Iron Dome. (Photo: Shaul Golan/Yedioth Ahronoth)
Congress approved an additional $235 million in U.S. military aid to Israel, Ynet reports. The U.S. allocates to Israel approximately $2.5 billion in aid, per year.
The request, which boosts the total amount allocated for 2012 to $25 million more than the last fiscal year (the 2011 budget was $3.075 billion), came from the Pentagon in order to help Israel in "development of safeguards against rockets and missiles that could be launched towards Israel by Hezbollah and Iran."
Ynet reports:
Pentagon officials were the ones who requested that Congress approve a $106 million aid budget for Israel's defense systems against missiles, on top of the Iron Dome budget. Congress chose to nearly double that amount, approving a budget of $235 million for 2012, amounting to $25 million more than in 2011.
Since 1949, Congress has distributed over $114 billion in U.S. aid to Israel.
$1.036 trillion? wow. Any record of a single Israeli word of gratitude for all that cash? More importantly, any chance the US will get paid back?
“Since 1949, Congress has distributed over $1.036 trillion in U.S. aid to Israel.”
Compound interest calculated at a reasonable 6% would be what? That is the true cost of this largesse. Anyone able to calculate this?
This is where the money is going that used to go to for food stamps for hungry American children and adults.
Your trillion$ link doesn’t work, Allison.
That’s actually rather fitting, neither does Iron Dome.
i am so ready for this love affair with israel to be permanently over.
I’m ready for it to be publicly recognized for what it is so that we can have a real public debate over what it has done, and so that the congressmen who went along with it are outed.
$1.036 trillion? Since that is over $16.7bn for each of the 62years since ’49, where does the myth of a mere $3bn come from? How do individual US states with similar population compare in what they get per annum? Flamin heck, it’s several thousands of dollars annually for each and every ‘Israeli’ (omitting Palestinians) man, woman and child!
Each iron dome rocket costs 70,000 dollars the rate of interception is 10% see here:- link to wanderingraven.wordpress.com
The whole boondoggle is a waste of time and money, but hey it is Israel so who is counting?
That’s my kids future they just sent over to Israel from my hard-earned tax money that I sweated blood for – and nobody asked my permission either. Talk about taxation without representation!
A pox on both your houses.
The trillion link doesn’t work but I am guessing the info is based in part on this 2002 report in the CS Monitor. I don’t know what is included in the Allison link but
since this one was done in 2002 even more extra ‘hidden’ funds have been allocated to Israel under many other categories thru various agencies; like direct grants to Israeli universities, grants for energy research, grants to Israeli hospitals and research centers, (and not even counting Ackerman’s famous 10 million earmark for a Israeli hospital) totally free weapons and equipment from US excess in Iraq, Afghan and other areas in the ME where the US has bases, restocking of US weapons stored in Israel that Israel is free to use ( and did) for operations like their attack on Lebanon. Doesn’t count either the jet fuel shipments to Israel that come out of the DOD budget.
I was listening this morning on c-span to house hearings on homelessness in the US and how many children it affects. The numbers are astounding And these aren’t all children of drug addicts and dead beats, they are families who lost jobs and then homes. One young girl told about how she and her waitress mother lived in a car for years, embarrassed and not knowing if they could or where to go to get help.
When she graduated from high school she joined the military just to have housing and some stability and be able to help her mother. Needless to say these people never see any health care unless they have access to a free clinic or get taken to a hospital emergency room.
Every time I have to look at what we taxpayers give that parasite Israel and how Israel uses it my blood boils. Vote every sob in congress out.
link to csmonitor.com
By David R. Francis, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / December 9, 2002
Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by today’s population, that is more than $5,700 per person.
This is an estimate by Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington. For decades, his analyses of the Middle East scene have made him a frequent thorn in the side of the Israel lobby.
For the first time in many years, Mr. Stauffer has tallied the total cost to the US of its backing of Israel in its drawn-out, violent dispute with the Palestinians. So far, he figures, the bill adds up to more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War.
