On May 17, 6:27 pm, HHW <
coaster132...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The Staggering Cost of Israel to Americans
>
> Administrator May 07, 2013 |
> Israel has a population of approximately 7.7 million, or a million
> fewer than the state of New Jersey. It is among the world’s most
> affluent nations, with a per capita income similar to that of the
> European Union.[1] Israel’s unemployment rate of 6.3% is much better
> than America’s 8.2%,[2] and Israel’s net trade, earnings, and payments
> is ranked 146th in the world while the US sits at a dismal 193rd.[3]
> Yet, Israel receives more of America’s foreign aid budget than any
> other nation.[4] The US has, in fact, given more aid to Israel than it
> has to all the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the
> Caribbean combined—which have a total population of over a billion
> people.[5]
>
> And foreign aid is just one component of the staggering cost of our
> alliance with Israel.
> Given the tremendous costs, it is critical to examine why we lavish so
> much aid on Israel, and whether it is worth Americans’ hard-earned tax
> dollars. But first, let’s take a look at what our alliance with Israel
> truly costs.
> Before the Iraq War in 2003
> Direct Foreign Aid
> According to the Congressional Research Service , the amount of
> official US aid to Israel since its founding in 1948 tops $115
> billion, and in the past few decades it has been on the order of $3
> billion per year.[6] (In 2013, for example, this amounted to over $8.5
> million every single day.)
> But this money is only part of the story. For one thing, Israel gets
> all of its aid money at the start of each year, rather than in
> quarterly installments like other countries.[7] This is significant:
> It means that Israel can start earning interest on the money right
> away – interest paid by the US since Israel invests these funds in US
> Treasury notes. In addition, because the US government operates at a
> deficit, it must borrow money in order to give it to Israel and then
> pay interest on it all year. Together these cost US taxpayers more
> than $100 million every year.
> Israel is also the only recipient of US military aid that is allowed
> to use a significant portion annually to purchase products made by
> Israeli companies instead of US companies. (The costs to Americans
> caused by this unique perk are discussed below.)
> In addition, the US gives roughly $1.6 billion per year to Egypt and
> Jordan in aid packages arranged largely in exchange for peace treaties
> with Israel. The treaties don’t include justice for Palestinians, and
> are therefore deeply unpopular with the local populations.[8]
> On top of this, the US gives more than $400 million to the Palestinian
> Authority each year,[9] much of it used to rebuild infrastructure
> destroyed by Israel and to bolster an economy stifled by the Israeli
> occupation.[10] This would be unnecessary if Israel were to end the
> occupation and allow the Palestinians to build a functioning and self-
> sustaining economy.
> Yet, there’s still much more to the story, because parts of US aid to
> Israel are buried in the budgets of various US agencies, mostly the
> Department of Defense. For example, since at least 2006, the American
> Defense budget has included between $130 and $235 million per year for
> missile defense programs in Israel.[11]
> In all, direct US disbursements to Israel are higher than to any other
> country, even though Israelis only make up 0.1% of the world’s
> population. On average, Israelis receive 7,000 times more US foreign
> aid per capita than other people throughout the world, despite the
> fact that Israel is one of the world’s more affluent nations.[12] And
> that number rises significantly when one considers disbursements to
> Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority and Defense spending on
> behalf of Israel.
> Additional Ad hoc support for Israel
> Dr. Thomas Stauffer, a Harvard economist and Middle East studies
> professor who twice served in the Executive Office of the President,
> wrote a comprehensive report about all components of the relationship
> with Israel’s cost to American taxpayers for theWashington Report on
> Middle East Affairs in 2003. He wrote:
> “Another element is ad hoc support for Israel, which is not part of
> the formal foreign aid programs. No comprehensive compilation of US
> support for Israel has been publicly released. Additional known items
> include loan guarantees… special contracts for Israeli firms, legal
> and illegal[13] transfers of marketable US military technology, de
> facto exemption from US trade protection provisions, and discounted
> sales or free transfers of ‘surplus’ US military equipment. An
> unquantifiable element is the trade and other aid given to Romania and
> Russia to facilitate Jewish migration to Israel; this has accumulated
> to many billions of dollars.”[14]
> Israel has often used its privileged access to US military technology
> against both the US government and US corporate interests. According
> to the Associated Press in 2002,
> “In France, Turkey, The Netherlands and Finland, Israeli companies
> have edged such U.S. firms as Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and General
> Atomics out of arms deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars in
> recent years. The irony, experts say, is that tens of billions of U.S.
