American Financial Support for the Zionists Fuels Terrorism

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

A strong impression has taken hold among Americans, people and government alike, that Arabs and Muslims are terrorists, and that they are the perpetrators behind every act of terrorism that occurs around the world. But they have not asked themselves about their own role in manufacturing, encouraging, and financing terrorism, and American researchers have not done what is required of them in examining the conduct of their own administration and its dealings with other peoples, in the hope of finding grounds on which America itself might bear some responsibility for the bombings and the spilling of innocent blood taking place in the world.

The American administration recently reached an agreement with the Zionist entity to provide $38 billion in military assistance to the entity, at a rate of $3.8 billion a year. This agreement builds on earlier agreements, understandings, and American conventions of providing various kinds of assistance to the Zionist entity. President Truman had already given the entity $145 million following its declaration of independence in 1948, to build settlements for the settlers who came to Palestine to strip the Palestinian people of its land, its cities, and its villages. Other presidents did the same — Roosevelt, Johnson, and Nixon among them.

America gave both the entity and Egypt a financial reward after the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1979: the entity received $3.2 billion a year in military and economic assistance, while Egypt received $1.2 billion. America reached a ten-year understanding with the entity in 1998, under which it would provide $21.3 billion in economic and military assistance, and another ten-year understanding in 2007, under which the entity received $30 billion.

The latest agreement came as a continuation, taking into account rising prices, financial inflation, and the entity’s mounting military burdens. This latest agreement restricts the assistance to military spending alone, directing no sum toward economic spending. The Zionist entity wanted it this way, because it is always concerned with purchasing the latest American weaponry, given that security and military matters always command its greatest attention. The agreement stipulates that the annual sum is to be paid to the entity within the first thirty days of the fiscal year, that the entity may purchase weapons in installments, and that it is exempt from advance payment.

Have American journalists, writers, and academics asked about the purposes of this enormous financial support? Against whom will the weapons the Zionists purchase be used? If anyone has asked, he has asked bashfully, fearful of the wrath of the Zionists and the American Jewish associations. American media does not dare raise the question, and politicians are no less cowardly and opportunistic than the media. As for academics, they fear dismissal from their positions, because American universities are no less submissive and deferential to Zionist will and to the Jewish associations standing with it.

I sometimes think that Arab thinkers and academics are bolder in putting forward their ideas about Arab despotism, repression, and terrorism than their counterparts in the Western states. There, the field is democratically open, while in the Arab countries the field is closed off by the despots — yet even among Arabs there remain those who carry their souls in the palms of their hands.

Reasons for the Increase in Financial Support

States do not buy or manufacture weapons in order to store them, but in order to use them in combat. Among states, some acquire weapons for self-defense, and others acquire them in order to attack others and to dominate and control them.

In the case of the Zionist entity, there is a claim that it is defending itself against enemies surrounding it on every side. The entity may indeed be surrounded by enemies, but history records that the entity was aggressive before it even became a state, since it was still a global Zionist organization.

It was the Zionists who invaded Palestine with the help of the Western states, Britain foremost among them. It was the Zionists who came to Palestine with the aim of establishing the Jewish national home on the ruins of the Palestinian people, and it was they who began seizing land with Britain’s help, and it was Britain that opened the door for the Jews of the world to immigrate to Palestine. It was Britain that gave the Zionists the means to spread across the land, and trained and armed them, and it was Britain that weakened the Palestinians, demolished their homes, and pursued every single Palestinian bullet that existed to defend the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people never once knew stability during the British Mandate, and in the end fell victim to conspiracies and to the enemy’s military strength.

No public justification has been published for reasons behind this scale of increase in American financial assistance, but there is speculation about it, including:

1. That the entity faces a real and powerful challenge from Arab resistance in Lebanon and Palestine, having already suffered a resounding failure in its war on Lebanon in 2006, and in its successive wars on Gaza up to 2014. America, and the entity with it, came to realize that Arab resistance had matured, had begun developing its combat methods and means, and was preparing its fighters ideologically, doctrinally, and in terms of armament, in order to deter the Zionists. Arab resistance has surpassed the Zionist army tactically, and has ended the chain of Zionist victories over the Arabs.

There is no longer any possibility for the entity to achieve victory over the resistance, neither in Gaza nor in southern Lebanon — indeed the equation has flipped to such a degree that the Zionist army is now training on how to expel Hezbollah fighters from the settlements in northern Palestine, and training the residents of northern Palestine on how to evacuate towns and settlements should Hezbollah enter the Galilee region, and so on. The Zionist entity, through its military experts and its media, repeats time and again that the Zionist home front is not yet ready for war — a matter that never used to concern the Zionists in the past, in the days of the wars with the Arab states.

For this reason, the Americans and the Zionists judge that the entity needs more money to develop its defenses, and to prepare military plans, equipment, and devices for tunnel detection, and anti-missile systems to confront the thousands of projectiles that could rain down on it in any coming war.

