Why doesn’t someone stop the violence?

The US cannot stop the violence in the Mideast? Come on! The country which has the greatest potential leverage over Israel is the country with the greatest power to broker peace. Israel’s foreign policy and military strategy is dependent on the approval of the United States.

Though Israel ranks very high on the global development index – above Greece, Singapore, Portugal and Brunei – it is also the world’s largest recipient of US aid.

Israel does not depend economically on this assistance. Its gross domestic product amounts to $155 billion, and its military budget to $9.5 billion. It manufactures many of its own weapons and buys components from all over the world – including the United Kingdom.

However, most of the money given by the US Foreign Military Financing program – as is common with all US aid disbursements – is spent in the United States. Israel uses it to obtain F15 and F16 jets, Apache, Cobra and Blackhawk helicopters, AGM, AIM and Patriot missiles, M-16 rifles, M-204 grenade launchers and M-2 machine guns. As the Prestwick scandal revealed, laser-guided bombs, even now, are being sent to Israel from the United States.

Many of these weapons have been used to kill Palestinian civilians and are being used in Lebanon today.

Why doesn’t someone stop the violence? –It’s too profitable to the military industrial complex.

[Includes an excerpt from an article by George Monbiot, The Guardian]