Posted on 03/08/2007 10:51:38 PM PST by CutePuppy
Israelis Want US Aid to Come Without 'Political Strings'
By Ryan Jones
March 08, 2007
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - As preliminary talks begin on a new U.S. aid package to Israel, experts here hope that in the future, the relationship between the two nations will be seen as one of reciprocity, rather than contributions and corresponding diplomatic obligation.
The results of a new public opinion poll suggest that Israelis will resist further pressure from the Bush administration for Israel to pursue "land-for-peace," notwithstanding the United States' generous backing of the Jewish state.
Israeli officials visited Washington last week to discuss a new U.S. aid program to replace the one set to expire at the end of the year.
Under the current aid program, America has provided Israel with military assistance in increasing annual amounts ranging from $1.8 billion in 1998 to $2.4 billion this year. Civilian aid started out at $1.2 billion and has been progressively phased out.
Following last week's talks, press reports indicated that Israel may seek an increase in U.S. military aid to help meet mounting strategic threats from Iran, Syria and Lebanon's Hizballah.
Speaking to Cybercast News Service on Thursday, Haifa University Professor Steven Plaut noted that more important than the cash component of any aid package is Israel's access to U.S. military hardware.
However, those short-term benefits carry negative long-term consequences in the form of "political strings" that are attached to the aid.
By Plaut's assessment, "much of the foolish Israeli appeasement of the Arabs over the past 15 years was related to these strings."
But he doesn't see a solution in simply reducing Israel's dependence on U.S. military aid.
"It should be added that these strings exist, not just for outright aid, but also for the whole gamut of relations with the U.S., including export-import trade relations, access to technology, U.S. tax exemption for charities raising funds for Israeli causes and NGOs, etc."
The way to stop Israel from seeing itself as beholden to the U.S. on the diplomatic front is to install a stronger, more courageous leadership in Jerusalem, one that puts the interests of the Jewish State first, said Bar Ilan University professor of political science Paul Eidelberg in a telephone interview.
Eidelberg explained that Israel's leaders need to realize that their country is a partner in a strategic relationship with the U.S., and not a charity case.
The problem here is that "Israel's dependence on the United States ... is misconceived because people do not see how Israel actually reciprocates," said Eidelberg.
The picture looks a lot different when one considers what Israel provides the United States in technological assistance, military assistance, and especially in intelligence information, he added.
Plaut concurred: "The relationship is non-symmetric but not one-sided. Israel has also provided the U.S. with essential intelligence, military, and technological services."
Israel needs to act on the principle of reciprocity, of providing the U.S. with value in return for its generous aid, said Eidelberg. American support should not cause "a wise and courageous government to subordinate the interests of the nation to [the U.S.], which is just as dependent in the long run as Israel might be."
Eidelberg noted that Egypt gets a comparable amount of U.S. military aid and assistance, but that doesn't prevent the president of Egypt "from taking an independent stand on the basis of what he regards as consistent with his own nation's interests."
Meanwhile, in a survey of how Israelis view the diplomatic aspects of the relationship with the U.S., the results of which were published Wednesday in Israel's leftist Ha'aretz newspaper, most no longer see their nation's interests as matching President Bush's "two-state vision."
As long as the current Palestinian leadership is in power, 56 percent of respondents said that a two-state solution to the conflict has no chance of actually bringing peace or security to the region.
All original CNSNews.com material, copyright 1998-2006 Cybercast News Service.
How about no aid and Israel does what it needs to.
Bush and Rice have been dictating terms to Israel since they've been in office. Give them the same aid and cut the strings.
It was one thing to send a bunch of money when Israel was relatively undeveloped, and barely making it. Israel's economy is now all-grown up. It is time to cut the strings. We should continue to sell them cutting edge weaponry (which the EU won't), on condition that they continue to avoid transferring it to China. But this multi-billion dollar annual subsidy to the wealthy Israeli taxpayer and the borderline hostile Jordanian and Egyptian governments has got to stop.
$140B in 2006, but in PPP (purchasing power parity) it's even more - $195B. And she has the highest GDP per capita in the ME and competes well with many European countries on that metric - $20K / $27.5K PPP.
