5 Things You Need to Know About the U.S.-Israel Relationship Under President Obama

from WhiteHouse.Gov March 1, 2015 ** Full Article Links HERE

NOTE: Truth is always difficult. Facts, though, can be reviewed, studied and verified if correct. Much of what we think we know should be questioned. 

Here are the five key facts you need to know about the U.S.-Israel relationship under President Obama: 

1. A strong defender: President Obama has strengthened Israel's defense in concrete and unprecedented ways: 

• Israel remains the leading recipient of U.S. foreign military financing (FMF), receiving over $20.5 billion since 2009. 
• The United States in Fiscal Year 2014 provided Israel with more security assistance funding than ever before. In Fiscal Year 2016, which marks the eighth year of a 10-year, $30 billion Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel, we have asked Congress for $3.1 billion in FMF funds for Israel.
• The President has provided $2.9 billion in funding for missile defense programs and systems. Since 2011, the United States has provided Israel with over $1.3 billion for the Iron Dome system alone, including $225 million in short-fuse funding last summer.
• The U.S. and Israel regularly conduct joint exercises to improve our military capabilities and strengthen our bilateral security.

2. An international ally: Under President Obama, the U.S. has led global efforts to defend Israel's legitimacy on the world stage: 

• Last year, the U.S. opposed 18 resolutions in the UN General Assembly that were biased against Israel.
• On five occasions last year, the U.S. cast the only “no” vote against unfair anti-Israel measures in the UN’s Human Rights Council.
• The U.S. worked with Israel and the European Union to organize the first UN General Assembly session on anti-Semitism in UN history, held in January 2015.

3. A proponent of peace: The President has strongly supported Israel in its quest for peace with its neighbors:

• President Obama has repeatedly stood up for a two-state solution that ensures the peace and security of Israelis and Palestinians.
• Under the President’s direction, Secretary Kerry initiated an intensive, collaborative effort to facilitate negotiations for a comprehensive peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.
• The President prioritized Israel’s security by asking one of our foremost military experts to help develop security arrangements that ensure a two-state solution leaves Israelis more secure, not less.

4. An economic partner: Under President Obama, the U.S. has a strong and robust commercial relationship with Israel:

• This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the United States-Israel Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which was the first FTA entered into by the United States.
• U.S. goods exports to Israel in 2014 were $15.1 billion, up 9.6% ($1.3 billion) from 2013, and up 64% from 2004.  U.S. exports to Israel are up 587% from 1984 (Pre-FTA).
• U.S. goods imports from Israel were $23.1 billion in 2014, a 1.1% increase ($242 million) from 2013, and up 58% from 2004. U.S. imports from Israel are up 1,203% from 1984.
• The U.S. continues to invest in the BIRD Foundation, a U.S.-Israeli partnership between private sectors to expand private high tech industries. Since its founding in 1977, the $295 million in grants have been awarded to 800 partnerships, generating over $10 billion in product sales.

​5. A support system for refugees and migrants: Under President Obama, the U.S. has invested millions in helping Israeli immigrants:

• In the last 6 years, U.S. humanitarian assistance to refugees and migrants travelling to Israel totaled $140 million. This funding is used to help transport eligible migrants to Israel, transitional shelter, intensive Hebrew-language programs that focus on ne
• wly-arriving immigrants, or youth programming in Israel.
Since Israel’s founding, the U.S. has provided Israel with more than $120 billion in bilateral assistance and, under President Obama’s leadership, the U.S. will continue to be Israel’s strongest ally and staunchest supporter in its pursuit of peace and security in the Middle East. 
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Israeli Center-Left Leader Seeks Path Forward

From The New York Times March 27, 2015  Article Links HERE

Tel Aviv- Isaac Herzog is not acting like a sore loser. He is not seeking scapegoats to blame for his center-left Zionist Union’s failure to capture enough votes in Israel’s election last week to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is not shouting “I told you so” as the Obama administration and Europe threaten to isolate Israel as never before.

Instead, Mr. Herzog is both promising to lead a “fighting opposition” if Mr. Netanyahu, as expected, forms a narrow coalition of right-leaning and religious parties, and leaving at least a crack in the door for the long-shot possibility of joining a unity government. He does not see the campaign in simple win-loss terms: The Zionist Union, after all, will have 24 of 120 seats in Israel’s next Parliament, more than the 21 its two parties had in the last one.

“I’m pleased with the result, and I’m not pleased with the outcome,” Mr. Herzog said in an interview. “We’re already moving on,” he added. “People stop us in the street all the time, stop me and say thank you for giving us hope and make sure Netanyahu doesn’t screw us up.”