And now Israel wants more. In a meeting at the White House late last month, Israeli officials made a pitch for $4 billion in additional military aid to defray the rising costs of dealing with the intifada and suicide bombings. They also asked for more than $8 billion in loan guarantees to help the country’s recession-bound economy.
Considering Israel’s deep economic troubles, Stauffer doubts the Israel bonds covered by the loan guarantees will ever be repaid. The bonds are likely to be structured so they don’t pay interest until they reach maturity. If Stauffer is right, the US would end up paying both principal and interest, perhaps 10 years out.
Israel’s request could be part of a supplemental spending bill that’s likely to be passed early next year, perhaps wrapped in with the cost of a war with Iraq.
Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. It is already due to get $2.04 billion in military assistance and $720 million in economic aid in fiscal 2003. It has been getting $3 billion a year for years.
Adjusting the official aid to 2001 dollars in purchasing power, Israel has been given $240 billion since 1973, Stauffer reckons. In addition, the US has given Egypt $117 billion and Jordan $22 billion in foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel.
“Consequently, politically, if not administratively, those outlays are part of the total package of support for Israel,” argues Stauffer in a lecture on the total costs of US Middle East policy, commissioned by the US Army War College, for a recent conference at the University of Maine.
These foreign-aid costs are well known. Many Americans would probably say it is money well spent to support a beleagured democracy of some strategic interest. But Stauffer wonders if Americans are aware of the full bill for supporting Israel since some costs, if not hidden, are little known.
One huge cost is not secret. It is the higher cost of oil and other economic damage to the US after Israel-Arab wars.
In 1973, for instance, Arab nations attacked Israel in an attempt to win back territories Israel had conquered in the 1967 war. President Nixon resupplied Israel with US arms, triggering the Arab oil embargo against the US.
That shortfall in oil deliveries kicked off a deep recession. The US lost $420 billion (in 2001 dollars) of output as a result, Stauffer calculates. And a boost in oil prices cost another $450 billion.
Afraid that Arab nations might use their oil clout again, the US set up a Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That has since cost, conservatively, $134 billion, Stauffer reckons.
Other US help includes:
• US Jewish charities and organizations have remitted grants or bought Israel bonds worth $50 billion to $60 billion. Though private in origin, the money is “a net drain” on the United States economy, says Stauffer.
• The US has already guaranteed $10 billion in commercial loans to Israel, and $600 million in “housing loans.” (See editor’s note below.) Stauffer expects the US Treasury to cover these.
• The US has given $2.5 billion to support Israel’s Lavi fighter and Arrow missile projects.
• Israel buys discounted, serviceable “excess” US military equipment. Stauffer says these discounts amount to “several billion dollars” over recent years.
• Israel uses roughly 40 percent of its $1.8 billion per year in military aid, ostensibly earmarked for purchase of US weapons, to buy Israeli-made hardware. It also has won the right to require the Defense Department or US defense contractors to buy Israeli-made equipment or subsystems, paying 50 to 60 cents on every defense dollar the US gives to Israel.
US help, financial and technical, has enabled Israel to become a major weapons supplier. Weapons make up almost half of Israel’s manufactured exports. US defense contractors often resent the buy-Israel requirements and the extra competition subsidized by US taxpayers.
• 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.
• Israel has 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, says Stauffer.
Stauffer’s list will be controversial. He’s been assisted in this research by a number of mostly retired military or diplomatic officials who do not go public for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic if they criticize America’s policies toward Israel.
And take a gander at how so many state and local governments and their agencies and quasi public entities have their employee pensions invested in Israeli bonds, not US bonds. Of course the employees don’t even know it. Israeli bonds have a lower credit rating, even still, than US bonds.
Better still, take a look at how many state and local governments are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy while Israel apple-cores our governmental budgets.
Hi American,
Q: …homelessness in the US…
R: A bit on a side note – roughly 40% of homeless people are Vets. It breaks my heart.
