“I want to stop American aid,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on June 30. “It’s like welfare; I don’t want it.”
Usually, Netanyahu gets anything he demands from Uncle Sugar. But on July 15, the US House of Representatives voted, 314-104 against even partially granting his wish.
Every Republican except Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and more than half of Democrats, voted down an amendment that would have removed $3.3 billion in “Foreign Military Financing” aid from the National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Appropriations Act.
What’s up with that?
Was Netanyahu perhaps a wee bit disingenuous in his public request, passing word through back channels that he didn’t really mean it?
Is US Congress more “pro-Israeli” than Netanyahu himself, or perhaps just so addicted to spending that they can’t bear to cut anything at all, even if the recipient doesn’t want it?
Some combination of the above?
This may be the first time I’ve ever found myself in agreement with Benjamin Netanyahu on anything.
Well, partial agreement, anyway.
US aid to Israel isn’t “like welfare.”
It IS welfare.
What does the US regime in return for its billions of dollars per year? Two things:
1. A way of re-routing tax money to crony “defense contractors” with Israel as the cut-out to obscure the domestic end of the corporate welfare pipeline; and
2. Dragged into a Middle Eastern garrison ethno-state’s every conflict with other regional powers — powers which substantially differ from Israel mainly in ethnicity, prevailing religion, and actually having some oil to make the entanglement worthwhile.
Don’t give me the “liberal democracy” stuff. The Israeli regime censors the press, bans political parties it doesn’t like, confines millions of Arabs to apartheid-style “homelands” as rightsless, non-voting serfs under Israeli rule, and just passed a law declaring that theological studies in one, and only one, religion are “fundamental” to its existence and thus deserving of exemption from the compulsory military hitch mere “secular” Jews serve. Politically, the main difference between Israel and Iran is that in Iran, Jews are guaranteed at least one seat in parliament.
Some “pro-Israel” — and “pro-US-aid-to-Israel” — people I talk with love to inform me that Israel has a longer average lifespan, a lower infant mortality rate, and a lower homicide rate (excluding the Palestinians ruled by, and murdered by, Israeli troops) than the US.
That doesn’t strike me as the “gotcha” they seem to think. Could those billions in aid possibly have anything to do with the statistical differences? Every dollar in US aid is a dollar more the Israeli regime gets to spend on healthcare and police salaries instead of on weapons to power its expansionist foreign policy.
This time, Congress should have given Netanyahu what he said he wanted.