The postgame analysis in Israel is, roughly, that after a surprisingly close battle, Mr. Netanyahu used the power of incumbency and scare tactics to turn the tables in a 72-hour blitz in which he tacked hard to the right. Mr. Herzog, a consensus-builder short on charisma, was slow and soft in his response to the onslaught, and never quite crossed the threshold as a strong-leader alternative.

Yet beyond any shortcomings of candidate and campaign tactics, the election has raised profound questions about the prospects for Israel’s moribund political left and amorphous center. Though the Zionist Union and other parties spent most of their time talking about kitchen-table concerns, in the end it was existential questions like peace with the Palestinians and the Iranian nuclear threat, along with internal, tribal rifts, that seem to have been the deciders.

If Mr. Herzog was selling hope against Mr. Netanyahu’s fear, fear won in part because Israelis are not hopeful about the situation they see surrounding them.

“Of course they made mistakes, but not terrible mistakes, not tragic mistakes. It’s much deeper than that,” said Yossi Sarid, who served as a leftist Parliament member and minister from 1974 to 2006.
“Philosophical arguments, theoretical arguments, are not for influence — the only factor which influences sometimes is reality by itself,” he added. “People think what they see, and as long as our reality is like the reality of the Titanic before the collision, or in Pompeii in the last days before the eruption, so nobody will influence them or convince them.”

Ari Shavit, a prominent columnist and author, said the Zionist Union also failed to articulate what, exactly, Israelis could be hopeful for, promising only to improve relations with Washington and try to return to negotiations with a Palestinian leadership that most Israeli Jews do not see as a partner for peace.

“Hope was very hollow, and fear is much deeper,” Mr. Shavit said. “The peaceniks have never internalized the fact that the right got something right, and the only way to fight the right is by giving an answer.

“They didn’t market the utopian peace because no one in this country will buy it,” he continued. “Instead, they sold ignoring the occupation, and ignoring the traumas. They didn’t bring a new, benign peace context that is solid and realistic.”

Some say a better strategy would have been to fight fear with fear. “Instead of shouting ‘things are terrible,’ the left wing should have told the public the truth,” Sever Plocker argued in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot. “ ‘Yes, right now your situation is good, but Netanyahu’s policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians is necessarily leading to the establishment of a binational state in which things will be bad, very bad, for you and us. Truly scary.’ ”

But Mr. Herzog said in the interview that Israelis had been warned of isolation and a binational state “for 50 years, that’s long term.” And in any case, he said, “If you hit too hard on that people view it as a kind of lefty position, you’re with our enemies.”
He complained that Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign consisted of “a lot of lying, a lot of false blame and false rhetoric,” and acknowledged, “We found ourselves kind of defending ourselves uselessly about it.”

“What could be our hate rhetoric?” he asked rhetorically at one point. “I’m trying to think.”
The son of Israel’s sixth president and grandson of its first chief rabbi, Mr. Herzog has since 2003 served in Parliament as a member of the left-leaning Labor Party. Yet for the bulk of a 40-minute conversation, he spoke of the center, not the left, and then ultimately defined his camp as “the center-center-left.”

“I have huge respect for the left — the left is bold, the left is very focused and is very ideological — but most of the rank and file of the Israeli public wants something more pragmatic,” he said. “I moved my party to the center and I will continue forcefully to stage my party to the center. The only way to win in Israel is by being in the center.”

The center, though, is already occupied — by Yair Lapid, who refused to meld his Yesh Atid party into the Zionist Union and won 11 Parliament seats last week, and now by Moshe Kahlon, who broke from Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party to form his own, called Kulanu, which won 10 seats and is expected to join the coalition. Both campaigned on the economy, not the security issues that have long defined Israel’s political map.

Mr. Herzog acknowledged that his campaign failed to expand the center-left base. Next time, he said, he would reach out more to the working-class and children of immigrants. He would emphasize Jewish tradition, understanding the damage caused when the Israeli artist Yair Garbuz derided Israelis who hold old customs dear at the left’s big pre-election rally.
He said he would also try to forge a deeper alliance with Arab lawmakers who have until now operated outside the political and parliamentary mainstream.

Last weekend, Mr. Herzog made a brief getaway with his wife to an upscale spa resort in Israel’s north.

By Tuesday, he had resumed meeting with activists in the Tel Aviv suburbs of Petah Tikva and Yehud. On Wednesday, he was taking meetings in the back room of Shine & Sharp, a Tel Aviv steakhouse, fueled by a bottle of Coke Zero.

