The International Day of Peace ("Peace Day") is observed around the world each year on 21 September. Established in 1981 by unanimous United Nations resolution, Peace Day provides a globally shared date for all humanity to commit to Peace above all differences and to contribute to building a Culture of Peace. This year is particularly significant: It is the 20th Anniversary of the UN Resolution on the Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace. A/RES/53/243 B.
Join the Baltimore Nonviolence Center and Baltimore Peace Action in a Vigil to celebrate the International Day of Peace on Mon., Sept. 21 from 5 to 6 PM at 33rd and N. Charles Sts. What better place than across the street from Johns Hopkins University, a major weapons contractor. There will not be a Tuesday "No Drone Research at JHU." You may consider contacting President Ron Daniels and telling him that the university should reject all military contracts, including those for killer drone and nuclear weapons research. The president’s mailing address is Office of the President, 242 Garland Hall, The Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, Maryland 21218. You can also reach his office by Phone: (410) 516-8068, Fax: (410) 516-6097 or email: president@jhu.edu. Contact Max at mobuszewski2001 at Comcast dot net or 410-323-1607.
Peace Through Weapons Sales
by Ariel
Gold, published on Mondowweiss, September 9, 2020
Next week, on
September 15, Donald Trump will host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan for a ceremonial
signing of the Israel-United Arab Emirates deal to normalize relations between
the two countries. Termed the Abraham Accord, the deal has been condemned by
many for failing to secure even a single concession for Palestinians. But
shortly after the deal was announced, another downside — and perhaps the U.S.’s
primary motivation for pursuing the deal — came sharply into focus: tens of
billions of dollars in UAE weapons sales.
Less than a
week after Trump announced the Abraham Accord on August 13, the story broke
that Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner and National Security
Council senior director for the Middle East Miguel Correa had been secretly pushing for the U.S. to sell F-35
stealth fighters, weaponized drones, and other advanced military equipment to
the Emiratis. Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s minister of foreign affairs, said that
his country had placed their request for the F-35 jets six years prior. He
denied that the normalization deal was connected to his country finally being
granted their request, but Trump administration officials later admitted that the deal had paved the way.
On August 18, leading Israeli newspaper YNet News reported that the Abraham Accord included a “secret clause”
wherein the UAE would get to buy billions of dollars in advanced U.S. military
hardware.
Netanyahu,
ever the prince of political drama, feigned outrage that the UAE might get to
purchase F-35 stealth fighters from the U.S., thereby threatening Israel’s
position as the most mighty armed air force in the Middle East.
Following
Netanyahu bluster and claims that he hadn’t known about the arms sale, the deal
between Israel and the UAE seemed to be on shaky ground. “Fake news,”
Netanyahu cried when Yedioth Ahronoth,
the New York Times and other outlets reported that the U.S.-UAE arms sale deal
had been the driving force behind the Israel-UAE normalization deal and that
Netanyahu had been in the know from the start. But then, after Netanyahu met
with Secretary of State Pompeo in Jerusalem during the Republican National
Convention, he came to heel and stopped all public complaining about the UAE
getting to buy new U.S. arms.
Anyone who
follows Middle East news knows what a shrewd politician Netanyahu is. So it
should be of no surprise that Netanyahu has parlayed the very deal he agreed
to, then lambasted and denied knowledge of, to his own country’s military
advantage (as well as to the further advantage of U.S. weapons companies). On
September 6, Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Netanyahu will be requesting
additional U.S. weapons for Israel to offset the impact of the new U.S. weapons
sales to the Emirates. These additional weapons will pile on top of the $3.8
billion the U.S. already gives Israel annually in military assistance (100% of
which must be used for purchases from U.S. weapons manufacturers).
On September
7, Trump spoke out against the revolving door of U.S. weapons sales and endless
wars. Pushing back against a report in the Atlantic that he
had disparaged fallen U.S. soldiers as “suckers” and “losers,”
he accused Pentagon leaders of wanting “to
do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make
the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.” But
Donald Trump himself is making these “wonderful companies” happy by
cutting a deal for them to sell tens of billions in weapons to the Emirates, a
country that is mired in the war in Libya and was, until recently, one of the
leaders of the brutal war in Yemen.
It isn’t just
the White House’s current arms-for-peace deal that contradicts Trump’s new
claim that he is the white knight candidate who will finally put a damper on
the military-industrial complex. Less than six months after taking office,
Trump signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia — the main
perpetrator of the war in Yemen — for $110 billion in immediate U.S. weapons
sales and $350 billion in sales over the following 10 years. On April 16, 2019,
Trump used his veto power to quash a bipartisan Congressional
resolution that would have mostly ended American military involvement in the
war in Yemen — a war that has killed thousands of civilians, created the worst
humanitarian crisis on the planet, and helped companies like Raytheon, Boeing,
and Lockheed Martin increase their already enormous piles of wealth. Not only
did Trump continue U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen, but the following
month, in May 2019, his administration used an emergency declaration to push
through — without congressional approval — an $8.1 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and
the UAE.
With Trump
touting himself as the anti-war candidate, Fox News host Laura Ingraham said on
her show, The Ingraham Angle: “If you want to rein in the Pentagon, Trump is
your only option.” But the Pentagon budget has increased annually every
year over the past five years. The fiscal year 2020 saw a colossal $738 billion
for the Department of Defense [sic], and for the fiscal year 2021, Trump
is seeking a whopping $750 billion DoD
[sic] budget.
Although the
Abraham Accord to formally normalize relations between Israel and the UAE will
be signed next week at the White House, the issue of U.S. weapons sales to the
UAE isn’t yet set in stone. Such sales will require congressional approval and,
according to congressional aides speaking with CNN, the relevant
committees in Congress have yet to even be notified. If the American people
really want to pursue peace in the Middle East and instead use our taxes to
build up U.S. infrastructure, healthcare, education and address the climate
crisis, then we must immediately pressure our Congressional representatives to
make sure that the U.S.-UAE weapons sales deal does not go through.
Ariel Gold is the national co-director
of CODEPINK. Though she can no longer
travel to Palestine, she carries out creative actions for peace and justice in
Israel/Palestine and throughout the world. Ariel has been published in the
Forward, Huffington Post, Tikkun Magazine, Truthout, Mondoweiss, and more.
Donations
can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame
Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email:
mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The
master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought
the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while
the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially
their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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