The Ultimate Earmark--U.S. Military Aid to Israel

[laststeamtrain]

The Ultimate Earmark
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

By Kathleen and Bill Christison

March 06, 2009 "Counterpunch" -- In these days of economic crisis, budget overruns, earmarks, and multi-billion dollar bailouts, when Americans are being forced to tighten their own belts, one of the most automatic earmarks—a bailout by any measure—goes to a foreign government but is little understood by most Americans. U.S. military aid to Israel is doled out in annual increments of billions of dollars but remains virtually unchallenged while other fiscal outlays are drastically cut.

The United States and Israel signed a Memorandum of Understanding in August 2007 committing the U.S. to give Israel $30 billion in military aid over the next decade. This is grant aid, given in cash at the start of each fiscal year. The only stipulation imposed on Israel’s use of this cash gift is that it spend 74 per cent to purchase U.S. military goods and services.

The first grant under this agreement was made in October 2008, for FY2009, in the amount of $2.55 billion. To bring the total 10-year amount to $30 billion, amounts in future years will gradually increase until an annual level of $3.1 billion is reached in FY2013. This will continue through FY2018.

Israel is by far the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. Since 1949, the United States has provided Israel with $101 billion in total aid, of which $53 billion has been military aid. For the last 20-plus years, Israel has received an average of $3 billion annually in grant aid;, until now the grant has been a mix of economic and military aid.

Israel receives its aid under vastly more favorable terms than any other recipient. Egypt, for instance, receives $2 billion a year in economic aid, but this is a loan and must be repaid. Saudi Arabia also has U.S. military equipment in its arsenal, but it buys and pays for this equipment and is not given it, as Israel is.

Aid to Israel can be said to benefit the United States because it is spent to purchase equipment manufactured here. But this recycling of federal monies into the arms industry is not the wisest way to spur general economic recovery. In fact, in the midst of a financial crisis, incurring a long-term obligation of this magnitude is highly irresponsible.

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http://www.counterpunch.org/christison03052009.html

[JuniperLea]

1. This just isn't right... eom

[polichick]

2. What a disgusting policy.

[aquart]

4. You think a nation without oil should pay as much as a nation with?

And I'm so pleased that you want to arm Egypt. Egypt loooves the Palestinians. Think what they could do with better guns.

[polichick]

5. Who wants to arm Egypt? I don't want to arm any of them, including Israel.

[liberal N proud]

3. Where is the GOP and liberal media out cry on that?

[classysassy]

6. When

Israel is involved our congressional critters are cowards.They all remember what happened to Cynthia McKenny.Don't piss off Aipac.

[Behind the Aegis]

8. "They all remember what happened to Cynthia McKenny"

:rofl:

[AdHocSolver]

7. This article is so off the wall it is hard to know where to begin.

First, the U.S. government did not give Israel significant amounts of aid until the 1960's when the Soviet Union, (remember them?), started making inroads into the Middle East in an attempt to take over that region's oil supply.

The oil sheikdoms started buying huge amounts of military equipment from the Soviets to enable their attacks on Israel. The U.S. weapons sales to Israel were to prevent the Soviets from taking over important U.S. suppliers of oil. If Israel hadn't defended itself, YOU would now be paying six or seven dollars a gallon for gasoline, assuming the Soviets would even sell oil to us. And, if the Soviet Union had succeeded in taking over Middle East oil, it would still be around today.

Also, over the years, Israel served the U.S. in gathering intelligence about Soviet weapons systems and political and military activities in the Middle East and Africa. This helped prevent a direct military confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Israel's victory in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war effectively ended Soviet influence in the Middle East and brought the oil sheikdoms to "our" side.

Saudi Arabia has the money to pay for its weapons systems because, in collusion with the oil companies, they have been price gouging us for decades. What they pay our military-industrial complex with are the huge profits they make selling oil to Americans.

Finally, Israel spending money in the U.S. WILL help the U.S. economy. What is preventing U.S. "recovery" is the fact that so many goods we purchase are manufactured in Asia. It is the outflow of money that hurts the U.S., not goods purchased here.