What I don't fully understand is why we're providing $3B a year to Israel and $2B to Egypt and Jordan as offsets
Carter. Camp David Accord did not have a "sunset clause", so we're paying for "peace". Actually, with Israel it works out more like our corporate welfare - they're committed to and do buy our products (mostly military/security) with most of the money, while others don't have to do anything for the money, though Egypt has 13.5% of GDP as direct exports to US and has 11.5% of direct imports and exports to US are 35% of total exports (Israel has 42% and 20% respectively). And as article noted, we also benefit from top-notch research that Israelis provide to modify our products (mostly military) for their market. We keep a lot of our research facilities in Israel, commercial, but different in nature from commercial ones we have in other countries. It's similar to "special relationship" that we have with England and/or Australia.
It was one thing to send a bunch of money when Israel was relatively undeveloped
As I mentioned above, it really has nothing to do with Israel being underdeveloped country. Also, Israel doesn't really want this "subsidy", they'd rather take it as a loan and have a better (less restricted) trade, and less "dependency" or 'strings'. It's possible that what this article implies is the beginning of restructuring of the agreement.
Note that the bit about our assistance to them being corporate welfare for American corporations is silly. Other countries that buy American weaponry pay us for the weaponry. The check goes from their taxpayers to our defense corporations, not from our taxpayers to our defense corporations, which is what happens with Israel's purchase of our weaponry. Besides, even if it were corporate welfare, what is good for defense corporations isn't necessarily what's good for the American taxpayer. And that's the only person whose interests aren't being accounted for in this series of transactions. Politicians get a bunch of free trips to all three countries, Israel, Egypt and Jordan get their moola, lobbyists get paid their fees, defense corporations get their orders and Joe Taxpayer in America gets the shaft.
You might be Chinese? In the Western mind Jerusalem and the Holy Land hold a special place. The last thing we want is Islam controlling them. You can look up the Crusades.
This is why we aid Israel
First, I think you completely missed the points in my post.
Second, we were spending $18B a year before Operation Iraqi Freedom just to keep bases in Saudi Arabia (one reason bin-Laden wanted us out of there) to "contain" Saddam Hussein and maintain Iraq's "no-fly zones". $5B dollars in foreign aid much of which is coming back in "peace dividend" trade is very cheap by comparison, and as I mentioned, Israel for a long time wanted to restructure it from aid to normal trade without "strings" attached.
If you think that these $5B a year (0.038% of our GDP, 0.2% of Federal budget), most of which is coming back in trade and some of which is therefore retained as taxes, are a huge drag on our deficit or debt, I'd say these may be the best money we spend in all of our foreign aid (latest example being $15B gift to Africa to fight AIDS and corrupt government-induced "poverty").
If your point is that we shouldn't have foreign aid, period, I wouldn't argue, but Israel is one country that's trying to do that while most others are asking or even demanding more.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
----------------------------
Of course this means 10 billion a year fewer sales for the defence industry. And without aid, Israel would be a more viable competitor in the international markets. A good case can be made that that's corporate welfare.
Meant to include you in post 11
Tough. He who pays the piper calls the tune.
We should be aiding Israel without giving the Islamo-fascist enemy the "Road Map" to invade Israel.
The whole complaint about Saudi Arabia is silly. Does anyone think we could have retaken Kuwait from Israeli bases? Without going to war with the entire Muslim world? I think the Israel lobby has fogged everyone's minds. I've read a lot of the BS they come up with, and used to accept it uncritically.
Most of the material is about shared values, and Israel's strategic location. The problem is that it's a strategic location we can't use - because our (geographically-closer, to the Gulf region) Muslim allies would then deny us the use of their bases, coupled with the fact that Israel is actually pretty far from oil-producing Gulf region, which is really the part of real strategic interest to us. And the reality is that our support for Israel causes the entire Muslim world to hate our guts in a way it does not hate, for example, Canada. Even Greece, which is probably one of the most Muslim-hating countries in the West, is hated less than we are.
