Mr. Schulman was not wearing liberal media blinders, he’d have seen that the truth comes from the opposite direction from which he was looking, though the subject would be the same. Obama strong-armed and bribed Netanyahu into signing this because HE, not Netanyahu, was afraid of a Trump presidency.
The reasons given by the writer for Netanyahu’s signing hurry-up, are patently weak and unconvincing. Netanyahu is NOT stupid and knows that a better deal would be forthcoming with the next administration regardless of who wins. The fact alone, that inflation has eroded this package to become less than that of 10 years ago is enough for anyone who deals with money to make an increased allotment. The rest of the deal, is an obvious attack on Congress, and Netanyahu must have known that by agreeing, he was inserting himself into a struggle between Obama and Congress.
Obama is telling Metanyahu that he’s using him, giving him a lousy deal, and, by some mysterious way, forcing him to accept. The reasons, given by the writer, as I said above, don’t hold water.
It all rests now on how legally binding this MOU is. It is not the signed and sealed Treaty. Trump says he’ll scrap the MOU if elected, and there are a variety of circumstances when that could be done, I believe. If the MOU is actually scrapped, than the extra conditions requiring Israel to refuse to accept Congress voted extra funds may also be null.
Legal experts on this sitr who are keeping up with the changing legal scenery should weigh in in this.
Just the fact that this is written by someone from Loseweek (which is somewhere to the left of Che Guevara) makes this a totally worthless, piece of crap piece of garbage.
Hamas television has more credibility than these filthy, anti-Western Marxist scum.