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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Jan 12, 2009 - 09:03am PT
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jbar: "Who descended from Abraham? The Jews or the Arabs? If you know the answer to that then tell me why you think religion has anything to do with the conflict."
Tricky question. Depends on what you mean by "has anything to do with." It has everything to do with it as far as propaganda and rationalizations go, on both sides.
Remains of ancient "Philistine" cities show a typically high degree of eastern Mediterranean culture, apparently right up until "God's chosen people" showed up and murdered everybody. And Islam's founder just recapitulated Abraham's original will to power, which is probably traceable to a particular genetic marker that makes people hear voices that aren't really there. Add a little extra imagination and a strong arm and you've got yourself a big batch of intolerant monotheism.
Lets say Isreal declares Gaza as a Canaanite, oops I meant palestinian state. What then? Where are they going to work? Where are they going to get their electricity? Hamas doesn't want peace with Isreal. They want them gone. Period. They just have a stupid way of trying to accomplish it.
One of those "if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail" deals.
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dirtbag
climber
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Jan 12, 2009 - 09:41am PT
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"Again, who chooses which war is just. The Taliban is bad but the Baath party is o.k.? "
Prior to 2001, the Taliban gave safe harbor to a group who tried to attack us (and did so successfully). They were using camps in that country, with the Taliban's blessing, to test chemical weapons and conduct training to attack us again. The Taliban were in bed with these folks and used
Bye-bye Taliban.
I never did think the Iraq War was a good idea.
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UncleDoug
climber
No. Lake Tahoe, CA
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Jan 12, 2009 - 11:25am PT
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"Why do you all on the left back this group? "
Too piss you off and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.
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scooter
climber
fist clamp
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Jan 12, 2009 - 03:01pm PT
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Madrid, Spain
Carlos Alberto Montaner is a Cuban-born writer, journalist, and former professor. He is one of the most influential and widely-read columnists in the Spanish-language media, syndicated in dozens of publications in Latin America, Spain and the United States.
Gaza's True 'Disproportion'
Israelis are being accused of suffering too few casualties in their confrontation with the Hamas terrorists. Those who reason thus usually speak the words "disproportion" or "asymmetry" in an indignant tone. While at this writing close to a thousand Arab Palestinians have died or been wounded as a result of the bombings, the Israeli losses amount to just over a dozen.
Tel Aviv's critics -- from whom an anti-Semitic stench often rises -- do not say whether Israel should increase its quota of cadavers or if it must reduce the Arabs' quota to achieve the reasonable proportion of blood that will soothe the peculiar itch for parity that afflicts them. Nor do they specify the morally permissible number of casualties to end the rain of rockets that for years has been constantly falling on the heads of Israeli civilians.
This demand for "proportionality" can only be called surprising. Until this conflict began, history books everywhere always expressed great satisfaction and a certain chauvinistic pride when a nation's army inflicted on the enemy a large number of casualties, vis-à-vis a trifling price paid by "our boys." Israel is the only country expected to behave differently and, in fact, it does; I know of no other nation that announces where and when it will drop its bombs, thus enabling civilians to evacuate the territory. Of course, in this it behaves asymmetrically, because the Hamas terrorists, forever eager to cause the greatest damage possible, never announce when or where they will launch their rockets against Israel's civilian population.
In turn, Israel has not the slightest interest in causing casualties. All it wants is to stop Hamas' attacks the only way it can: by eliminating the terrorists and destroying their arsenals. There's no other way to deal with them. Hamas is not a political organization with which agreements can be reached, but a fanatical gang intent on wiping Israel off the map. To achieve this objective, its members are even willing to turn their own children into human bombs, just to kill the hated Jews.
Here's another very important asymmetry. The Jews build underground shelters in all houses near the border; they close the schools and hide the children at the least sign of danger; they treat the death of a single soldier as a national tragedy; they do everything possible to rescue their prisoners, and protect the civilian population from the consequences of war. In contrast, the authorities in Gaza, drunk with violence, fire their machine guns irresponsibly into the air to express joy or grief (causing numerous injuries), do not hesitate to install their headquarters or hide their guns in schools, mosques or hospitals, use human shields to protect themselves, turn to suicidal terrorists and reward the families of such "martyrs" with money.