He said he had not spoken with Mr. Netanyahu since calling him to concede on the morning after the election, despite persistent rumors that they might yet join forces — rumors he did not definitely deny.

“Netanyahu said there’s a huge chasm between us. He said during the elections that we are anti-Zionists, and he said during the election that I will basically sell the country to the Arabs,” Mr. Herzog said. “I haven’t heard anything to the contrary. I’m not intending to be the troubleshooter or the fixer or the bleaching element in his government.

"We will try to expose the weakness of this coalition," he said "my goal will always be to bring hope, to show that there is a sincere, reasonable and sensible voice in the arena."  Click HERE to keep reading.

Iran Comes to the Israeli Border

FULL ARTICLE LINKS HERE
from Foreign Policy March 25, 2015 by Sara Elizabeth Williams 

NOTE: A truly scary analysis. Read this is if you want to understand the Middle East Today. 
As the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah try to drive back rebel fighters in southern Syria, they threaten to spur a larger conflict in one of the Middle East's most volatile regions.

MAN — In Jordan, Syria’s war is everywhere. Over 600,000 refugees have fled to the country: Cities like Irbid and Zarqa teem with new Syrian inhabitants, and Zaatari camp, which houses 85,000 exiled Syrian Sunnis, is home to at least four donkeys named Bashar. Above it all, coalition cargo planes and screaming F-16s slice through the spring sky toward northern Syria and Iraq, daily reminders of Jordan’s role in the coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State.

But the most potent force in the battle unfolding just across Jordan’s northern border is still invisible: Iranian power.

Over the past six weeks, soldiers belonging to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah have played a major role in the Syrian regime’s long-awaited offensive on the southern province of Daraa.

The southern province is the moderate opposition’s last stronghold, and the site of steady rebel gains since early summer 2014. With no Islamic State presence to contend with, Free Syrian Army-affiliated groups and the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front have found ways to work together, tightening their hold on the region. Their reach covers most of the Jordan-Syria border, providing them with valuable supply lines leading to Amman. On March 25, reportedly supported by an influx of arms from their international backers, a coalition of rebel groups were able to seize the Daraa town of Bosra al-Sham from the Syrian regime and its allies.

Yet while the opposition fighters vying for control in this part of the country are mostly locals, their adversaries are not. Sunni rebels, activists, and researchers say the well-trained Iranian-backed Shiite fighters on the ground are more numerous and more powerful than the Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces (NDF), a government-funded paramilitary force they are fighting alongside.

If anything, the Iranian militias seem to be leading the fight, said Issam el-Rayyes, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army’s Southern Front.

“We are costing them a lot of losses, but they don’t stop. It’s clear this isn’t the [Syrian army],” he said. “They are fighting for beliefs.”

According to Rayyes, the U.S.-backed Southern Front has about 2,500 men in the battle, compared to the regime’s 5,000. He estimates that just one of every five of the men on the opposite side are Syrian — a number with which several independent experts agreed. The other 4,000 are Iranian-backed Shiite fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Afghanistan.

Phillip Smyth, a researcher of Hezbollah and other Shiite militias, said that Iran and its allies have attracted foreign fighters by painting the fight as a battle to the death with Sunni extremists, in which Shiites are obliged to defend the Sayyida Zainab Mosque in Damascus, one of the holiest shrines for Shiites.  

(MUCH more in this vital article. Click HERE to keep reading)

For even more in depth analysis see this Guardian Article Click HERE

Jewish-Arab coexistence against the odds

ARTICLE LINKS HERE

by Yoram Ettinger March 20, 2015 in Israel Hayom

The Israeli election shed some light on the increasingly local -- rather than national or regional -- priorities of the 1.7 million Israeli Arabs. It served to underscore the intensifying Israelization/localization of their self-determination; the widening cultural/ideological gap between Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians; the deep fragmentation within the Israeli Arab sector (despite the current merger between the individual Arab parties); their growing appreciation of Israel's civil liberties and expanded trust in Israel's political system; and the gap between the worldviews of a growing number of Israeli Arabs and most Arab Knesset members.

According to a Feb. 17 public opinion survey conducted by Tel Aviv University's researcher Arik Rudnitzky, a project manager at the Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation, the most pressing issues for Israel's Arabs are employment, education, health care, neighborhood crime and women's rights (43%), ahead of enhancing the status of the Arab community in Israel (28.1%) and the Israel-Palestinian conflict and negotiations (19%).

Moreover, the survey concluded that 61.3% of Israel's Arabs consider the Knesset an effective arena to address their concerns. Only 12.2% dismiss the Knesset as a platform for improving the status of Israeli Arabs.