We take a lot of crap for our financial support for Israel. If we stopped sending money there (and to Jordan and Egypt), it would do several things - it would save us $5B a year, it would put paid to the silly Muslim argument that Uncle Sam is somehow propping Israel up, it would help Israel become a more powerful country by forcing it to cut its welfare state, thereby reducing socialism's drag on its economy and it would benefit our standing in the Muslim world - we would neither be propping Israel up (in the silly minds of Muslims) nor keeping Egypt's and Jordan's corrupt leaders in power.
Are you the same Zhang Fei who posts at Rantburg? I have read your posts there in the past. I might have time to give counter arguments to your post later. But with all due respect, you don't have a clue about what you are talking about when it comes to Israel, America and the eternal Muslim Jihad and
BTW - I notice how China kills all Jihadist pests in it's Western provinces - no ifs ands or buts
Most countries at war are semi socialist. You can check out history on this. The USA became semi socialist to mobilize and win WW2. Israel's semi-socialism also brings in Jewish immigrants who would not otherwise move there. Is Israel more socialist than Britain France or any European nation? That's what Israel sort of models itself after
If you're serious, your post makes very little sense, but that was explained by your reference to "Israel lobby" (aka "Jewish lobby"), which is usually a code phrase by an Arab / Muslim organizations in US (like CAIR) and many other countries, so you have probably been influenced by them and I'll address that first.
The terms of "Israeli lobby" or "Jewish lobby" are used to get support for your own side by flaring an anti-Semitic sentiments unfortunately present in many for a long time, a technique that was developed by Hitler and later expanded by Goebbels as the basis for "Big Lie" technique - this will give you a quick start, but you can find more by yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie
The term is also often used by Louis Farrakhan.
"Blame the Jews for all our problems" is an old concept, which you may not understand, if you are young or don't understand history, which the "Israeli lobby" term that you used underscores.
And where was this "Israel lobby" during implementation of Oslo Accord, when more Israelis lost their lives than in all the years, excluding the Wars? Clinton pushed Israel to give "Land for Peace", they have given more and more land and got less and less peace. Land is gone, no peace... oh, yes they NEED more land, it's "occupied", you know, just as Gaza is. Clinton also used NATO to be on the wrong (Muslim terrorists') side during Kosovo bombing campaign, all the while Muslim terrorists were planning attacks on US. need I say more. Jews are the EXCUSE for their people squalor, and poverty and misery, not the REASON for it, just like they were for decades and centuries.
Israel is in the middle of the war, like we are, and is our partner in, GWOT. To say that "we should help Israel out, but only when it needs it - as occurred during Yom Kippur War" is like saying that we only needed help during 9/11, not before or after. Help comes in different shapes and sizes and with different $ amounts associated with it.
To say that money is going to their welfare and socialized healthcare system because we're helping them with the military is like saying that we would be spending less on our welfare and socialized healthcare system because we're fighting GWOT and are in two "hot spots" at the moment. We are spending far more in foreign aid in Arab / Muslim countries to "win hearts and minds" and from humanitarian goodness of our hearts than on entire "Camp David' agreement, yet as you say they still have this "silly Muslim argument" "in the silly minds of Muslims" that we are evil. That's because most of their people are poor, and it's not because of us, or because Israel "occupies" their lands, it's because they are being robbed by their own mullahs and masters, who can point
Your Saudi Arabia example is completely nuts ("The whole complaint about Saudi Arabia is silly. Does anyone think we could have retaken Kuwait from Israeli bases? Without going to war with the entire Muslim world? I think the Israel lobby has fogged everyone's minds.") We were invited by Saudis because Saddam presented a threat to THEM, and was going there next, it had absolutely nothing to do with Israel (though Saddam tried to get her involved, by firing Scuds to help him alienate US Arab allies, which was almost every country except Syria), we had most of Arab Muslim world on our side in coalition against Saddam, and later maintained the bases in Saudi Arabia to protect THEM, and used them to enforce no-fly zones. Israel had NOTHING to do with the Gulf War, you should not be so easily swayed by anti-Israel BS.
