The Arrangement - The Subscription (Part2/8)

0:01 Roger, Charlie, we're ready to rock. $300 billion.

0:12 That is the total amount of American financial and military assistance given to Israel since its founding in 1948, adjusted for inflation. What?

0:28 $300 billion from American taxpayers to the country, making Israel the single largest recipient of US foreign assistance in the history of the United States. For context, that is more than the entire Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War 2. And for further awe, the universe is said to be 13.8 billion years old since The Big Bang. What I'm trying to say is that's a shit load of money. Oh. My God.

1:03 And here is the detail that should stop you completely. When Donald Trump came into office in January 2025 and froze all US foreign aid, every dollar going to every country on earth, Israel was the only country exempted automatically without a vote, without a debate. Every other country on earth, and just this one exception. Take a moment with that, because it is not normal. Smash the Like button.

1:48 It is not standard foreign policy. It is not something that happens by accident. This episode is about how it happens, who makes it happen, and what it costs everyone else. Welcome back to the arrangement done by the Unusual Practice Podcast. This is episode 2 and we're calling it the subscription.

2:29 In 1976, the United States passed the Symington Amendment, a law specifically designed to prohibit American foreign aid to any country that is pursuing nuclear weapons outside the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. The MPT was signed in 1968. It is the international framework that governs nuclear weapons. Countries that sign it agree not to develop nuclear weapons. In exchange, the five nuclear powers, America, Britain, France, Russia and China, agreed they would eventually disarm. Lo and behold, they never did.

3:15 But that is the conversation for Episode 3. Here is what matters right now. Israel has never signed the NPT. Israel has an estimated 90 nuclear warheads. Israel has never confirmed or denied their existence, a policy they call nuclear ambiguity. Under the Symington Amendment, the law of the United States of America, Israel should receive zero aid. Not reduced aid, but 0 Instead, every single year since 1976, Congress has applied a formal waiver specifically and exclusively for Israel, exempting it from the law automatically, quietly, without debate, without a press conference, without most Americans ever knowing the waiver exists.

4:16 Meanwhile, Iran signed the NPT. Iran submitted to inspections. Iran is at war partly because of nuclear concerns. The country that never signed the treaty faces no consequences. The country that signed it faces bombs.

4:39 This is not a foreign policy inconsistency. This is the policy understanding who enforces it and why. That's what this episode is about. Oh, that's really naughty. APAC. Yep, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. If you've heard the name and don't fully understand what it is, this segment is definitely for you. APAC is a lobbying organization. It advocates for U.S. policy that supports Israel. It is legal, registered and operates openly in Washington. It has done so for decades. In the 202324 election cycle alone, APACS PAC and Super PAC Public Affairs Committee spent nearly $127 million combined, making it the single largest PAC spender in the entire election.

5:39 They covered more than 80% of all congressional seats Up for re election. 389 races, both parties, incumbents and challengers. And here is the mechanism that makes this so effective and so invisible to the public. APAC Super PAC presents itself as an organization that supports democracies around the world. Its advertisements strategically avoid mentioning APAC or Israel. A voter watching the ad has no idea it came from an Israeli lobbying organization. Even on TikTok, we don't get away with that.

6:19 This is not lobbying. This is olitical architecture disguised as something else entirely. And the consequences inside Congress? Well, former Congressman Brian Byrd, A lifelong admirer of Israel by his own description, said this publicly and on record. When key votes are cast, the question on the House floor, troublingly, is often not what is the right thing to do for the United States of America, but how is AIPAC going to score this? A former United States congressman on record saying that votes on the floor of the House of Representatives are decided not by America's national interest, but by how a foreign policy lobbying organization will grade them.

7:05 Whatever do you mean? Let's be specific about what the money funds, because this is exactly where the abstract becomes concrete. Since October 7th, 2023, the US government approved $17.9 billion in Security Assistance for Israeli military operations, the highest annual total since the United States began granting military aid to Israel in 1959. Brown University's Watson Institute calculated the total US spending, including operations against the Houthis in Yemen, at $22.7 billion, and researchers have cited active efforts to conceal the full amounts through bureaucratic maneuvering.

7:50 The weapons being sent are not defensive. In 2024, the Biden administration paused the shipment of 1800 MK 84 bombs. 2000 LB bombs. The pause was widely reported. What was less reported, Trump immediately released that shipment the moment he took office in January 2025. Two 1000 LB bombs released while simultaneously freezing aid to every other country on earth. And what has the money funded on the ground? Under Netanyahu's current government, the number of Israeli settlements and outposts in the occupied West Bank in East Jerusalem has risen by nearly 50%, from 141 in 2022 to 210 today, the Israeli activist group Peace Now, which is Israeli not a foreign critic, stated.

8:58 The Israeli government no longer pretends otherwise. The annexation of the occupied territories and expansion of settlements is its central goal. The American taxpayer is funding the expansion of settlements the United Nations considers illegal in territory the International Court of Justice ruled in 2024 is illegally occupied using weapons approved by a Congress graded by a lobbying organization that doesn't mention Israel in its own advertisements. Most people are watching the war, a few are trying to understand it.