Another Feb. 17 poll, conducted by Stat Net, indicated that 77% of Israeli Arabs prefer Israeli -- over Palestinian -- citizenship, and 64% are optimistic about Jewish-Arab relations. In an unprecedented fashion, 60% of Arab voters said they would like to see the Joint Arab List (the merged Arab parties, which went on to win 13 seats in the election) joining Israel's coalition government. While 30% would join only a coalition government led by Labor (the Zionist Union), 28% would join a coalition headed by either Labor or Likud.

Contrary to most Arab Knesset members, 70% of Israeli Arabs care more about their socio-economic status than about solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are more concerned about the standard of living among Israeli Arabs in the city of Ramle than about the nationalistic aspirations of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Similarly, the 2014 special election for the mayor of Nazareth featured a resounding victory (62% to 38%) for Ali Salam, who focused on civic challenges in Nazareth, over Ramiz Jaraisy, who highlighted his identification with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

According to Rudnitzky, the dramatic increase in voter turnout among Arab voters from 56.5% in 2013, 53.4% in 2009 and 56.3% in 2006 to about 64% in 2015 reflects the widening interaction and integration between Israel's Jews and Arabs, and growing Arab confidence in the Israeli political system. This is in contrast to the lowest ever Arab turnout, just 18%, in the 2001 election. Current political Arab involvement aims at peacefully coexisting with, rather than confronting, the Jewish majority. In 2015, most Israeli Arabs strive for political and civic national self-determination and improvement of their civic status within the boundaries of the Jewish state. A growing majority of Arab voters appreciate Israel's democracy, especially when observing the flaming Arab tsunami on Arab streets throughout the Middle East, devoid of civil liberties, replete with violent intolerance towards minorities and each other.

Will the current trend of Israelization and co-existence withstand the tectonic pressures on the Israeli Arab street, fueled by the savage, intra-Muslim rampage from the Persian Gulf through northeast Africa (Islamists vs. secularists; for vs. against equality for women; local vs. national preoccupation; integrationists vs. separatists; civil liberties vs. Shariah, etc.)?

Against the backdrop of 1,400 years of no intra-Muslim peaceful coexistence, and in view of the endemic civic restlessness between majorities and minorities in most Western democracies, one should not underestimate the evolving political, cultural, economic Jewish-Arab coexistence in the Jewish state, one of the world's leading democracies, which faces constant lethal dangers: daily terrorism and war launched by the brethren of its Arab minority.

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Dual Crises May Intensify Obama-Netanyahu Tensions

ARTICLE LINKS HERE

from the Washington Institute David Makovsy March 23, 2015

NOTE: Terrific, thoughtful article. 

To avoid a full-blown diplomatic collision, Obama will have to urgently address concerns about the Iranian nuclear deal, while Netanyahu will need to publicly declare a two-state-minded policy on Israeli settlements.

Binyamin Netanyahu's electoral victory last week was greeted by an immediate crisis with the Obama administration, when some of his comments aimed at wooing right-wing voters in the campaign's final days angered the White House. The administration perceived Netanyahu's statement that there would not be a Palestinian state on his watch as a repudiation of his commitment to a two-state outcome. Immediately after the election, the prime minister insisted that he remained committed to two states, but President Obama chose to believe that his election remarks were more authentic than his clarification, in keeping with his well-known doubts about Netanyahu's support for that goal. While pledging not to touch U.S.-Israeli military or intelligence cooperation, Obama told the Huffington Post on Friday that he took Netanyahu "at his word" that a Palestinian state will not happen during his tenure, and that Washington needed to evaluate all other options to avoid chaos.

Beyond this latest grievance, bilateral relations are almost certain to hit greater turbulence in the coming months, over both the Palestinian issue and the more urgent matter of whether the United States and its negotiating partners strike a nuclear deal with Iran. In principle, the two issues are completely separate, but both are trending toward crises that will only exacerbate the iciness between Obama and Netanyahu.

DIFFERENCES OVER IRAN

Netanyahu's speech to Congress earlier this month highlighted Israel's disagreements with the White House over how to proceed on Iran, even though he implied for the first time that he was not insisting on zero uranium enrichment. The tension surrounding the speech stemmed from a variety of incidents -- most recently, an Obama administration spokesman confirmed media reports that Washington has not been sharing information with Israel lately due to sensitivity in the Iran talks, but the problems date back to when Washington first opened a secret channel with Tehran without telling Israel.

