Alan Siegrist wrote:
>
>
> >So what exactly is "wrong" again?
>
And John G. responded:
> What you wrote and then blissfully rewrote.
> (Except the bit about things changing somewhat in 2006.)
>
> > the
> >Palestinians had received essentially the same level of US foreign aid on a
> >per capita basis as Israel.
>
> 3 minutes research produced this piece from The
> Washington Report is published by the American
> Educational Trust (AET), a non-profit foundation
> incorporated in Washington, DC by retired U.S.
> foreign service officers to provide the American
> public with balanced and accurate information
> concerning U.S. relations with Middle Eastern states:
>
> ---A Conservative Total for U.S. Aid to Israel: $91 Billionand Counting
>
[snip]
Thanks, John.
For many reasons (some of them discussed in Chapter 2 ("The Great Benefactor")
of Mearsheimer and Walt's "The Israel Lobby"), official aid figures for US aid
to Israel are highly deceiving. There are several reasons for this. For one
thing, arms sales to Israel, which are not included in the aid figures, have
often been subsequently "forgiven", that is, simply written off, a few years
down the road by the US side. Former Congressman Steven Solarz was a pro at
this maneuver, and billions of dollars of such sleight-of-hand has been
involved over the years. For another thing, there are all kinds of indirect
subsidies to Israel. Moreover, "... the United States has provided Israel with
nearly $3 billion to develop weapons like the Lavi aricraft, the Merkava tank,
and the Arrow missile. (M&W, p. 32)." And of course the US is a major purchaser
of Israel's armaments output as well.
In regular economic aid, the number of ways that the US props up Israel's
economy is legion. In addition to direct governmental aid, Israel receives
another $2 billion of aid from private donations by US citizens to various
Israeli charities, and these donations generally receive favorable tax
treatment (a special boon reserved to Israel alone). The US also provides huge
loan guarantees for Israel (estimates vary, and M&W give the figure for 1992 as
ranging somewhere between $100 million and $800 million). Israel is also the
only recipient of US aid that does not have to account for where the money is
spent, something that is linked to the repeated scandals that have afflicted
Israeli politics over the years.
The bottom line: Israel could never have prospered without this money. It
dwarfs anything ever seen, anywhere, anytime. Yitzhak Rabin acknowledged this
once when he said that US generosity towards Israel "is beyond compare in
modern history (M&W, p. 48)." It goes without saying that the Israeli policy of
colonizing the occupied territories, illegal in international law and
ultimately so disastrous for both Israelis and Palestinians, would have been
impossible without these direct and indirect US subsidies to Israel. It further
goes without saying that such campaigns as the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the
current assault on Gaza could never have been sustained without such assistance.
On a related note: One thing that Alan mentioned previously, a long time back,
and is correct about, is the problem of the corruption of the Palestinian
Authority. The exact amount of money siphoned off personally by Arafat will
never be known, but a common estimate is $2 billion. This is simply obscene,
and not surprisingly some of Arafat's most vehement critics were of course
Palestinians, such as the late Edward Said. That is not an excuse for the
inexcusable US tilt towards Israel, but the Palestinians have not been well
served by such leaders, and part of solving the larger conflict will be to
address and prevent such blatant thievery. Aid to a Palestinian state that does
not go to improving the living standards of the average Palestinian will
ultimately cause more problems than it will resolve.
John M.
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