Latest
News...
Foreign
Aid Bill Passes Overwhelmingly
The US
Senate overwhelmingly passed the fiscal year 2002
Foreign Operations Appropriations bill by a vote of
96-2. The Senate version of the foreign aid bill, is
similar to the version passed earlier this year in the
House. It contains $2.04 billion in military aid
and $720 million in economic aid for Israel, as well as
important provisions which enable Israel to maximize the
benefits of the aid such as payment of the money in a
lump sum at the beginning of the fiscal year.
Special
Reports:
THE
STRATEGIC FUNCTIONS OF U.S. AID TO ISRAEL
By Stephen Zunes
Dr. Zunes is an
assistant professor in the Department of Politics at the
University of San Francisco
Since 1992, the U.S.
has offered Israel an additional $2 billion annually in
loan guarantees. Congressional researchers have
disclosed that between 1974 and 1989, $16.4 billion in
U.S. military loans were converted to grants and that
this was the understanding from the beginning. Indeed,
all past U.S. loans to Israel have eventually been
forgiven by Congress, which has undoubtedly helped
Israel's often-touted claim that they have never
defaulted on a U.S. government loan. U.S. policy since
1984 has been that economic assistance to Israel must
equal or exceed Israel's annual debt repayment to the
United States. Unlike other countries, which receive aid
in quarterly installments, aid to Israel since 1982 has
been given in a lump sum at the beginning of the fiscal
year, leaving the U.S. government to borrow from future
revenues. Israel even lends some of this money back
through U.S. treasury bills and collects the additional
interest. In addition, there is the more than $1.5
billion in private U.S. funds that go to Israel annually
in the form of $1 billion in private tax-deductible
donations and $500 million in Israeli bonds. The ability
of Americans to make what amounts to tax-deductible
contributions to a foreign government, made possible
through a number of Jewish charities, does not exist
with any other country. Nor do these figures include
short- and long-term commercial loans from U.S. banks,
which have been as high as $1 billion annually in recent
years.
Total U.S. aid to
Israel is approximately one-third of the American
foreign- aid budget, even though Israel comprises just
.001 percent of the world's population and already has
one of the world's higher per capita incomes. Indeed,
Israel's GNP is higher than the combined GNP of Egypt,
Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. With a
per capita income of about $14,000, Israel ranks as the
sixteenth wealthiest country in the world; Israelis
enjoy a higher per capita income than oil-rich Saudi
Arabia and are only slightly less well-off than most
Western European countries. AID does not term economic
aid to Israel as development assistance, but instead
uses the term "economic support funding."
Given Israel's relative prosperity, U.S. aid to Israel
is becoming increasingly controversial. In 1994, Yossi
Beilen, deputy foreign minister of Israel and a Knesset
member, told the Women's International Zionist
organization, "If our economic situation is better
than in many of your countries, how can we go on asking
for your charity?"
U.S. Aid to
Israel:
What U.S. Taxpayer Should Know
by Tom Malthaner
This morning as I was
walking down Shuhada Street in Hebron, I saw graffiti
marking the newly painted storefronts and awnings.
Although three months past schedule and 100 percent over
budget, the renovation of Shuhada Street was finally
completed this week. The project manager said the reason
for the delay and cost overruns was the sabotage of the
project by the Israeli settlers of the Beit Hadassah
settlement complex in Hebron. They broke the street
lights, stoned project workers, shot out the windows of
bulldozers and other heavy equipment with pellet guns,
broke paving stones before they were laid and now have
defaced again the homes and shops of Palestinians with
graffiti. The settlers did not want Shuhada St. opened
to Palestinian traffic as was agreed to under Oslo 2.
This renovation project is paid for by USAID funds and
it makes me angry that my tax dollars have paid for
improvements that have been destroyed by the settlers.
Most Americans are not
aware how much of their tax revenue our government sends
to Israel. For the fiscal year ending in September 30,
1997, the U.S. has given Israel $6.72 billion: $6.194
billion falls under Israel's foreign aid allotment and
$526 million comes from agencies such as the Department
of Commerce, the U.S. Information Agency and the
Pentagon. The $6.72 billion figure does not include loan
guarantees and annual compound interest totalling $3.122
billion the U.S. pays on money borrowed to give to
Israel. It does not include the cost to U.S. taxpayers
of IRS tax exemptions that donors can claim when they
donate money to Israeli charities. (Donors claim
approximately $1 billion in Federal tax deductions
annually. This ultimately costs other U.S. tax payers
$280 million to $390 million.)