2. Zionist observers see that the Iranian nuclear agreement has added new security burdens on the Zionist entity. The agreement with Iran runs only ten years, and Iran will be able to return to its former practice of enriching uranium once that period expires. Because of this agreement, Iran is able to provide more money and weapons to Arab resistance movements, and push them toward further military development. Iran’s financial revenue is improving as sanctions are lifted, and it continues to support the resistance and to continue developing its missile systems that threaten the Zionist entity.

3. There are large arms deals between America and Arab states, and it is true that these weapons are in the hands of states that coordinate with the entity, and sometimes ally with it, but their political regimes are unstable and subject to change at any time. There are no guarantees that American weapons will not fall into the hands of new people who come to control the political system. This means the entity must possess enough weapons and munitions to confront its current and potential enemies alike.

Who Is the Terrorist?

It was the Zionists who expelled the Palestinian people in 1948, with Western backing, particularly from the Americans. Indeed, the United States played the greatest role, in 1947, in pressuring states at the United Nations to vote in favor of partitioning Mandatory Palestine. And it is the Western states, led by the United States, that worked to water down General Assembly Resolution 194 on the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes and properties, placing the resolution in the hands of Zionist will. These are the very states that still refuse the right of return and the implementation of the watered-down Resolution 194.

And it was these same states that pressured the Arab rulers in 1948 to halt the war for a month, because the Arabs had the upper hand at the time, and the Western states exploited that truce to change the facts on the ground and empower the Zionists, so that when the war resumed, the Arab armies were forced to retreat, the military balance flipped, and the Arab armies suffered a crushing defeat.

In 1956, the Zionist entity allied with Britain and France to invade Egypt. Egypt had attacked no one — it had merely acted to assert its ownership of the Suez Canal — but the Zionists initiated the aggression and occupied the Sinai Peninsula.

Between 1948 and 1967, the Zionist army continued to carry out military operations across the ceasefire lines against Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. The Arab armies never initiated aggression — aggression remained always a Zionist monopoly. During this period, France supplied the entity with the nuclear reactor later used to develop the Zionist nuclear bombs, which now constitute a factor of instability in the Arab-Islamic region.

And the Zionists launched an attack in 1967, inflicting on the Arabs a terrifying defeat whose effects still stir instability and wars in the region to this day. The Zionists won with Western weapons, French weapons in particular, and America then stepped forward to become, thereafter, the Zionists’ foremost supplier of weapons, and continues, to this day, to provide the Zionists with its most advanced weaponry for use in aggression against the Arabs.

Ever since the Zionist entity was established, it has been the one to initiate aggression against the Arabs, and its assaults never cease. There are those who say the Arabs attacked in 1973 — this is true, but their attack was not driven by aggression but by the goal of liberating the land the Zionists had occupied in 1967. The Zionists, for their part, have gone to great lengths in killing safe civilians in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria, have shot down civilian aircraft, destroyed water wells, bombed industrial facilities and power stations, burned farms, and desecrated holy sites — among a great many other atrocities of every kind.

Occupation itself is terrorism, and by definition it is terrorism, because it is the use of force against civilians to achieve political ends. The Zionist entity has never stopped practicing terrorism, demolishing homes, destroying villages, and arresting people en masse. All of this thanks to the Western states, and to American weaponry specifically. Were it not for American weapons, Zionist arrogance, savagery, and brutality would never have reached this extent.

American Terrorism

The Americans know full well the conduct of the Zionists, their assaults, their killing of people, and their demolition of homes, and they supply them with weapons so that they may go further still in their crimes. American money and weapons place the Zionists at the throats of Arabs and Muslims, humiliating them, degrading them, and constantly making them feel frustration, abasement, and disgrace — and then the Americans turn around to speak out against Arab and Muslim terrorism.

The Americans themselves are the terrorists. They killed the sons of Iraq and destroyed the country, wrought corruption throughout Syria, Yemen, and Libya, and showed mercy to no one across the length and breadth of the Arab homeland, and they are always the leaders of siege and the imposition of sanctions on Arabs and Muslims. So who, then, are the people of terrorism, its patrons, and its financiers?

Before the Americans direct their tongues, their media, and their propaganda against others, they ought to look at what their own hands have done. What do they expect from Arabs, when they subject them to this kind of torment, directly or through the Zionists? Most Arabs do not want to respond in a way that would deter the Americans and their accomplices, but it takes no more than 1% of Arabs thinking of revenge for America and the Western states to be set ablaze with bombings.

For this reason, American financial assistance to the entity constitutes a factor that inflames Arab feelings, and confirms Arab awareness that were it not for the United States, the Zionists would never have gone this far in their aggression. And every action has a reaction — the Americans should expect what has not yet even crossed their minds. And if Americans wish to live in security and peace, that will never happen unless they come to realize that others need security and peace too.

Reprinted from Al Jazeera.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الدعم الأميركي المالي للصهاينة يغذي الإرهاب” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.