One week before Hamas broke the truce and stepped up its rocket attacks against the Jewish state (the spark that set off this conflict), I was in Israel, where I had been invited to deliver a lecture at the University of Tel Aviv. As part of the contacts organized by my hosts, I visited the Wolfson Medical Center to learn about the program "Save a Child's Heart." I was very moved. It is a foundation devoted to providing heart surgery for very poor children, most of them from the Arab world. As it happened, I witnessed the hurried arrival of a tiny 5-day-old girl, who had to be operated on at once to keep her from dying. She was brought in by her mother, a woman in a black head covering that allowed me to see only her tear-filled eyes, and her husband, a small, bearded man who watched with amazement the indescribable kindness with which a group of doctors and nurses treated the baby. The family came from Gaza.
Since the war erupted, I have asked myself constantly what became of them all.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jan 12, 2009 - 03:48pm PT
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It's incredible how human nature sleeps in denial so comfortably that we can easily see the faults and evil in "the other side" and none on our own.
Sadly, technology has a different kind of blindness. It keeps getting more powerful but doesn't care how it's used.
So if our whole basic humanity doesn't reform in the next 10 or 20 years, we're all going to kill each other. Period.
Funny how this vortex of conflict in the mid-east consumes so much emotion. Obviously far more people have died in Iraq and more than that in Rwanda. All kinds of unjustified wholesale slaughter going on, perpetrated by those those never expect to pay for their killings nor even consider their justifications outside of mere rationalization. (it's easy to say it was righteous to invade Iraq cause Saddam (our man) was a bad man. Would you say that if you were raised Iraqi and then welcome the foreign invaders with strange values and who bombed your house?)
Personally, I think each individual had better mind their lives and actions carefully as a reckoning will be upon us sooner or later.
Peace
karl
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atchafalaya
climber
Babylon
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Jan 12, 2009 - 03:56pm PT
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"Seems that all of you have finally concurred with my theory of "Clash of Civilizations", this is a religious war. Led by Saudi Wahhabi clerics, Iranian Mullahs, Hamas and Hezbollah on one side and the Judeo/Christian world on the other, not much different that Saladin and Richard."
Agreed. Except for the Judeo/Christian part. The US should let Israel fight or die by its own hands. Its their (i.e., your) f*#ked up clash, not ours. Bush fell for it.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
Monrovia, CA
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Jan 12, 2009 - 05:05pm PT
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I'm just going to ask if the Middle East was arguably the center of science and knowledge 500 years ago what happened?
Second, read Ayaan Ali's Infidel and Manji's The Trouble With Islam Today
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jan 12, 2009 - 05:10pm PT
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From
"...The trouble is that propaganda is most convincing for the propagandist himself. And after you convince yourself that a lie is the truth and falsification reality, you can no longer make rational decisions.
An example of this process surrounds the most shocking atrocity of this war so far: the shelling of the UN Fakhura school in Jabaliya refugee camp.
Immediately after the incident became known throughout the world, the army "revealed" that Hamas fighters had been firing mortars from near the school entrance. As proof they released an aerial photo which indeed showed the school and the mortar. But within a short time the official army liar had to admit that the photo was more than a year old. In brief: a falsification.
Later the official liar claimed that "our soldiers were shot at from inside the school". Barely a day passed before the army had to admit to UN personnel that that was a lie, too. Nobody had shot from inside the school, no Hamas fighters were inside the school, which was full of terrified refugees.
But the admission made hardly any difference anymore. By that time, the Israeli public was completely convinced that "they shot from inside the school", and TV announcers stated this as a simple fact..."
"NEARLY SEVENTY YEARS ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called "the Red Army" held the millions of the town's inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.
Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz.
This is the description that would now appear in the history books - if the Germans had won the war."
from
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/12-4
Peace
Karl
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jan 12, 2009 - 05:13pm PT
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A continuation of the last article
"The real aim (apart from gaining seats in the coming elections) is to terminate the rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In the imagination of the planners, Hamas is an invader which has gained control of a foreign country. The reality is, of course, entirely different.
The Hamas movement won the majority of the votes in the eminently democratic elections that took place in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. It won because the Palestinians had come to the conclusion that Fatah's peaceful approach had gained precisely nothing from Israel - neither a freeze of the settlements, nor release of the prisoners, nor any significant steps toward ending the occupation and creating the Palestinian state. Hamas is deeply rooted in the population - not only as a resistance movement fighting the foreign occupier, like the Irgun and the Stern Group in the past - but also as a political and religious body that provides social, educational and medical services.
