Should the United States put solving Israel's budget problems ahead of its own?

When it comes to defense spending, it appears that the United States already is.

Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, will meet Thursday in Washington with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta to finalize a deal in which the United States will provide an additional $680 million to Israel over three years. The money is meant to help pay for procuring three or four new batteries and interceptors for Israel's Iron Dome short-range rocket defense program. The funds may also be used for the systems after their deployment, according to the report of the House Armed Services Committee on the fiscal 2013 Defense Authorization bill.

The Iron Dome funds, already in legislation before Congress, will be on top of the $3.1 billion in military aid grants being provided to Israel in 2013 and every year thereafter through 2017. That deal is part of a 10-year memorandum of understanding agreed to in 2007 during the George W. Bush presidency.

A new chapter has been added to the shale gas industry's eco-terrorism, counterinsurgency and psychological operations saga.

In March, NBC News investigative reporter Michael Isikoff revealed that many prominent U.S. public officials are on the payroll of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), a group labeled by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization. These U.S. officials are lobbying hard to remove the MEK from the list.

Under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, after the recent Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project decision - a controversial decision itself - it is a federal crime to provide "material support" for a designated terrorist organization. But legal niceties are apparently of nil concern to those on the dole of the MEK, a list that includes several big name political figures, according to a report written by former Bush Administration attorney and RAND Corporation analyst Jeremiah Goulka. A sample is below:

Tam Dalyell, the Father of the House, sparked outrage last night by accusing the Prime Minister of "being unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers".

In an interview with Vanity Fair, the Left-wing Labour MP named Lord Levy, Tony Blair's personal envoy on the Middle East, Peter Mandelson, whose father was Jewish, and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who has Jewish ancestry, as three of the leading figures who had influenced Mr Blair's policies on the Middle East.

Yesterday Mr Dalyell, the MP for Linlithgow, told The Telegraph: "I am fully aware that one is treading on cut glass on this issue and no one wants to be accused of anti-Semitism but, if it is a question of launching an assault on Syria or Iran . . . then one has to be candid."

He added: "I am not going to be labelled anti-Semitic. My children worked on a kibbutz. But the time has come for candour." The Prime Minister, Mr Dalyell claimed, was also indirectly influenced by Jewish people in the Bush administration, including Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, and Ari Fleischer, the President's press secretary.

Jeremiah Goulka worked as a lawyer in the Bush Justice Department, and then went to work as an analyst with the RAND Corporation, where he was sent to Iraq to analyze, among other things, the Iranian dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), publishing an oft-cited study on the group. MEK has been in the news of late because a high-powered bipartisan cast of former Washington officials have established close ties with the group and have been vocally advocating on its behalf, often in exchange for large payments, despite MEK's having been formally designated by the U.S. Government as a Terrorist organization. That close association on the part of numerous Washington officials with a Terrorist organization has led to a formal federal investigation of those officials. Goulka has written and supplied to me two superb Op-Eds on the MEK controversy - one about the group itself and the other explaining why so many prominent Washington officials are openly providing material support to this designated Terror group - and I'm publishing the two Op-Eds below with his consent (as you read them, remember that paid MEK shill Howard Dean actually called on its leader to be recognized as President of Iran while paid MEK shill Rudy Giuliani has continuously hailed the group's benevolence).

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) - the political arm of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO) often known as the People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI), a terrorist organization trained by the United States and the Israeli Mossad to carry out assassinations and other covert operations in Iran - has put out another propaganda report dealing with the Iranian nuclear program.

In their latest report, which a top U.S. nuclear expert already said should be treated with great skepticism according to Haaretz, claims that there are 60 scientists and engineers currently playing a role in the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Of course, in reality, the United States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has confirmed that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons on multiple occasions. Similarly, the United States intelligence community does not have any evidence indicating that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.

Even the Israeli military chief Benny Gantz shares this position, making the claims from the NCRI highly suspicious at best.

The NCRI's track record is far from one which would inspire confidence in the accuracy of their claims.

On May 21, 1975, Col. Paul Shaffer, a military attaché to the US mission in Iran, kissed his wife and two children goodbye, and entered a waiting car with his colleague, Lt. Col. Jack Turner, whose wife was getting their three children ready for school. It was the last time the families of these two US servicemen would see them alive.

As the Iranian driver pulled into a side street to avoid traffic a car blocked their passage and another car rammed them from behind. Three gunmen appeared and fired at the two Americans pointblank, killing them instantly: the three escaped in a third car, leaving a leaflet on the blood-drenched seat. The leaflet denounced "US imperialism" and bore the imprint of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), or "People's Crusaders," a Marxist-Islamist group led by Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.