AMERICAN wrote and reproduced … a whole lot of stuff that would gobsmack most …
… and it’s exactly why I think concentrating mostly on essentially trying to persuade Americans to sympathize with the Palestinians is the wrong tack.
Sure, that is, if you wanna go and crusade against the big moral magilla, have at it. But if you choose to principally shoot at the lesser one of *American* interests—which would however also vastly help that big moral magilla situation—you have *vastly* more powerful ammunition in the form of the kind of stuff AMERICAN has written here.
After all, it is simply wrong for us to be financially raped the way we are given our own needs. But put an end to or even substantially put a dent in the kind of unbelievable subsidization of Israel’s position that this kind of stuff represents, and see just how quickly the Israelis start viewing their situation differently.
In short, relieve them from being insulated from the costs of their policies—including most profoundly the cost of the Israeli dead and wounded that would result from an unsubsidized continuation of its policies—and you bet you’d see some change. Insulation is a very very valuable thing if you chose to make your climate frigid. And very quickly I think the Israelis would start to see the virtues of … not being at chronic war with everyone around them.
Or … don’t. Just ignore talking about the cost to Americans of supporting Israel out of the sense that … money doesn’t really matter, if not the idea that it’s “immoral” to be concerned about it at all.
Certainly doesn’t give one that inner, self-congratulatory glow of high virtue talking about such prosaic matters, that’s for sure.
But, then again, is that the real reason a person should have for addressing this issue?
Forgot the cost of an Arab oil embargo in ’73 for providing Israel with means to defeat Arabs – Our car and energy dependent industry never recovered as a result of it ,…
The WRMEA site said 103,000,000,000 which is 103 Billion, NOT 1.03 Trillion.
That’s one-tenth as much, but still a WHOPPPPPING number.
Adding interest? At 6%/ann? The table shown by WRMEA coagulates the amounts from 1949-1996, and goes only to 2008, so it is impossible (solely from that table) to apply interest.
But, since these are GIFTS, not loans, interest-to-date is indeed “interesting”. Taking the numbers for gifts up-to 1996 as having been delivered on 1/1/96, I calculate a total of $171 B through 1/1/2009 (the table going only through 2008).
That’s almost DOUBLE the $103 B reported. And maybe accurate (as far as it goes). Assuming $3 B/annum for 2009, 2010, 2011, all delivered on Jan 1, the total for 1/1/2012 becomes $213 B. HEFTY.
If you want to consider the total picture, Stauffer’s estimate of 1.6 trillion is more accurate because it counts direct and indirect cost.
The late Mr Stauffer reported 3 trillion total aid to Israel in 2003 & obviously it’s much higher now. His federal sources are now having their budgets cut, and WRME is desperate for donor funding, as you can see on their web site.
I just did some quick math —for the even underestimated figure of 4 billion we give Israel every year we could house 333,500 homeless a year at a high cost of $1000 a month for some areas and double that, 666,000 hundred thousand in less costly areas of the country.
What is the % of the religious Israelis that don’t work because they are studying their religious navel and are supported by the government?
,… Or a tuition for 350 000 bright students that can’t afford college ,…
They can afford to support 135,616 parasitic yeshiva and kollel students to pay the married ones NIS 1,000 per month and unmarried NIS 850 per month, not to mention reduced mortgages for families with eight members to discounts of 70-90 percent on arnona (local property tax). Orthodox boarding schools, daycare centers and kindergartens are receiving government financing and discounts, depending on the number of children in a family , etc. etc. ,…
link to matzav.com
Same V- column of traitors that voted for all those billions for Israel’s war machine that’s killing defenceless Palestinians proposed elimination of a chump change of $75 million program that offers housing vouchers to homeless veterans in the U.S.
link to democrats.appropriations.house.gov
NY, 20 odd years ago.
‘Those M-16s really suck!’
‘Then why accept them?’
‘Coz they’re for free.’
Nuff said.