From the point of view of the population, the Hamas fighters are not a foreign body, but the sons of every family in the Strip and the other Palestinian regions. They do not "hide behind the population", the population views them as their only defenders.
Therefore, the whole operation is based on erroneous assumptions. Turning life into living hell does not cause the population to rise up against Hamas, but on the contrary, it unites behind Hamas and reinforces its determination not to surrender. The population of Leningrad did not rise up against Stalin, any more than the Londoners rose up against Churchill."
It's a good point. We didn't turn away from Bush after 9-11 either. Attacking a people never makes them abandon their government or country.
Peace
Karl
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Jan 12, 2009 - 06:56pm PT
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I'm just going to ask if the Middle East was arguably the center of science and knowledge 500 years ago what happened?
It was untill the remnants of Potolemy's library (that was then at Byzantium) were destroyed by a guy named Umar in 642 with the imfamous pronouncement. "They will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous."
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 12, 2009 - 07:02pm PT
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Middle East was arguably the center of science and knowledge 500 years ago ....
No way ho-say. not the Middle East, the far east and still is.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Jan 12, 2009 - 07:04pm PT
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Three cheers for Karl.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Jan 12, 2009 - 07:35pm PT
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Skip, this is not a war of two armies of relative parity on a level field of battle. This is the fourth most powerful military backed by the world's most powerful military besieging bombing and invading one and a half million prisoners. Name me one other war where one side was tapped inside a wall. Compared to a true two sided war this is akin to putting down a prison riot.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Jan 12, 2009 - 07:49pm PT
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"Compared to a true two sided war this is akin to putting down a prison riot. "
Ain't that the truth, Hamas is a bunch of thugs for the most part. Also, wouldn't it be suicidal for 'prisoners' to fire at the better-armed 'guards'? Not very smart.
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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Jan 12, 2009 - 07:53pm PT
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"Compared to a true two sided war this is akin to putting down a prison riot."
A prison which has been run by the inmates for the last two year and where the inmates are randomly raining high-explosive down on the rest of the surrounding town.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Jan 12, 2009 - 08:23pm PT
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Ahhh the good ol days of a little over seven years ago at the early daze of the Bush Debacle.
The Jenin Refugee Camp Massacre
During the brutal Israeli military campaign in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank during the period of March 29-April 13, 2002, the Israeli occupation forces committed a massacre in which hundreds of Palestinians were killed. Initial estimates were more than 500 children, women, and men. The following are some of the pictures of the destruction and corpses of Palestinians which remained after Israeli forces had evacuated many other corpses and buried them in Israel (in the numbered "enemy" cemetery) in an attempt to hide the actual number of victims in the refugee camp. The UN Security Council formed a Committee to investigate the massacre but the Israeli government refused to cooperate with the Committee unless it accepts Israeli conditions. Most important for Israel was that the Committee should grant immunity from self-incrimination for Israelis who would be investigated. Israel also demanded that the Committee should not offer recommendations or reach conclusions about the massacre. Upon that Israeli rejection of cooperation with the Committee, the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Anan, dissolved the Committee before starting its work. Thus, the Israeli war criminals are still free to commit more war crimes, atrocities, and human rights violations against the Palestinian people, without being held accountable for their actions.
Here is a nice excerpt.
JENIN: Israeli Army bulldozer driver Moshe Nissim, also known as “Kurdi Bear,” did enjoy his work in Jenin camp, fortified by an arsenal of alcohol.
First published in the popular Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot and since reprinted on the website of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, his testimony gives a version of events that has since largely fallen off the country’s conscience.
He left his own at the door to Jenin.
“They were warned by loudspeaker to get out of the house before I come, but I gave no one a chance. I didn’t wait. I didn’t give one blow, and wait for them to come out. I would just ram the house with full power, to bring it down as fast as possible. I wanted to get to the other houses. To get as many as possible,” he recounts. “I didn’t give a damn about the Palestinians, but I didn’t just ruin with no reason. It was all under orders.”
and another.