When grant, loans,
interest and tax deductions are added together for the
fiscal year ending in September 30, 1997, our special
relationship with Israel cost U.S. taxpayers over $10
billion.
Since 1949 the U.S. has
given Israel a total of $83.205 billion. The interest
costs borne by U.S. tax payers on behalf of Israel are
$49.937 billion, thus making the total amount of aid
given to Israel since 1949 $133.132 billion. This may
mean that U.S. government has given more federal aid to
the average Israeli citizen in a given year than it has
given to the average American citizen.
I am angry when I see
Israeli settlers from Hebron destroy improvements made
to Shuhada Street with my tax money. Also, it angers me
that my government is giving over $10 billion to a
country that is more prosperous than most of the other
countries in the world and uses much of its money for
strengthening its military and the oppression of the
Palestinian people.
"U.S.
Aid to Israel: Interpreting the 'Strategic
Relationship"'
Report from a CPAP briefing
by Stephen Zunes
"The U.S. aid
relationship with Israel is unlike any other in the
world," said Stephen Zunes during a January 26 CPAP
presentation. "In sheer volume, the amount is the
most generous foreign aid program ever between any two
countries," added Zunes, associate professor of
Politics and chair of the Peace and Justice Studies
Program at the University of San Francisco.
He explored the
strategic reasoning behind the aid, asserting that it
parallels the "needs of American arms
exporters" and the role "Israel could play in
advancing U.S. strategic interests in the region."
Although Israel is an
"advanced, industrialized, technologically
sophisticated country," it "receives more U.S.
aid per capita annually than the total annual [Gross
Domestic Product] per capita of several Arab
states." Approximately a third of the entire U.S.
foreign aid budget goes to Israel, "even though
Israel comprises just . . . one-thousandth of the
world's total population, and already has one of the
world's higher per capita incomes."
U.S. government
officials argue that this money is necessary for
"moral" reasons-some even say that Israel is a
"democracy battling for its very survival." If
that were the real reason, however, aid should have been
highest during Israel's early years, and would have
declined as Israel grew stronger. Yet "the pattern
. . . has been just the opposite." According to
Zunes, "99 percent of all U.S. aid to Israel took
place after the June 1967 war, when Israel found itself
more powerful than any combination of Arab armies . .
."
The U.S. supports
Israel's dominance so it can serve as "a surrogate
for American interests in this vital strategic
region." "Israel has helped defeat radical
nationalist movements" and has been a "testing
ground for U.S. made weaponry." Moreover, the
intelligence agencies of both countries have
"collaborated," and "Israel has funneled
U.S. arms to third countries that the U.S. [could] not
send arms to directly, . . . Iike South Africa, like the
Contras, Guatemala under the military junta, [and]
Iran." Zunes cited an Israeli analyst who said:
"'It's like Israel has just become another federal
agency when it's convenient to use and you want
something done quietly."' Although the strategic
relationship between the United States and the Gulf Arab
states in the region has been strengthening in recent
years, these states "do not have the political
stability, the technological sophistication, [or] the
number of higher-trained armed forces personnel" as
does Israel.
Matti Peled, former
Israeli major general and Knesset member, told Zunes
that he and most Israeli generals believe this aid is
"little more than an American subsidy to U.S. arms
manufacturers," considering that the majority of
military aid to Israel is used to buy weapons from the
U.S. Moreover, arms to Israel create more demand for
weaponry in Arab states. According to Zunes, "the
Israelis announced back in 1991 that they supported the
idea of a freeze in Middle East arms transfers, yet it
was the United States that rejected it."
In the fall of
1993-when many had high hopes for peace-78 senators
wrote to former President Bill Clinton insisting that
aid to Israel remain "at current levels."
Their "only reason" was the "massive
procurement of sophisticated arms by Arab states."
The letter neglected to mention that 80 percent of those
arms to Arab countries came from the U.S.
"I'm not denying for a moment the power of AIPAC
[the American Israel Public Affairs Committee], the
pro-Israel lobby," and other similar groups, Zunes
said. Yet the "Aerospace Industry Association which
promotes these massive arms shipments . . . is even more
influential." This association has given two times
more money to campaigns than all of the pro-Israel
groups combined. Its "force on Capitol Hill, in
terms of lobbying, surpasses that of even AIPAC."