> tax dollars and transfers of American military technology helped
> create and nurture Israel’s industry, in effect subsidizing a foreign
> competitor.”
> The AP article quoted a vice president at the Aerospace Industries
> Association of America, who bluntly said, “We give them money to build
> stuff for themselves and the U.S. taxpayer gets nothing in
> return.”[15]
> Meanwhile, according to the Christian Science Monitor , Israel has
> also “blocked some major US arms sales, such as F-15 fighter aircraft
> to Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s. That cost $40 billion over 10
> years.”[16]
> Even worse, Israeli weapons “buttress the arsenals of nations such as
> China that the United States considers strategic competitors, alarming
> US military planners,” theAssociated Press article went on to report.
> “[In 2001] US surveillance planes flying along China’s coast were
> threatened by Chinese fighter jets armed with Israeli missiles… Had
> Chinese fighter pilots been given the order to fire, they could have
> brought down the US planes with Israeli Python III missiles… US
> defense chiefs say Israel sold China the missiles without informing
> the United States.”[17]
> Lost jobs, trade, and standing
> One of the most devastating indirect costs of the US alliance with
> Israel was the Arab oil boycott of 1973. The Arab states imposed the
> boycott in protest of US support of Israel during the 1973 war, in
> which Arab countries attacked Israel to try to reclaim lands Israel
> had invaded and occupied in 1967.
> “Washington’s intervention triggered the Arab oil embargo which cost
> the U.S. doubly: first, due to the oil shortfall, the US lost about
> $300 billion to $600 billion in GDP; and, second, the US was saddled
> with another $450 billion in higher oil import costs,” wrote Stauffer
> in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.[18]
> Then there’s the cost in lost jobs. “US policy and trade sanctions
> reduce US exports to the Middle East about $5 billion a year, costing
> 70,000 or so American jobs,” Stauffer estimates. “Not requiring Israel
> to use its US aid to buy American goods, as is usual in foreign aid,
> costs another 125,000 jobs.”[19]
> But perhaps the most damaging cost to the US has been its loss of
> standing in the Arab and Muslim worlds, where US largesse towards
> Israel as it commits human rights violations[20] provokes deep
> resentment. “To many of the world’s Muslims, it places the US taxpayer
> on the Israeli side of its conflicts with Arabs,” observed the
> Associated Press article.[21]
> According to Harvard professor Stephen Walt, “The 9/11 Commission
> reported that 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s ‘animus toward the
> United States stemmed not from his experiences there as a student, but
> rather from his violent disagreement with US foreign policy favoring
> Israel.’ Other anti-American terrorists—such as Ramzi Yousef, who led
> the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center—have offered similar
> explanations for their anger toward the United States.”[22]
> There are many more potential categories of costs that are even more
> difficult to quantify. All in all, Stauffer estimates that Israel cost
> the US about $1.6 trillion between 1973 and 2003 alone—more than twice
> the cost of the Vietnam war.[23]
> Costs since Stauffer’s study in 2003
> Israel’s cost to American taxpayers has remained high since Stauffer’s
> 2003 study. The US currently gives Israel an average of $3 billion a
> year in military aid, under an agreement signed by the Bush
> administration to transfer $30 billion to Israel over ten years,
> starting in 2009.[24]
> All of the other extras and costs remain and in some cases have
> increased since 2003. For example, “Despite a tough economic climate
> and expected US budget cuts—including drastic cuts to the US military
> budget—US lawmakers will provide $236 million in fiscal 2012 for the
> Israeli development of three missile defense programs,” reported
> Israeli newspaper Haaretz.[25]
> In addition, the US government “has provided $205 million to support
> the Iron Dome, manufactured by Israel’s state-owned Raphael Advanced
> Defense Systems Ltd. The system uses small radar-guided missiles to
> blow up in midair Katyusha-style rockets with ranges of 3 miles to 45
> miles, as well as mortar bombs… Legislation moving through the
> Republican-controlled US House of Representatives would give Israel
> additional $680 million for the Iron Dome system through 2015.”[26]
> And if, as many experts believe, the US would not have invaded Iraq
> without intense and sustained pressure from Washington insiders who
> advocate actively on behalf of Israel,[27] this adds yet another
> dimension of ...
>
> read more »
The Staggering Cost of Israel to Americans
---
the extortion must end.
not a single star on the US flag represents israel.
we should be funding Peurto Rico and our other properties instead of a
country that has killed our soldiers, extorted our politicians, and
sells our technology to our competitors.