11 March 2014
Source: Middle East Monitor
Amidst increasing discourse regarding alleged threats to Israel's
security, the US and Israel have signed an agreement deemed "of
strategic value" that ensures a continuation of production for the Iron
Dome air defence system. According to reports in the Times of Israel, the Jerusalem Post and YNet
News, the US government will immediately transfer $429 million to
Israel to be used for building the system glorified during Operation
Pillar of Defence.
The
US Department of Defence released a statement highlighting the mutual
value of the agreement. "During Operation Pillar of Defence in 2012,
Iron Dome was credited with saving countless Israeli lives and was
called a 'game changer' by many Israeli policy makers ... Israel will
obtain valuable resources to contribute to its defence and US industry
will receive meaningful co-production opportunities for Iron Dome
components."
According to Rabbi Jack Moline, executive director of the National
Jewish Democratic Council, the funding is "another shining example of
the iron-clad friendship between the United States and Israel".
According to YNet News, the chief defence attaché for the US
Embassy in Tel Aviv said that "multi-layered defence" should also be
considered within the region. "If we were able to build a regional
defence capability in, say, Jordan, that capability could easily defend
Israel, Jordan and even Egypt, if you so desired."
Israeli coverage during Operation Pillar of Defence manipulated the
loss of Palestinian lives by focusing upon intercepted rockets from
Gaza. The distortion induced by the rhetoric of "saving lives" allowed
Israel to gloss over the massacres perpetrated in Gaza following the
targeted assassination of Ahmed Al-Jabari. The trend was also evident in
social media, allowing the Iron Dome to become a metaphor of security
while obliterating the settler-colonial state's sanctioned terror
against Palestinians in Gaza.
The funding of Iron Dome consolidates Israel's security threat
narrative amidst escalating rhetoric about Hamas's alleged procurement
of weapons from abroad. The Israeli defence Forces (IDF) has been
running a propaganda campaign about "Gaza terrorists" and the
confiscated weapons from Iran that were allegedly on their way to Gaza.
The IDF blog displays a series of maps which project the area of the
Gaza Strip onto its allies' landscapes to illustrate the rockets' reach
capability to put the threat "in perspective". Utilising maps of the US,
Canada and the UK already diminishes the perspective by invoking images
of hypothetical destruction upon Israel's staunchest allies. Projecting
the same improbability upon countries which have resisted colonial and
imperial violence would have elicited far less misplaced compassion.
The funding of Iron Dome and its benefits for the oppressor states
have been conveniently discarded in an attempt to deflect attention from
the US's constant compulsion to fuel terror and bolster Israel's
strategy of isolating Gaza while attempting to exploit regional
instability as a pretext to disseminate its culture of annihilation.
What emerges from the military cooperation is the deconstruction of
settler-colonial and imperial violence in order to provide
justifications for the endorsement of war and ostracising of
Palestinians in Gaza.
Link: /www.middleeastmonitor.com/blogs/politics/10244-israel-sells-defence-systems-as-protection-from-gaza-qterrorq.
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