Anna Lekas Miller: Violent Crackdowns on Dissent in the Middle East!

It's odd to see an Israeli flag flying in rural Pennsylvania. Still, until very recently, the Israeli flag flew right alongside the American flag against the bucolic landscape of Jamestown, Pennsylvania. The nondescript warehouse-like buildings surrounding the two flags are not the factories of a local Pennsylvania Jewish-owned business,as one might guess. Rather, they are the headquarters of Combined Systems, Inc. one of the largest manufacturers and international suppliers of teargas, stun grenades and other "non-lethal" crowd control devices in the world. Israel, or more accurately, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), is their most frequent client, and Combined Systems' relationship with the IDF is an emblem of a global system that binds together US weapons companies, repressive governments and taxpayer money. Here's how this system generally works: A foreign government requests a cerain amount of military assistance from the United States government. If the US government chooses to accept this request, Congress appropriates the amount into the budget, and once the budget is passed, the recipient can use the money to purchase weapons from US manufacturers. Israel is a case in point. The United States has given foreign aid to Israel since 1949. In the beginning it was only used for economic development. It wasn't until 1959 that the United States began a modest military loan program to Israel. By 1962, this money was used to fund the purchase of US weaponry, forming the foundation of the relationship between the US government and Israeli military. Due to an Israeli economic crisis during the 1980s, military loans to Israel were eliminated and replaced with grants.