When Palestinian militants on Nov. 15, 2002, killed 12 Israelis in occupied Hebron, Israeli government spokesmen instantly dubbed it “the Sabbath massacre,” casting it as a terror attack on Jewish settlers worshipping at the city’s Ibrahimi mosque and synagogue complex. It soon emerged that all of those killed were soldiers and settler paramilitaries, but not before fierce denunciations from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Pope John Paul II had cast the attack in infamy on major international news networks.
The condemnations were never retracted. “This is the double standard that is usually voiced by the Israelis, and even the Americans,” Salameh says.
On Oct. 14, the Israeli army razed 115 houses and damaged an equal number in the town of Rafah in southern Gaza, rendering some 1,240 people homeless and culminating in a series of increasingly brutal mass demolitions along the path of Israel’s “Separation Fence.”
What a way to build a ... "FENCE"
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ahad aham
Trad climber
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Jan 12, 2009 - 08:50pm PT
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Which foreign-aid recipient is the only one allowed to receive its aid in a lump sum and which routinely invests part of it in U.S. Treasuries so that taxpayers pay them interest on the taxpayers' gift?
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2008, pages 10-11
Congress Watch
A Conservative Estimate of Total Direct U.S. Aid to Israel: Almost $114 Billion
By Shirl McArthur
TABLE 1: Direct U.S. Aid to Israel (millions of dollars)
Year Total Military
Grant
Economic
Grant Immigrant ASHA All Other
1949-1996 68,030.9 29,014.9 23,122.4 868.9 121.4 14,903.3
1997 3,132.1 1,800.0 1,200.0 80.0 2.1 50.0
1998 3,080.0 1,800.0 1,200.0 80.0 ? ?
1999 3,010.0 1,860.0 1,080.0 70.0 ? ?
2000 4,131.85 3,120.0 949.1 60.0 2.75 ?
2001 2,876.05 1,975.6 838.2 60.0 2.25 ?
2002 2,850.65 2,040.0 720.0 60.0 2.65 28.0
2003 3,745.15 3,086.4 596.1 59.6 3.05 ?
2004 2,687.25 2,147.3 477.2 49.7 3.15 9.9
2005 2,612.15 2,202.2 357.0 50.0 2.95 ?
2006 2,534.53 2,257.0 237.0 40.0 ? .53
2007 2,500.24 2,340.0 120.0 40.0 ? .24
2008 2,423.8 2,380.6 0.0 39.7 3.0 .5
Total 103,614.67 56,024.0 30,897.0 1,557.9 143.3 14,992.47
Notes: FY 2000 military grants include $1.2 billion for the Wye agreement and $1.92 billion in annual military aid. FY 2003 military aid included $1 billion from the supplemental appropriations bill. The economic grant was earmarked for $960 million for FY 2000 but was reduced to meet the 0.38% rescission. Final amounts for FY 2003 are reduced by 0.65% mandated rescission, the amounts for FY 2004 are reduced by 0.59%, and the amounts for FY 2008 are reduced by .81%.
Sources: CRS Report RL33222: U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel, updated Jan. 2, 2008, plus the FY ’08 omnibus appropriations bill, H.R. 2764.
This estimate of total U.S. direct aid to Israel updates the estimate given in the July 2006 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It is an estimate because arriving at an exact figure is not possible, since parts of U.S. aid to Israel are a) buried in the budgets of various U.S. agencies, mostly that of the Defense Department (DOD), or b) in a form not easily quantifiable, such as the early disbursement of aid, giving Israel a direct benefit in interest income and the U.S. Treasury a corresponding loss. Given these caveats, our current estimate of cumulative total direct aid to Israel is $113.8554 billion.
It must be emphasized that this analysis is a conservative, defensible accounting of U.S. direct aid to Israel, NOT of Israel’s cost to the U.S. or the American taxpayer, nor of the benefits to Israel of U.S. aid. The distinction is important, because the indirect or consequential costs suffered by the U.S. as a result of its blind support for Israel exceed by many times the substantial amount of direct aid to Israel. (See, for example, the late Thomas R. Stauffer’s article in the June 2003 Washington Report, “The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion.”)
Especially, this computation does not include the costs resulting from the invasion and occupation of Iraq—hundreds of billions of dollars, 4,000-plus U.S. and allied fatalities, untold tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, and many thousands of other U.S., allied, and Iraqi casualties—which is almost universally believed in the Arab world to have been undertaken for the benefit of Israel. Among other “indirect or consequential” costs would be the costs of U.S. unilateral economic sanctions on Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria, the costs to U.S. manufacturers of the Arab boycott, and the costs to U.S. companies and consumers of the 1973 Arab oil embargo and consequent and subsequent soaring oil prices partially as a result of U.S. support for Israel.