Of the 87 new freshman GOP representatives in the House, 75% have already signed a pledge not to cut aid to Israel although they were given office by shouting to the roof tops,” Cut, baby, Cut spending!” I guess those free vacations to Israel really paid off for the Israel Firsters, eh?
link to counterpunch.org
What pisses me of it’s a hasbara crap that no one challenges, that 3/4 of that over 3 billions in military handout (2/3 according to latest news) stays in US creating jobs
for the poor six-pack-schmock – If this is a such a good deal why there’s any other business oriented country in line bidding to take our place ? ,…
I think that there must exist a certain number of sixpackers who do benefit from this money. The money is recycled to businesses who will support and fund and to individuals who will vote for – and perhaps fanatically advocate through their churches – the politicians who vote for the arms contracts, thus setting the cycle in motion yet again. It’s an extraordinarily distorting and inefficient way to use public money to stimulate the economy but a war-related stimulus has that perverse popularity that a peace-related stimulus does not.
An updated version of the table Alison links to in the last sentence of this post, published in the November, 2011 issue of Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and available here, shows a total of $123.2 billion in aid since 1949.
Of course that doesn’t include the several kinds of indirect aid Thomas Stauffer cited.
BTW, rumor has it that WRMEA is in dire financial straits. Anyone who can spare $29 (or more) and wants to see this kind of research and reporting continued should subscribe.
Another data point: in 2006 Congressman John Dingell wrote in the Arab American News, a paper based in Dearborn, MI, “I have been in Congress for 50 years, and during my tenure I have proudly helped to move more than $300 billion worth of American aid to Israel.” His column is no longer available at the Arab American News sit, but Jeff Blankfort posted the full text here.
Dingell doesn’t spell out how he arrived at the $300 billion figure, but obviously he was including various kinds of indirect assistance the US provides to Israel that WRMEA and the Congressional Research Service don’t include in their tabulations.
Great cartoon where the “American ship” is heading
link to 2.bp.blogspot.com
Except that it’s factually wrong, dumvitaestspesest. Greece does not issue its own currency. As a result of giving up its sovereign currency when it joined the EU, it is in the same position as New Hampshire or Nebraska or Nevada or any one of the other 50 states, all currency users (dollars). Greece is a currency user (Euro).
The US is a sovereign nation, and issues its own currency. It can sell its debt in its own currency and control its own fate. Greece cannot. Neither can Ireland or Portugal or Spain or Italy, etc.
Do you really think FED is under a full control of American people??
Or maybe it is rather vice versa??
You are right ,Greece lost its sovereignity, and became the “slave” of the euro. America may lose its sovereignity according to a different blueprint.
Nobody said only one is obligatory?
I am intrigued by this story over at Veterans Today:
link to veteranstoday.com
Finnish authorities have confirmed the seizure of 69 Patriot missiles manufactured by Raytheon Corporation…
Strange in itself, but…
Germany officials have offered to take responsibility for the shipment to China though there is no record of Germany ever having received the missiles in the first place…
Hello?
Germany has a long history of working with Israel, call it “war guilt” or profiteering.
This wouldn’t be the first time:
We are told the missiles heading to China were to be “cloned” for sale along with radar and launch units, already there. They would be sold worldwide under Israeli branding in competition with the US.
And of course:
Yet the Chinese government has given an official denial of any knowledge of this transaction.
China walked into a trap, one that uncovered their espionage cooperation agreements that involved, not the receipt of advanced Patriot missile systems but the full plans for the F22 stealth fighter.
And it gets murkier:
Now we learn the Pentagon story was “cover” and it was the F22 Raptor, not the F35, an “export plane,” that was compromised…
And, oh really?
The US Department of Defense has assured all involved that these missiles were not being sent to South Korea and that their presence on a civilian ship either being loaded in Germany or in port in Finland was in now way a part of any exercise nor any accepted methodology for the handling of this type of ultra-high technology weaponry.
Israeli officials have failed to respond to questions about the consignment.
Air Force transport command personnel indicate that high tech transfers to Israel are routinely offloaded at Schipol Airport in the Netherlands where Israel maintains secure facilities.
Not sure what to make of it, but I have a sick feeling.