[Peace Patriot]

9. This is rather a cleansed history. In truth, the paranoid, McCarthyite, U.S. war

establishment misinterpreted every democracy movement on earth, with any tinge of socialism, or independence from the U.S., as a "Soviet threat." They misinterpreted Vietnam's longing for independence, and 5,000 year history of fighting off invasion and occupation, as a threat because the Vietnamese would have freely voted for communism in 1954. So they nixed those elections--and ended up slaughtering 2 million people, for what? For WHAT? They misinterpreted Chile's socialist government in a similar vein, and funded and trained Chilean murderers and torturers, who killed thousands of leftists, under the heinous dictator Pinochet. This sorry tale was repeated all over South America and Africa. And in the Middle East, the U.S. and Israel deliberately and with malice aforethought destroyed Iran's democratic government, and installed the horrible Shah of Iran, who inflicted the Iranian people with 25 years of torture and oppression--to steal Iran's oil.

In so far as Israel aided these horrors, they have done the U.S. and the world no favors.

[truedelphi]

12. Thank you, Peace Patriot. n/t

[AdHocSolver]

15. You are attacking Israel using the very tactic beloved of Joe McCarthy and other demagogues...

...guilt by association.

Israel had nothing to do with the Vietnam war or the coup in Chile or the overthrow of Mosaddeq of Iran in 1953 by the U.S and Britain. The Soviet Union was a significant threat to the U.S. After all, they had thousands of nuclear missiles aimed at the U.S.

The "horrible" Shah of Iran (Shah means king) was installed as Shah in September of 1941, years before the coup. Mosaddeq was ousted (in a coup instigated by the British and the U.S.) after he nationalized Iran's oil industry which "kicked out" the British and American oil companies.

[Peace Patriot]

10. There is one more--the $6 BILLION that the U.S. has larded on the narco-thugs running Colombia--

the second biggest U.S. military aid package in the world, outside of Israel. The Colombian military and its closely tied rightwing death squads have slaughtered thousands of union leaders, political leftists, small peasant farmers, human rights workers, journalists and others, with complete impunity. The government itself is closely tied to the death squads and the cocaine trade.

While we lay off teachers and nurses and firefighters and police officers, and jobs bleed out of the country in the hundreds of thousands, month after month, and the country reels from the looting of the Bush Junta, we're sending billions to a country with one of the worst human rights records on earth, and where furthermore the cocaine production has increased by 25%--one of the excuses for this war profiteer boondoggle being the corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. 'war on drugs.'

We could just about achieve solvency if we stopped propping up governments, like Israel and Colombia, which can't stand on their own feet--and which grossly misuse the fire power that we are funding. Israel is close to my heart, and I would not want to see it fail--so I am not proposing that all aid be withdrawn. But that aid should be contingent upon social justice and honoring past agreements. We are propping up warmongers and war profiteers in Israel. As for Colombia, it is now surrounded by good leftist governments, and, if aid were withdrawn tomorrow--which I DO propose--the new South American Common Market (UNASUR) would intervene and help set up a democratic government. Colombia would greatly benefit if all U.S. military aid were withdrawn. That's $6 BILLION that we could put to far, far better use right now.

[polichick]

11. So true - great post!

[bvar22]

13. Israel should be sending aid to the US.

All Israeli citizens enjoy cradle to grave FREE (at point of delivery) Universal Health Care.

It is ironic that some of the taxpayer monies going to Israel comes from people who can't afford to go to a doctor.

[BlueMTexpat]

14. You can find relevant stats for Israel and other countries

at The Greenbook, although the latest stats only go through 2006. http://qesdb.usaid.gov/gbk/

Iraq, since BushCo's illegal and immoral war there, is in a class by itself. Otherwise, Israel and Egypt were the top two annual recipients of US aid through 2006 at least, a major proportion of it military. Even much of the so-called "economic" assistance has military aspects. But Israel continues to lead every other country in total dollars received. We also give a lot of money to Pakistan and Colombia, as someone mentioned upthread, is also another major recipient. Other than Israel, "democracy" is a hollow word for the governments in those countries. Even in Israel, the left is in such disarray and has become so marginalized that the radical RW control of political outcomes, viz. the most recent elections where Netanyahu looks centrist in comparison to Lieberman (no, not "ours"), makes that "democracy" nearly as much of a sham.

If nothing else, our policies are harming Israeli progressives, who are an extremely courageous breed.

Here's one chart showing summary data for the major recipient countries, together with the preparer's comments.

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/politics/us-foreign-aid.htm