By:
Jamal Kanj*
Recent
report by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation revealed that the US has provided Israel with more than $103 billion
between 1949 and 2008. More than any amount spent on any foreign country not occupied
by US forces.
It
is even more absurd during economic hardship at home for the US to sign a Memorandum
of Understanding granting Israel additional $30 billions between Fiscal Year
(FY) 2009 and 2018. This is further to another $24.1 billion paid from FY 2000
to 2009. Bringing the total US
tax payer’s tab to more than 54 $billion in less than 20 years.
Is
Israel putting US money into
good use?
Israel receives almost
one third of the total US
foreign aid appropriation. But in reality, more than half of the aid is set
aside, directly or indirectly, for Israel. The other major
international aid recipients, contingent on their peace treaties with Israel are Egypt,
Jordan and Palestine. But unlike all others, Israel receives
its aid at the beginning of US FY year.
US aid program was
envisaged, arguably, to promote peace and help underprivileged nations.
Following the signing of the Camp David peace treaty with Egypt, and ostensibly to promote peace, annual
financial aid to Israel
swelled to more than $3 billion.
However
instead of programs to anchor future peace, Israel
utilized US
aid to perpetuate war and hatred. Since occupying the West Bank and Gaza, US
aid was used in massive concrete desertification scheme destroying more than 6000
dunams of agricultural land and uprooting approximately 450,000 trees; demolishing
more than 30,000 homes for native Palestinians and building hundreds of
thousands of “Jewish only” habitats in 152 illegal colonies.
After
signing the peace treaty with Egypt,
Israeli settler’s population in the West Bank
was less than 20,000. Today, they number more than 300,000. In fact, since
signing the purported Peace Accord with Palestinians in 1993, the illegal
Jewish colonial population increased roughly by 200 per cent.
If
not promoting peace, are there economical justifications to aid Israel?
The 2010 World Economic Global Comprehensive Report
ranked Israel
24th largest economy in the world. In the same year’s International Monetary
Fund’s Gross
Domestic Product Purchasing Power Parity, Israel
trails Italy, and eight
places ahead of Saudi Arabia
on the scale measuring wealth of nations.
While
“aiding the less affluent” Saudi Arabia
might be more worthy investment for the wellbeing of US
economy; but how would US
tax payers feel if Saudi Arabia
was allotted $30 billion of US
tax money in the next 9 years?
Nevertheless
and unlike Israel, Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf
Cooperation Council have pumped in the last 20 years more than $100 billion into
the US
economy buying armament. Today, they are in discussion to spend more money on the
US
military industrial complex for a proposed regional missile shield system.
Meanwhile,
Israel’s missile shield
(Iron Dom) was entirely financed by US tax payers, above and beyond the
annual aid appropriations.
Plunged
in $15 trillion debt at home, there are no moral or strategic justifications
for sending US Tax payer’s money abroad when Americans are expected to tighten
their belts and US Congress is proposing to trim government spending for
students and proposing to phase out Medicare for the elderly.