No, we do not, as you say, "take a lot of crap for our FINANCIAL support for Israel.", and if "we stopped sending money there (and to Jordan and Egypt)" it wouldn't "put paid to the silly Muslim argument that Uncle Sam is somehow propping Israel up", because they would only say that we stopped helping their "poor brothers and sisters" in Arab countries but still favor Israel and help Israel to kill Palestinins "women and children" and "occupy" their land. If you think so little of "silly minds of Muslims" why do you think they would hear the voices of reason (and who would tell them?) and stop their "silly Muslim argument that Uncle Sam is somehow propping Israel up"? The mullahs and Islamist chieftains NEED "Death to Israel!" and "Death to America!", it's the only thing that keeps their people from killing each other, in "occupied" Gaza between "political" gangster parties, in "occupied" Iraq and "occupied" elsewhere between
Sunnis and Shiites, and in "occupied" Darfur in Sudan between black Africans and Arabs, just like before in "occupied" SouthEast Sudan it was a slaughter of Chtistians by Muslims, or in Indonesia and elsewhere in "occupied" SouthEast Asia...
The Mullahs don't "hate" Canada now any more than Hitler "hated" Vichy France - they are not doing anything to stop them. We were supposedly "hated" by half the world in WWII, and later "hated" by half the world during Cold War by the "Democratic" and "People's" governments, which proved to be a total lie, because what these people really wanted was the freedom from their governments, Talibans with and without burqas. We are doing very similar things now, related to the Muslim world, and Israel just happens to be one of our allies that is being used an EXCUSE by mullahs for decades. Read or watch History Channel about Nazis and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (uncle of Yasser Arafat, and friend and mentor of Saddam's uncle).
To you, the solution is to give up a friend, maybe in pieces like Clinton was doing, because it seems easier and there are a lot of people that would possibly stop hating you for a few months, but if you don't understand the reasons for the hate, who espouses the hate, who actually hates you (it's not the people who are freed from the boot of their own tyrants blaming everyone they can for their people's miserable lives), and just "keep feeding the crocodile so he will eat you last"... I wouldn't want to be your friend.
I understand that Arab/Muslim lobby (like CAIR) is trying to come up with "legitimate" reasons to stop supporting Israel ("except the time of war", of course) and sour conservatives' perception of our help by hitting on hot button conservative sensibilities - Israeli "perks", "cradle-to-grave Scandinavian-style welfare state system", "socialized medicine" etc. - but that is just a cheap "silly Muslim argument" hatched "in the silly minds of Muslims"... you shouldn't be so easily influenced by "lot of the BS they come up with" and "accept it uncritically."
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it" - George Santayana.
Give me a break. Every foreign country has a lobbying group in the US. Just as every foreign country has a lobbying group in China. Israel is successful in the US in a way it is not in China because Jews are perhaps 5% of the American population (some are secular and don't show up in the demographic polls, but that doesn't mean they don't support Jewish causes), and they vote at something like a 90% rate, which no other ethnic group does.
I don't have a problem with Jews supporting Israel - it isn't actually an enemy* of the US in the way that China, North Korea or Iran are. The issue is whether everything that is good for Israel is also good for the US. I don't think the $5B annual subsidy we hand out to Israel, Jordan and Egypt for Israel's sake is good for either the US or Israel. On our side, there is the cost to taxpayers. On Israel's side, it is the long-term cost to their economy of maintaining a cradle-to-grave welfare state system.
In the case of Egypt and Jordan, there is the perception that we are propping up tyrannical rulers. Since Jordan ought rightly be the Palestinian state - and it would be nice if Israel could just deport all the Gaza and West Bank Palestinians to Jordan - that is an especially big problem. The issue of a Palestinian state might just go away if the Hashemite ruler of Jordan gradually turned his state into a constitutional monarchy with free elections. Our subsidy to Jordan provides just another buffer to King Abdullah from popular pressures.
* Whether it's a friend in the way the UK, Australia and Canada are won't really be known until there is occasion for Israel to send troops to fight alongside our forces. At this moment, Israel's usefulness as an ally is more or less nugatory.
We were socialist in the sense that we organized the economy to focus on the production of war materials. Israel is socialist in the sense that it feeds and houses lazy people who don't want to work. I think there's a difference.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.