9:35 This series is for the second group. 8 episodes, every thread connected, all sourced the arrangement only on unusual practice. Now we get to the question that makes people most uncomfortable, and I'm going to handle it the way this entire series handles everything with as much precision about what is documented, what is credibly reported, and what is not yet proven. OK, so here is what is fully documented on the Congressional Record and in court files. In 2004 and five Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin was convicted of passing classified U.S. policy documents on Iran to two AIPAC staffers.

10:21 The staffers were accused of relaying those documents to Israeli diplomats. Franklin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years. Jonathan Pollard, AUS Navy intelligence analyst, passed an estimated 800 highly classified documents and over 1500 intelligence summaries to Israeli intelligence over 18 months. US counterintelligence described it as more documents more highly classified than any other spy in the history of the country. In 1982, a Washington Post investigation based on captured classified American documents found that Israeli intelligence agencies had blackmailed, bugged, wiretapped, and bribed U.S. government employees to gather sensitive intelligence.

11:15 That is the Washington Post, based on classified American government documents. Now here is what is credibly reported but not yet sealed in public documents. At the 1998 Y Plantation summit, Netanyahu raised the existence of Israeli recorded tapes of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky privately while demanding the release of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. Clinton was told the tapes had been destroyed. CIA Director George Tenet said he would resign on the spot if Pollard was released. Clinton agreed only to review the case.

12:00 This is reported in Clinton Inc by Washington Examiner editor Daniel Halper and is corroborated by Lewinsky's own testimony to the special prosecutor in which she stated Clinton told her a foreign embassy had tapped his phone the month after the Y Plantation meeting. And then there is Jeffrey Epstein. Former Mossad agent Ari Ben Menashe, a real person with a documented intelligence background, stated on record that Epstein worked for Israeli intelligence and that Israel engaged in blackmailing American politicians using recorded material.

12:42 What is documented in the case files is Epstein's network, which included formal Israeli Prime ministers Ehud Barack, Shimon Perez, Moshe Khatzab and Ehud Almert. What is not yet in public documents a direct, casual link between specific recorded material and specific foreign policy decisions. This could very much change next week, but this is where we at today. So I would ask what those files answer once they are released. If they are released now, who benefits from Epstein's client list remaining sealed?

13:25 Who has the most to lose from the full network being made public? And why, in a country that claims transparency as a democratic value, are those files still not available to the people whose government was involved? Unusual practice. We read the studies you pretend to quote. We question everything, especially the experts. It's the show that does the research so you don't have to, and saves you from another Ted Talk while we're at it. Unusual practice, we're thinking. Still a thing? $300 billion from American taxpayers.

14:01 But America is not the only one paying. Lebanon is paying in its southern territory being systematically occupied by Israeli forces and documented violation of the US brokered ceasefire agreement. From November 2024, the Lebanese army was given timelines to contain Hezbollah that it had no military capacity to meet. Everyone in the room knew that the timeline was a pretext, not a policy. Palestinians are paying with their land, 50% more settlements in two years with their lives, the death toll documented by every major international humanitarian organization with their legal status.

14:48 The International Court of Justice ruled in 2024 that Israel's occupation is illegal and must end. It has not ended. And the Arab states around them, they are paying in a very different currency. Silence. Jordan publicly condemns Israel while its military shoots down Iranian missiles protecting it. Saudi Arabia performs Palestinian solidarity while conducting business and intelligence sharing with Israel through back channels. The Arab world's inability to stand together is not weakness. It is a structural condition built deliberately by the same colonial lines we discussed in episode 1 and maintained by American military protection of governments that depend on it to survive.

15:48 The arrangement is self reinforcing. The money buys the votes, the votes approve the weapons, the weapons enable the expansion, the expansion requires more weapons, and the bill is sent to people who were never asked to sign the contract.

16:12 We've now followed the money, $127 million in one election cycle, 300 billion since 1948. A law that should cut all aid waived every year for just one country. A lobbying organization that grades congressional votes and doesn't put its own name in its advertisements. A former congressman telling you on record that the question on the House floor is not what's right for America, but how AIPAC scores it. Smash the Like button. Every source cited in this episode is documented and LinkedIn the description.

16:53 Read them for yourself. In episode 3, we're going to look at the single most revealing word in this entire conflict. Terrorist. Unusual practice. Do you think what you think you know?

17:11 Who it's applied to, when it's removed. And the former al Qaeda fighter who received a presidential handshake and now runs Syria. Same man, different Tuesday, different word. The word terrorist was never a description, it was always a designation, and in episode 3 I will prove it. Look, comment and subscribe.

17:46 You just heard what they don't say on the news. Episode 3 drops tomorrow and it gets darker. Follow unusual practice and share this with someone who thinks they know the full story. And please do leave a comment because I am sure you're thinking of something right now. This guy. Is this is the arrangement? Because history didn't just happen, it was totally arranged.

18:17 Somebody just thought of. Me.