Human Rights an Issue in US/Israeli Relations? US Aid Finances Gross Violations?
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The State Department reportedly asked US Middle East embassies to assure aid isn’t given to foreign militaries involved in human rights abuses.
The above sounds more like fiction than reality. No militaries anywhere violate human rights more egregiously than America’s and Israel’s.
It’s gone on throughout the entire history of both countries, countless millions harmed by their high crimes of war and against humanity, their use of chemical, biological, radiological, and other banned weapons, their contempt for rule of law principles, their disdain for the rights of invented enemies.
Zionist ideologue Trump regime ambassador to Israel David Friedman opposes scrutiny of IDF practices – enforcing occupation harshness, waging undeclared war on defenseless Palestinian civilians, responsible for over 14,000 casualties in Gaza since March 30 alone, Israel holding an entire Palestinian population hostage to what the late Edward Said called its “refined viciousness.”
Responding to alleged State Department human rights guidelines, Friedman turned truth on its head claiming
“Israel is a democracy whose army does not engage in gross violations of human rights,” adding:
The IDF “has a robust system of investigation and prosecution in the rare circumstance where misconduct occurs…(I)t would be against (US) national interests” to limit military aid to Israel “especially in a time of war.”
Israel’s self-styled world’s most moral army is one of the most ruthless. Its war crimes and other human rights abuses are rife.
Its so-called “robust system of investigation and prosecution” consistently whitewashes flagrant abusiveness time and again.
America and Israel partner in each other’s Nuremberg-level high crimes, accountability never forthcoming.
Both countries flagrantly violate the laws of war and other fundamental human rights.
US law is clear, unequivocal and ignored. The 1961 Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) prohibits aiding governments engaged:
“in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons, or other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, and the security of person, unless such assistance will directly benefit the needy people in such country.”
The Leahy Law provision of the 2001 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act (FOAA) (Sec. 8092 of PL 106-259) states:
“None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to support any training program involving a unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of Defense has received credible information from the Department of State that a member of such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights, unless all necessary corrective steps have been taken.”
FOAA prohibits funding foreign security forces involved in gross human rights violations. It’s proscribed unless “effective measures (are taken) to bring the responsible members of the security forces unit to justice.”
When it comes to Israel, the Saudis, and other US allied flagrant human rights abusers, the above laws don’t apply – no matter how lawless their practices.
Israel has a well-documented appalling human rights record. Yet it gets billions of dollars in US military aid annually, including state-of-the-art weapons, munitions and technology, more on request – along with special benefits afforded no other countries.
Every US administration along with virtually the entire Congress, bureaucracy, and major media support Israel, ignoring its high crimes, blaming victims for its brutality inflicted on them.
Alleged State Department concern for human rights is a ruse, especially with neocon extremist Mike Pompeo in charge as secretary of state – an unindicted war criminal, an assassin and torturer as CIA director.
Israel and other US allied rogue states are immune from accountability no matter how flagrant their high crimes and human rights abuses.
The above cited US laws and alleged State Department concern for human rights don’t apply to them.
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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.
VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].
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