Apart from the specifics of an Iran agreement, the United States and Israel need to reach a set of understandings about the wider context of any deal. This means that in addition to defining quantifiable methods for enforcing Iranian compliance and outlining precise mechanisms for penalizing consequential violations, Washington will need to provide assurances that the accord is not political shorthand for a change in the balance of regional power toward Iran at the expense of Sunni Arab countries and Israel. If Tehran emerges from the negotiations believing it has a free hand to act regionally -- and with additional cash due to the easing of sanctions -- Israel will feel nervous even if it is not directly threatened. The question remains whether Iran is entitled to an industrial-size nuclear capability after an agreement expires, irrespective of whether the regime acts in a destabilizing manner. Given all of these issues, Washington and Israel will find it difficult to adequately address their differences before the July 1 deadline for reaching a final agreement with Iran.

If that timetable was not enough of a constraint, two other factors have entered the mix. First, Netanyahu will be quite busy building his coalition of right-of-center parties, which he has made clear he wants to complete within three weeks. Second, Speaker of the House John Boehner announced that he will visit Israel at the end of this month, a move that is bound to revive speculation about Netanyahu seeking further coordination with him on Iran, since Boehner was the one who invited him to address Congress.

Presumably, Netanyahu would prefer to coordinate first with the Obama administration on key Iran issues, and he should make that preference abundantly clear even amid the current tensions. If spurned, however, he will most likely intensify consultations with Boehner. Although going that route and focusing on congressional oversight of an Iran deal would open Netanyahu up to U.S. accusations of partisanship, he would likely claim that he had no choice since he is disregarded by the White House, and since the stakes for Israel are existential. The upshot is greater Israeli tension with the Obama administration in the months ahead as the congressional debate over Iran is likely to intensify.

PREVENTING A CRISIS OVER THE PALESTINIAN ISSUE  CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING 

Remarkable diversity of the pro-Israel community at DePaul

ARTICLE LINKS HERE

March 22, 2015

When people hear the term ‘Israel Advocate’ a certain connotation may come into mind. When we both arrived to campus – Cameron in 2011, and Lyric in 2014 – we had very little passion or connection to the U.S.-Israel relationship.

When we came to DePaul, we both had no perceptions of how strong of a presence the Arab-Israeli conflict held on college campuses across the country. Anti-Israel posters accusing Israel as being the source of all of the woes and conflict in the world made us start to seek the truth as to what the situation was in the Middle East.

We also had no idea that there was such a large political base of support for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship in the United States. This support includes people of all political backgrounds, including Jews, Christians, Democrats, Republicans and more.

Thus enters the AIPAC Policy Conference, which we both attended March 1-3 this year. It was inspiring to see the attendance from DePaul this year grow from just one student – Cameron – in 2013, to a whopping 12 delegates from DePaul this year.

It was a surreal experience entering an environment in which there were 16,000 people that were passionate about a movement that we had become so passionate about over the last few years.

This year, the Policy Conference was sold out for the first time since its conception in 1963. With attendance like this, it is clear that AIPAC garners its strength from the remarkable diversity of its stakeholders. As we walked through the Policy Conference, all of the thanks we received for being students passionate about this conflict made it clear that the members of AIPAC understand that our generation holds the key to the movement’s success or failure. This gratified came from various attendees from all walks of life: African Americans, Hispanics, LGBT, women, progressives from the East, and conservatives from the heartland.

Another strength of the pro-Israel movement is how many young people are engaged. This is because AIPAC understands young people, and knows how to connect with us. As we told different friends at DePaul that we were going to attend this conference, the question always arose, “what are you going to do there?”

I told them about the various breakout sessions that catered to my array of interests in a pro-Israel context. Not only did I sit in on sessions concerning the state of women in the Middle East, and Israel’s borders, but I also had the pleasure of watching a renowned Israeli chef make hummus.

It is these exciting, informative and most importantly Middle East-related sessions that allow students like myself to understand the amazing advances happening in Israel today. A dull moment never took place and we were captivated by the overwhelming energy.

Cameron spoke on a panel titled “Defeating Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)” along with other students who have used detractor activity such as BDS to actually make strategic inroads for the pro-Israel community on their campus. The audience was a packed room of students –several of the over 3,000 that attended –and also an overwhelming amount of adults in the room who are so supportive of the next generation of activists.

We’re two students that have come into this issue from very different perspectives. However, through AIPAC and this movement, we have both been able to be activists for a cause that we believe so strongly in. Perhaps that’s why, because of our hard work, we were able to win the AIPAC Activist of the Year award at Policy Conference this year.

For more information on how you can get involved, find “Demon PAC – Students Supporting Israel at DePaul” on Facebook.

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