Among the real benefits to Israel that are not direct costs to the U.S. taxpayer are the early cash transfer of economic and military aid, in-country spending of a portion of military aid, and loan guarantees. The U.S. gives Israel all of its economic and military aid directly in cash during the first month of the fiscal year, with no accounting required of how the funds are used. Also, in contrast with other countries receiving military aid, who must purchase through the DOD, Israel deals directly with the U.S. companies, with no DOD review. Furthermore, Israel is allowed to spend 26.3 percent of each year’s military aid in Israel (no other recipient of U.S. military aid gets this benefit), which has resulted in an increasingly sophisticated Israeli defense industry. As a result, Israel has become a major world arms exporter; the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports that in 2006 Israel was the world’s ninth leading supplier of arms worldwide, earning $4.4 billion from defense sales.
Another benefit to Israel are U.S. government loan guarantees. The major loan guarantees have been $600 million for housing between 1972 and 1990; $9.2 billion for Soviet Jewish resettlement between 1992 and 1997; about $5 billion for refinancing military loans commercially; and $9 billion in loan guarantees authorized in FY ’03 and extended to FY ’10. Of that $9 billion, CRS reports that Israel has drawn $4.1 billion through FY ’07. These loans have not—yet—cost the U.S. any money; they are listed on the Treasury Department’s books as “contingent liabilities,” which would be liabilities to the U.S. should Israel default. However, they have been of substantial, tangible benefit to Israel, because they enable Israel to borrow commercially at special terms and favorable interest rates.
Components of Israel Aid
Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. aid since World War II (not counting the huge sums being spent in Iraq). The $3 billion or so per year that Israel receives from the U.S. amounts to about $500 per Israeli. Most of this money is earmarked in the annual Foreign Operations (foreign aid) appropriations bills, with the three major items being military grants (Foreign Military Financing, or FMF), economic grants (Economic Support Funds, or ESF), and “migration and refugee assistance.” (Refugee assistance originally was intended to help Israel absorb Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union, but this was expanded in 1985 to include all refugees resettling in Israel. In fact, Israel doesn’t differentiate between refugees and other immigrants, so this money is used for all immigrants to Israel.)
Not earmarked but also included in congresssional appropriations bills is Israel’s portion of grants for American Schools and Hospitals Abroad (ASHA) and monies buried in the appropriations for other departments or agencies. These are mostly for so-called “U.S.-Israeli cooperative programs” in defense, agriculture, science, and hi-tech industries.
Before 1998, Israel received annually $1.8 billion in military grants and $1.2 billion in economic grants. Then, beginning in FY ‘99, the two countries agreed to reduce economic grants to Israel by $120 million and increase military grants by $60 million annually over 10 years. FY ’08 is the last year of that agreement, with military grants reaching $2.4 billion (reduced by an across-the-board rescission), and zero economic grants. Then, in August 2007, U.S. and Israeli officials signed a memorandum of understanding for a new 10-year, $30 billion aid package whereby FMF will gradually increase, beginning with $2.55 billion in FY ’09, and average $3 billion per year over the 10-year period.
Methodology
TABLE 2: Foreign Aid and DOD Appropriations
Legislation Since FY 2004
Basic Documents Conference Report Public Law
FY '04 Defense H.R. 2658 H.Rept. 108-283 P.L. 108-87
Omnibus H.R. 2673 H.Rept. 108-401 P.L. 108-199
FY '05 Defense H.R. 4613 H.Rept. 108-662 P.L. 108-287
Omnibus H.R. 4818 H.Rept. 108-792 P.L. 108-447
FY '06 Defense H.R. 2863 H.Rept. 109-359 P.L. 109-148
Foreign Aid H.R. 3057 H.Rept. 109-265 P.L. 109-102
FY '07 Defense H.R. 5631 H.Rept. 109-676 P.L. 109-289
Foreign Aid H.J.Res. 20 P.L. 110-5
FY '08 Defense H.R. 3222 H.Rept. 110-434 P.L. 110-116
Omnibus H.R. 2764 H.Rept. 110-497 P.L. 110-161
Notes: H.R.=House Resolution; S.=Senate Resolution; H.Rept.=House Report; the “public law” is the final, binding version, as signed by the president. In FY ’04, ’05, and ’08 defense was passed separately and foreign aid was included in the consolidated or “omnibus” bill. In FY ’07 defense was passed separately and foreign aid was included in the continuing resolution, H.J. Res. 20, which continued ’07 appropriations at the ’06 level with some exceptions—including, of course, for Israel.
