Fwd: Press Overlooks U.S. Role as Arms Merchant in Mideast Conflict
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/ pressingissuesdisplay.jsp?vnucontent_id=1002914055
Press Overlooks U.S. Role as Arms Merchant in Mideast Conflict
For better or worse, the U.S. has a special role in the current
conflict as supplier of the best weapons money can buy to one side.
Yet the media nearly always underplays this angle, even though it has
enormous consequences, not just for those under fire inLebanon but
for Americans at home.
By Greg Mitchell
(July 27, 2006) — The cable news networks must be getting attacked,
by someone, for offering relentless gavel-to-gavel coverage of the
current crisis in the Middle East, for hosts or producers for three
different cable news programs have asked me this week if I thought
they were going overboard. They all seemed relieved, and surprised,
when I answered no, although my reason for saying so included a
criticism of their coverage, and that provided by nearly all newspapers.
The conflict would be worth massive attention on its own merits (or
demerits), but what really makes it so significant for an American
audience is our own deep involvement in that war and the possible
dire consequences for our country. The issue does not get much play —
Fox News, for example, seems to be more concerned about Hezbollah
sneaking agents over the Mexican or Canadian borders into the U.S.
Simply put: Those are largely American made, supplied, and/or paid
for missiles falling on Lebanon today, emerging from jets, tanks and
artillery linked to the USA. Much of it could be described as your
tax dollars at work — or the best weapons money can buy. In all,
Israel has received since 2001 about $10.5 billion in Foreign
Military Financing (FMF) from the U.S., the most of any country,
while also spending $6.3 billion on U.S.arms deliveries.
While the U.S. press — and leading liberal bloggers — pretty much
ignores this, the media abroad does not, and none of it is lost on
those who live in or near the Middle East. In this country we read or
hear countless references to “Iranian-supplied rockets” or “weapons
provided by Syria” but when is that last time you heard a reference
to a particular Israeli jet or missile that was sent over by our
country?
If you think we should be proud of arming the assault on Lebanon’s
infrastructure and civilian neighborhoods, fine. If you are appalled,
or worried about how others view this, okay. In either case, you
might want to read on, because you won’t see much of this in your
local paper.
Probably the most publicity this received lately came just days ago
when the U.S. announced it would be providing $30 million in relief
aid to Lebanon—while at the same time rushing new weapons to Israel.
Asked if there were a contradiction between U.S.arms sales to Israel
and aid supplies to Lebanon, U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman said
Washington’s position was based on “two pillars to how we need to
deal with the conflict. One pillar is humanitarian assistance. …
The other is to find conditions for a sustainable cease-fire.”
Space does not allow a full accounting of U.S. arms shipments to
Israel in the past year, but to cite just one current budget line:
“100 Guided Bomb Units (GBU-28) that include: BLU-113 A/B penetration
warhead.” That only cost $30 million. Another budget line for $319
million cites “5,000 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) tail kits.”
These can be dropped from the air by some of the 102 F-16 aircraft
sent to Israel since 2001 (price tag: over $4.5 billion). And those
aircraft will stay in the air, thanks to emergency approval last week
by the U.S. for $210 million in JP-8 jet fuel to go to the Israeli
military. Israel also has from the U.S. over 700 M-60 tanks, 89 F-15
combat aircraft, missiles and bombs of all kinds and scores of attack
helicopters.
One of the more obscure items in that arsenal, however, came to the
fore this week, although it got little notice in the mainstream press.
Human Rights Watch, which has no dog in this fight – it has storngly
condemned the Hamas and Hizbollah rockets attacks, for example –
issued a bulletin on Monday, revealing that Israel has used artillery-
fired “cluster” bombs in populated areas of Lebanon, producing
documented civilian casualties. “Cluster munitions are unacceptably
inaccurate and unreliable weapons when used around civilians,”
saidKenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “They
should never be used in populated areas.”
Newsweek online confirmed the report today, with photos, adding,
“Israel, under pressure from the United States, had not used cluster
munitions in Lebanon since 1982.”
The cluster shells explode in the air and scatter hundreds of tiny
bomblets in a wide area. Because of the high “dud” rate for the
bomblets, civilians who step on them are killed months later.
Human Rights Watch researchers photographed cluster munitions among
the arsenal of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) artillery teams stationed
on the Israeli-Lebanese border on July 23. The photographs show
M483A1 Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions which, of course,
are U.S.-produced and -supplied. Human Rights Watch “believes that
the use of cluster munitions in populated areas may violate the
prohibition on indiscriminate attacks contained in international
humanitarian law,” it said in a statement, calling on Israel to cease
and desist. The group earlier established that the use of cluster
munitions in Iraq caused more civilian casualties than any other
factor in the early U.S.-led military operations in 2003.
But all of this leads to a final, perhaps hopeful, angle underplayed
by the press. That is: The fact that the U.S. is such a strong patron
potentially gives us enormous influence in pressuring Israel to
exercise restraint or accept a ceasefire. Newspaper editorial pages,
which with rare exception, shamefully gave Israel a blank check to
bomb at will during the first two weeks of the air assault, can make
up for lost time now.
“The billions of dollars of U.S. arms and aid it provides every year
gives the Bush administration substantial leverage,” observed William
Hartung and Frida Berrigan of the World Policy Institute in New York
this week. “Without at least discussing U.S. military support for
Israel, it will be difficult—if not impossible—for Americans to
understand the options available to our government in this crisis.”
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor of E&P.