The House Armed Services Committee has voted to give Israel another half a billion dollars in military aid– on top of the $3.1 billion we already give Israel. It’s for missile interception systems.
“The $488 million for the joint U.S.-Israeli research and development of anti-missile projects proposed in the Defense Authorization bill is not technically considered ‘military aid’ to Israel, even though these ostensible ‘joint projects’ only benefit Israel,” explains Josh Ruebner of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. “Instead, they are budgeted through the Pentagon, which means that this money is additional to the $3.1 billion in military aid to Israel requested by President Obama for the 2014 budget.”
From Haaretz:
The U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee … last week approved the defense authorization bill proposal submitted by its chairman, California Republican Howard McKeon. According to the wording of the proposal, the U.S. will allocate another $268 million to Israel in 2014 for the development of two interception systems…This is a larger investment than initially planned. The bill also states that a further $220 million will be allocated in 2014 to finance the purchase of extra batteries for the Iron Dome missile defense system. The proposal must now be approved by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations. It will be submitted to the Senate at a later stage…Israel currently has five Iron Dome batteries. The plan will give Israel another five batteries by the end of next year.The U.S. also gives Israel $3.1 billion in military aid annually. U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel promised that this would not be reduced even while significant cuts are being made to the U.S. defense budget.
Missile defense is known to be a failure, because the offense can always increase the number of missiles to overwhelm the defense. It’s a situation in which the defense is “trying to hit a bullet with a bullet,” so the offense always wins. This is not a secret: the ABM (anti-ballistic missile) program was first proposed in the 1970’s, but studies showed that it wouldn’t work. In the 1980’s, Reagan’s SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative, aka Star Wars) was studied by a group of prominent physicists, who said that it wouldn’t work. Of course this didn’t stop it. Nobody who mattered minded a bit.
By 9/11/2001, when the US really was attacked, the program had consumed $40B. And of course on 9/11/2001 it proved completely useless in stopping the attacks on the World Trade Center.
So why did the program continue? Because the real goal was to spend the money, producing jobs and profits. Bearing in mind that the real goal is to spend the money, the program is actually a success, homing in on the taxpayer for about $3B/year.
This latest uptick in Star Wars (“Iron Dome”), if it goes through, will bring more profits to the US and Israeli “defense” contactors.
I wonder when this corrupt funding of Israel will become so blatantly obvious to our somnambulant citizenry that the guillotines will be rolled out? I keep thinking that this “next” one will be the tipping point, but somehow it just never seems to happen. Perhaps the one after this one…
Congress actually tried to get 980 million additional for Israel instead of Obama’s initially proposed 248 million.
Evidently the WH and congress split the difference and agreed on the 488 million.
Should we be grateful for the compromise?