All in all, the MEK killed 6 Americans in Iran: Lt. Col. Louis Lee Hawkins, an Army comptroller, cut down by gunman in front of his Tehran home, and William Cottrell, Donald Smith, and Robert Krongard, all employees of Rockwell International. They wounded Air Force Gen. Harold L. Price, and tried and failed to kidnap the US ambassador, Douglas MacArthur II. After the Iranian Revolution, the MEK supported the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran, opposed the release of the diplomats - calling a mass demonstration in protest - and demanded their execution.

Palestine - Israeli tanks fired into the Gaza Strip on Thursday, wounding seven Palestinians and leaving two of them in critical condition, Palestinian medical officials told AFP.

The shell hit near the Karni crossing east of Gaza City, according to the medics, who said the injured included three elderly men, and four other men, including two who were in critical condition.

Eyewitnesses said all those injured were farmers.

Israeli security officials initially insisted no tank fire was involved in the incident, but the army later said tank fire had been directed at "terrorists."

"A preliminary inquiry into the incident found that tank shells were fired in the direction of the terrorists," a military spokesman told AFP.

"Israeli soldiers identified several terrorists approaching the security fence in the northern Gaza Strip, in an area that is used by terror organisations to lay explosive devices," an army spokesman had earlier told AFP.

The Israeli military maintains an exclusion zone inside the Gaza Strip along the border and regularly carries out military activities in the area.

Gunmen dressed in Afghan police uniforms and wearing suicide vests have stormed a government compound, killing seven people and wounding 12 others.

The four attackers targeted the offices of governor Mohammad Ikhpolwak in Farah, which borders Iran and is considered a trouble spot for the decade-old Taliban insurgency.

Two of the attackers detonated their suicide vests and the other two were shot dead by police, said interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi.

The ministry blamed the attack on "terrorists", a phrase Afghan officials use to refer to Taliban insurgents and other militants.

The Taliban frequently target government compounds in attacks carried out by multiple militants carrying suicide vests, rockets and machine-guns.

The U.S. has plans in place to attack Iran if necessary to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons, Washington's envoy to Israel said, days ahead of a crucial round of nuclear talks with Tehran.

Dan Shapiro's message resonated Thursday far beyond the closed forum in which it was made: Iran should not test Washington's resolve to act on its promise to strike if diplomacy and sanctions fail to pressure Tehran to abandon its disputed nuclear program.

Shapiro told the Israel Bar Association the U.S. hopes it will not have to resort to military force.

"But that doesn't mean that option is not fully available. Not just available, but it's ready," he said. "The necessary planning has been done to ensure that it's ready."

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, like energy production. The U.S. and Israel suspect Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, but differences have emerged in how to persuade Tehran to curb its program.

Washington says diplomacy and economic sanctions must be given a chance to run its course, and is taking the lead in the ongoing talks between six global powers and Iran.

Israel, while saying it would prefer a diplomatic solution, has expressed skepticism about these talks and says time is running out for military action to be effective.

President Barack Obama has assured Israel that the U.S. is prepared to take military action if necessary, and it is standard procedure for armies to draw up plans for a broad range of possible scenarios. But Shapiro's comments were the most explicit sign yet that preparations have been stepped up.

In his speech, Shapiro acknowledged the clock is ticking.

Earlier this week, the federal government announced that the Air Force might be dispatching drones to a backyard near you. The stated purpose of these spies in the sky is to assist local police to find missing persons or kidnap victims, or to chase bad guys.

If the drone operator sees you doing anything of interest (Is your fertilizer for the roses or to fuel a bomb? Is that Sudafed for your cold or your meth habit? Are you smoking in front of your kids?), the feds say they may take a picture of you and keep it. The feds predict that they will dispatch or authorize about 30,000 of these unmanned aerial vehicles across America in the next 10 years. Meanwhile, more than 300 local and state police departments are awaiting federal permission to use the drones they already have purchased - usually with federal stimulus funds.

The government is out of control.

If the police use a drone without a warrant to see who or what is in your backyard or your bedroom, or if while looking for a missing child the drone takes a picture of you in your backyard or bedroom and the government keeps the picture, its use is unnatural and unconstitutional.

I say "unnatural" because we all have a natural right to privacy; it is a fundamental right that is inherent in our humanity. All of us have times of the day and moments in our behavior when we expect that no one - least of all the government - will be watching. When the government watches us during those times, it violates our natural right to privacy. It also violates our constitutional right to privacy. The Supreme Court has held consistently that numerous clauses in the Bill of Rights keep the government at bay without a warrant.