Perhaps in an effort to help balance out all the unconstitutional foreign and military aid showered on hostile regimes and anti-Israel United Nations bureaucracies, the Obama administration just signed an agreement purporting to commit American taxpayers to the largest military aid package in U.S. history.
Over the next decade, U.S. taxpayers (and U.S. government creditors) will send close to $40 billion worth of security assistance to the Israeli government, primarily in the form of military aid. That is more than twice Israel’s annual defense budget and $8 billion more than the previous 10-year package.
Unsurprisingly, the huge subsidy comes with various strings attached, imposed by the White House, that will also benefit crony capitalists and Democrat mega-donors in the United States.
The deal also comes amid a record $19 trillion in U.S. government debt and an estimated $200 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
In a very real sense, the massive aid package represents a gigantic subsidy to politically connected U.S. defense contractors. For instance, according to the terms of the “memorandum of understanding” as reported in various media outlets, much of the foreign aid must be used to buy F-35 fighter jets from U.S. giant Lockheed Martin. The aircraft have been plagued by cost overruns, developmental delays, and more.
While previous U.S. aid deals to Israel allowed the Israeli government to spend more than a quarter of the money purchasing Israeli products, that will be phased out in the coming years, U.S. media outlets reported. The ability to buy fuel with that money will also end.
As a consequence of those terms, though, the $38 billion deal will result in Israeli defense companies buying up more U.S. defense contractors so they can benefit from the huge aid package. CNBC reported that many Israeli companies already own U.S. subsidiaries where the money can be spent. Israel’s largest defense firm, Elbit Systems, for example, has a wholly owned subsidiary based in Texas where the new aid money can be spent.
“The big contractors in Israel will follow Elbit’s methods and establish U.S. subsidiaries to work through,” Liran Lublin, an analyst who covers Elbit for Israel Brokerage and Investments, was quoted as saying.
In a statement released online, the White House portrayed the 10-year deal, which is presumably subject to appropriations from Congress, as an example of Obama’s commitment to Israel. “Under President Obama’s leadership, the multifaceted cooperation between the United States and Israel has reached unprecedented levels,” the statement said, claiming arrogantly, repeatedly, and falsely that “Obama” — not the American taxpayer or the people’s elected representatives — was the benefactor. “This is particularly true with regard to the security of Israel. The new 10-year security assistance Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to Israel is the most recent reflection of President Obama’s unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.”
At the same time, though, Obama, with funding provided by Congress, has been busy showering money on Islamic terrorist groups across the Middle East. He has also been funneling billions in taxpayer cash — literally — to the anti-Israel dictatorship in Tehran, which remains listed as a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department. Before Obama, the U.S. government was caught giving nuclear know-how to Iran-friendly regimes.
While Israel is indeed the single largest recipient of U.S. military aid, its enemies and potential enemies also receive massive subsidies from the U.S. government. The Islamic governments and dictatorships ruling Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia, Yemen, and more all receive massive amounts of wealth and military aid from U.S. taxpayers and creditors. Israel has faced off against many of those nations in wars — often many of them at the same time.
Why the U.S. government apparently feels obligated to spend U.S. taxpayer funds propping up governments, dictators, and terrorist groups hostile to Israel and its mere existence was not immediately clear.
Similarly, the U.S. government remains the largest single financier of multiple UN agencies that have become infamous for promoting hatred of Jews and Israel. In June, for example, this magazine reported that U.S. taxpayer-funded schools run by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were caught brainwashing Arab children to wage constant jihad against Jews. Some of the schools even provide military training to the young children in addition to the constant hate propaganda.
More broadly, the UN has a long and uninterrupted track record of obsessively demonizing the state of Israel even while ignoring mass-murder, genocide, and ruthless oppression perpetrated by many of its member regimes.
According to UN Watch, which crunched the numbers, more than half of all resolutions from the dictator-dominated “UN Human Rights Council” criticizing a specific country were aimed at the state of Israel. At the UN General Assembly, the number is 86 percent. At UNESCO, almost 100 percent of all resolutions blasting a specific country targeted the Jewish state.
The increasingly extreme UN has also been clamoring in recent years to prosecute Israeli leaders and officials in its widely ridiculed kangaroo courts over alleged “war crimes.”
Over the years, more than a few prominent Israeli political leaders and activists have spoken out against U.S. aid to the Israeli government. In 2013, for example, then-Deputy Knesset Speaker Moshe Feiglin cited numerous reasons for opposing U.S. assistance — including arguing that it was bad for Israel.
“I’m totally against this aid,” he explained to The New American magazine at his office in the Knesset (Parliament) in Jerusalem. “It cannot be when, first of all, the Americans are standing in line like two or three miles in the snow to get a job. To get any kind of aid from America when, economically, we are in a much, much better position doesn’t look moral to me.”
“But it’s much more than that,” continued Feiglin, who at the time was leading the Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) faction of the ruling Likud Party but has since decided to form his own party. “This aid is not in our favor, not economically, not militarily, not in any way. This aid serves psychological purposes, not anything else. We are talking about 1.5 percent of our income, of what Israel is producing — we can definitely deal without it.”
Feiglin also agreed with U.S. political leaders, such as former Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), who have argued that U.S. government should not be sending foreign aid to Israel and then trying to obtain leverage over Israeli policy. Instead, Israel should be free as an independent nation to set its own policies without having to consult or consider what politicians in Washington, D.C., think should be done.
And indeed, there is no question that the state of Israel is more than capable of taking care of itself militarily. According to recently released hacked e-mails from former Secretary of State Colin Powell, even the regime in Iran would never dare to attack the Jewish state. “Iranians can’t use one [a nuclear bomb] if they finally make one,” Powell said. “The boys in Tehran know Israel has 200 [nukes], all targeted on Tehran, and we have thousands.”
While the state of Israel’s nuclear arsenal is officially not acknowledged, it is something of an open secret. And Israel has steadfastly defended its sovereignty in the face of hysterical global efforts to force it into submitting to UN conventions on the issue.
In the e-mails, former Secretary of State Powell also explained why the dictatorship ruling over Iran would not use nuclear bombs even if it had them. “As Akmdinijad (sic) [said]: ‘What would we do with one? Polish it?’” he said in the hacked e-mail, quoting former Iranian “President” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “I have spoken publicly about both NK (North Korea) and Iran. We’ll blow up the only thing they care about — regime survival. Where, how would they even test one?”
Indeed, top Israeli defense officials have acknowledged as much.
There is no legitimate reason for the federal government to finance both sides of a conflict, as it continues to do in the Middle East.
Beyond that, there is no authority in the Constitution to shower U.S. taxpayer money on foreign governments — whether that be the state of Israel or the myriad dictatorships in the region that want to destroy it and exterminate the Jews.
And with the U.S. government already drowning the American people in odious debt to hostile regimes, it is past time for all foreign and military aid to be scrapped.
Photo of President Obama: AP Images
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at [email protected].
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