https://israelpalestinenews.org/despite-coronavirus-caused-cutbacks-israel-expects-to-get-full-3-8-billion/
https://archive.vn/hJCxh
Despite coronavirus-caused cutbacks, Israel expects to get full $3.8 billion
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Israel’s Jerusalem Post newspaper reports that “nearly all the experts” it consulted believe that Israel will get at least $3.8 billion from the U.S. in the coming year despite economic devastation to the U.S. economy caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
JP notes that the aid is expected even though “American economic activity has declined in recent weeks at a rate not seen since the Great Depression.” Barron’s similarly reports that the entire U.S. economy “has been brutalized” by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Whatever happens next, the events of the past six weeks will scar the U.S. economy well into the 2030s, if not beyond,” Barron’s predicts. “Tens of millions of Americans are already paying the price, and they will continue to do so for a long time.”
Nevertheless, the Jerusalem Post reports, a “Trump administration source” said that Israel would not need to worry about getting the money “even if there is a depression” in the U.S.
For decades Israel has received more U.S. tax money than any other country – on average, about 7,000 times more per capita than to others around the world.
$38 billion package
The current aid to Israel is part of a package promised by the Obama administration in 2016 under which Israel would get $38 billion over the next 10 years – the largest such package in U.S. history.
The aid package works out to $7,230 per minute to Israel, and equals about $23,000 per each Jewish Israeli family of four.
Under the Obama-Netanyahu Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), the $3.8 billion per year was to be a ‘ceiling’ – the agreement was that Israel would not ask for more money on top of this annual disbursement.
However, an MOU is a non-binding agreement and can be changed. Therefore, Israel partisans in Congress have introduced legislation that would make it into law – and the legislation before Congress makes the terms even more beneficial to Israel than the MOU.
Under the current bill before Congress, the $38 billion would be a ‘floor’ rather than a ‘ceiling,’ meaning that aid could increase, as it almost always has in the past.
JP reports, however, that some former Israeli diplomats, concerned that Americans suffering under COVID-19 might object, recommend that this year Israel avoid its usual request for more money.
Aid to Israel hurts U.S.
Israel and its partisans claim that U.S. aid to Israel is supposedly good for the U.S. because Israel spends most of the aid money on U.S. weaponry. (All other nations that receive U.S. military aid are required to spend 100 percent of it on U.S. equipment.).
However, if the U.S. wishes to subsidize U.S. companies, the Pentagon and/or other U.S. agencies could simply buy more equipment themselves, and let Israelis use their own money to purchase weaponry.
Similarly, Israel and its advocates often claim that Israel is America’s “aircraft carrier” in the Middle East. However, it is actually American soldiers who have fought and died for Israel through the years.
Aid to Israel is also problematic for other reasons. Israel has a long record of human rights violations, as documented by Human Rights Watch, the Red Cross, Christian Aid, Amnesty International, Oxfam, and numerous other humanitarian agencies.
Israel has also used U.S. aid in ways that violate U.S. laws.
For these reasons, providing Israel with massive amounts of money and weaponry is antithetical to most Americans’ moral and ethical principles.
In addition, such aid creates dangerous hostility to the U.S. Bin Laden, for example, listed U.S. support for Israeli crimes as one of the major reasons for his opposition to the United States.