As with previous Washington Report estimates of U.S. aid to Israel, this analysis is based on the annual CRS report, U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel, which uses available and verifiable numbers, primarily from the foreign operations appropriations bills. Although the CRS report does include such things as the old food for peace program, the $1.2 billion from the Wye agreement, the $1 billion in FMF included in the FY ’03 Emergency Supplemental appropriations bill, the subsidy for “refugee resettlement,” and money from the ASHA account, it does not include money from the DOD and other agencies. Nor does it include estimated interest on the early disbursement of aid.
The January 2008 CRS report on aid to Israel shows a total of $101.1908 billion through FY ’07. Table 1, on the previous page, is drawn from the summary table of that report, plus $2.4238 billion from the FY ’08 omnibus appropriations bill and estimates for ASHA and “other” amounts in FY ’08, for a total of $103.6147 billion through FY ’08.
To that has been added $10.2407 billion, as detailed below, for a grand total of $113.8554 billion.
Estimated Amounts Not Included in Table 1: $10.2407 Billion
Defense Department Funds: $7.694 Billion. For previous estimates, a search going back several years was able to identify $6.794 billion from the DOD to Israel through FY ‘06. Adding $450 million from the FY ’07 DOD appropriations and $450 million from the ’08 appropriations gives a total of $7.694 billion. (The FY ’08 appropriations bill earmarks $155.6 million for Israel. However, AIPAC’s Web site reported that the total for earmarked and non-earmarked programs was $450 million—and who would know better than the Israel lobby itself?)
The military aid from the DOD budget is mostly for specific projects. The largest items have been the canceled Lavi attack fighter project, the completed Merkava tank, the ongoing Arrow anti-missile missile project, and several other anti-missile systems, most recently the “David’s Sling” short-range missile defense system. Haaretz reported in June that a senior U.S. defense official has said the U.S. will support and help Israel’s development of the advanced Arrow 3 designed to intercept advanced ballistic missiles. The fact that the U.S. military was not interested in the Lavi or the Merkava for its own use and has said the same thing about the Arrow and the other anti-missile projects would seem to jettison the argument that these are “joint defense projects.” The FY ‘01 appropriations bill also gave Israel a grant of $700 million worth of military equipment, to be drawn down from stocks in Western Europe, and the FY ’05 defense appropriations bill includes a provision authorizing the DOD to transfer an unspecified amount of “surplus” military items from inventory to Israel. In addition, since 1988 Israel has been designated a “major non-NATO ally,” giving it access to U.S. weapons systems at lower prices, and preferential treatment in bidding for U.S. defense contracts.
Interest: $2.089 Billion. Israel receives its U.S. economic and military aid in a lump sum within one month of the new fiscal year or the passage of the appropriations act. Applying one-half of the prevailing interest rate to the aid for each year (on the assumption that the aid monies are drawn down over the course of the year), the July 2006 estimate arrived at a total of $1.991 billion through FY ’06. To that, using an interest rate of 4 percent, is added $50 million for FY ’07 and $48 million for FY ’08, for a cumulative total of $2.089 billion through FY ’08.
Other Grants and Endowments: $457.7 Million. The July 2006 report included $456.7 million in U.S. grants and endowments to U.S.-Israeli scientific and business cooperation organizations. The two largest are the BIRD (Israel-U.S. Binational Research & Development) Foundation and the BARD (Binational Agriculture and Research and Development) Fund. While these are mostly self-sustaining, the BARD Fund gets about $500,000 a year from the Agriculture Department. Adding $0.5 million for each of FY ’07 and ‘08 to the ’06 total gives a new total of $0.457.7 billion.
For the convenience of those who wish to look up more details, citations for the foreign aid and DOD appropriations bills for the past five years are given in Table 2 above.
Shirl McArthur, a retired U.S. foreign service officer, is a consultant based in the Washington, DC area.
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