Israel's Feeding Frenzy at $3 Trillion
by William Hughes
Recently, I attended an advanced computer skills class at a local community college. I was shocked to find out that we had to meet in an overcrowded WWII-type trailer, that served as an annex to the institution’s main facility. As a result of severe legislative under-funding, this school, and many others, are pressing into service these relics of a bygone era.
Meanwhile, my daily paper, the Baltimore Sun, has been filled with horror stories relating to the deepening fiscal crises affecting the nation, Baltimore City, its surrounding counties and the state of Maryland. Budget cuts and layoffs dominate the news, as the unemployment rate continues to soar. Teachers and police department personnel are also protesting over denial of promised raises. The governor of Maryland has predicted that unless Medicaid cost are reined in, they could bankrupt the state.
Nationally, the U.S. debt is at a staggering $6.1 trillion and last year’s deficit alone was $158 billion and rising. On the global front, a UN agency, the International Labor Organization, reported, “Half the world lives on less than $2 a day, and of that total, a billion people survive on $1 a day.”
This week, I began reading the June, 2003 edition of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) magazine. An article titled “The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $ 3 Trillion” caught my eye. Its author is the distinguished economist, Thomas R. Stauffer, who has taught at both Harvard U. and the Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
Stauffer’s research is a damning indictment of the outrageously expensive U.S. relationship with Israel, since the post WWII period. The $3 trillion cost to the taxpayers, measured in 2002 dollars, “is almost four times greater than the cost of the Vietnam War, also reckoned in 2002 dollars. Even this figure underestimates the costs because certain classes of expenditure remain un-quantified . . . in the interest of national security.”
In his excellent overview, Stauffer underscores the financial outlays in seven different categories, running from “Political or Military Crises” to “Contingent Costs.” He emphasized how the draconian costs aren’t limited to financial outlays alone. U.S. aid to Israel also costs “some 275,000 American jobs each year.” Now, there’s a statistic that four of the most egregious cheerleaders for Zionist Israel; Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Arlen “Magic Bullet” Specter (R-PA), Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT), and Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), should be forced to explain to their constituents.
According to Stauffer, Israel’s 1973 War “proved to be dear. At a minimum, it cost the U.S. between $750 billion and $1 trillion,” he wrote. “This was the price tag for the rescue of Israel when President Richard Nixon agreed to re-supply Israel with U.S. arms as it was losing the war against its neighbors. Washington’s intervention,” Stauffer continued, “triggered the Arab oil embargo which cost the U.S. doubly: first, due to the oil shortfall, the U.S. lost about $300 billion to $600 billion in GDP; and second, the U.S. was saddled with another $450 billion in higher oil import costs . . . The 1973 War illustrated the new dimension of Middle East conflicts, where the burdens are economic rather than military.”
Stauffer expects the extreme right wing Tel Aviv regime of Ariel Sharon to shake U.S. taxpayers down this year, for more aid-$4 billion “in extra military support and a further $10 billion in loan guarantees, over and above the current level of appropriated aid.” Meanwhile, Israel’s illegal and brutal occupation continues to generate cycles of violence that fall heaviest on the 3.5 million Palestinian civilians, who are trapped under barbaric conditions of confinement that cry out to heaven for relief.
When President George W. Bush mildly rebuked Israel for its extra judicial killings policy, which involved an attempted assassination of a supposed Hamas leader, a hard line U.S.-based Zionist, one Morton Klein, called Bush’s reaction “really appalling.” Klein’s reply reeks of monumental ingratitude. It also couldn’t be more wrong. The president deserves credit for trying to move this controversial process along, especially in light of the fact that Sharon’s Defense Minister, the super hawkish Shaul Mofaz, is looking to “expel” PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat (NY Post, 06/11/03).
What IS “really appalling” is how America is being used by the Zionists. Soon after the President announced his modest “Road Map” peace plan, 40,000 angry Jewish settlers denounced it at a Jerusalem rally. This one sided relationship has also created totally unnecessary enemies for the U.S. in the Islamic World.
In addition to bringing only misery to the Palestinians, it has also sullied America’s name and reputation as a Republic, created political unrest throughout the Middle East, and even contributed to the U.S. going to war with Iraq. One economist, William D. Nordhaus, puts that cost alone at “anywhere from $120 billion to $1.6 trillion.”
The price of the corrupting U.S. relationship with Israel rises daily. Our treasury is being held hostage by the pushy Israeli Lobby and a servile Congress (See Paul Findley’s “The Dare to Speak Out”). Israel’s feeding frenzy is draining our resources, while our basic national needs go unmet.
Enough is enough!
William Hughes is a Baltimore attorney and the author of "Andrew Jackson vs. New World Order" (Authors Choice Press), which is available online. He contributed above article to Media Monitors Network (MMN) from Maryland, USA.
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