The Staggering Cost of Israel to Americans

The Staggering Cost of Israel to Americans

Mark Roberts

The Staggering Cost of Israel to Americans http://www.veteransnewsnow.com/2013/05/19/223756-the-staggering-cost-of-israel-to-americans/

Israel has a population of about 7.8 million, which is less than the state of New Jersey. It is among the world’s most affluent nations, with a per capita income similar to that of the European Union. Israel’s unemployment rate of 5.6% is much better than America’s 9.1%. Yet Israel receives approximately 10% of America’s foreign aid budget every year.
Official US aid to Israel since 1948 tops $112 billion, and in the past few decades it has been around $3 billion per year. Israelis only make up 0.001% of the world’s population. In other words, on average, Israelis receive 10,000 times more US foreign aid per capita than other people throughout the world, despite the fact that Israel is one of the world’s more affluent nations.
Israel uses most of the money to prolong a 45-year military occupation (which regularly involves gross violations of international law), commit egregious human rights violations, and destroy billions of dollars worth of Palestinian homes and infrastructure (resulting in still more U.S. tax money being sent to Palestinians to rebuild demolished homes, hospitals, and schools), while building illegal Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land.
And foreign aid is just one component of the staggering cost of the U.S.'s alliance with Israel.
Another element is ad hoc support for Israel, which is not part of the formal foreign aid programs. No comprehensive compilation of US support for Israel has been publicly released. Additional known items include loan guarantees… special contracts for Israeli firms, legal and illegal transfers of marketable US military technology, de facto exemption from US trade protection provisions, and discounted sales or free transfers of ‘surplus’ US military equipment.
Harvard economist Dr. Thomas Stauffer estimates that Israel cost the US about $1.6 trillion between 1973 and 2003 alone.
But perhaps the most damaging cost to the US has been its loss of standing in the Arab and Muslim worlds, where US largesse towards Israel as it commits human rights violations provokes deep resentment.
Read more…
Share this.