Zunes asserted that the "general thrust of U.S.
policy would be pretty much the same even if AIPAC
didn't exist. We didn't need a pro-Indonesia lobby to
support Indonesia in its savage repression of East Timor
all these years." This is a complex issue, and
Zunes said that he did not want to be
"conspiratorial," but he asked the audience to
imagine what "Palestinian industriousness, Israeli
technology, and Arabian oil money . . . would do to
transform the Middle East. . . . [W]hat would that mean
to American arms manufacturers? Oil companies? Pentagon
planners?"
"An increasing
number of Israelis are pointing out" that these
funds are not in Israel's best interest. Quoting Peled,
Zunes said, "this aid pushes Israel 'toward a
posture of callous intransigence' in terms of the peace
process." Moreover, for every dollar the U.S. sends
in arms aid, Israel must spend two to three dollars to
train people to use the weaponry, to buy parts, and in
other ways make use of the aid. Even "main-stream
Israeli economists are saying [it] is very harmful to
the country's future."
The Israeli paper
Yediot Aharonot described Israel as "'the
godfather's messenger' since [Israel] undertake[s] the
'dirty work' of a godfather who 'always tries to appear
to be the owner of some large, respectable
business."' Israeli satirist B. Michael refers to
U.S. aid this way: "'My master gives me food to eat
and I bite those whom he tells me to bite. It's called
strategic cooperation." 'To challenge this
strategic relationship, one cannot focus solely on the
Israeli lobby but must also examine these "broader
forces as well." "Until we tackle this issue
head-on," it will be "very difficult to
win" in other areas relating to Palestine.
"The results"
of the short-term thinking behind U.S. policy "are
tragic," not just for the "immediate
victims" but "eventually [for] Israel
itself" and "American interests in the
region." The U.S. is sending enormous amounts of
aid to the Middle East, and yet "we are less secure
than ever"-both in terms of U.S. interests abroad
and for individual Americans. Zunes referred to a
"growing and increasing hostility [of] the average
Arab toward the United States." In the long term,
said Zunes, "peace and stability and cooperation
with the vast Arab world is far more important for U.S.
interests than this alliance with Israel."
This is not only an
issue for those who are working for Palestinian rights,
but it also "jeopardizes the entire agenda of those
of us concerned about human rights, concerned about arms
control, concerned about international law." Zunes
sees significant potential in "building a
broad-based movement around it."
The above text
is based on remarks, delivered on. 26 January, 2001 by
Stephen . Zunes - Associate Professor of Politics and
Chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at San
Francisco University
The
Cost of Israel to U.S. Taxpayers
True Lies About U.S. Aid to Israel
By Richard H. Curtiss
For many years the
American media said that "Israel receives $1.8
billion in military aid" or that "Israel
receives $1.2 billion in economic aid." Both
statements were true, but since they were never combined
to give us the complete total of annual U.S. aid to
Israel, they also were lies--true lies.
Recently Americans have
begun to read and hear that "Israel receives $3
billion in annual U.S. foreign aid." That's true.
But it's still a lie. The problem is that in fiscal 1997
alone, Israel received from a variety of other U.S.
federal budgets at least $525.8 million above and beyond
its $3 billion from the foreign aid budget, and yet
another $2 billion in federal loan guarantees. So the
complete total of U.S. grants and loan guarantees to
Israel for fiscal 1997 was $5,525,800,000.
One can truthfully
blame the mainstream media for never digging out these
figures for themselves, because none ever have. They
were compiled by the Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs. But the mainstream media certainly are not
alone. Although Congress authorizes America's foreign
aid total, the fact that more than a third of it goes to
a country smaller in both area and population than Hong
Kong probably never has been mentioned on the floor of
the Senate or House. Yet it's been going on for more
than a generation.
Probably the only
members of Congress who even suspect the full total of
U.S. funds received by Israel each year are the
privileged few committee members who actually mark it
up. And almost all members of the concerned committees
are Jewish, have taken huge campaign donations
orchestrated by Israel's Washington, DC lobby, the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or
both. These congressional committee members are paid to
act, not talk. So they do and they don't.
The same applies to the
president, the secretary of state, and the foreign aid
administrator. They all submit a budget that includes
aid for Israel, which Congress approves, or increases,
but never cuts. But no one in the executive branch
mentions that of the few remaining U.S. aid recipients
worldwide, all of the others are developing nations
which either make their military bases available to the
U.S., are key members of international alliances in
which the U.S. participates, or have suffered some
crippling blow of nature to their abilities to feed
their people such as earthquakes, floods or droughts.
Israel, whose troubles
arise solely from its unwillingness to give back land it
seized in the 1967 war in return for peace with its
neighbors, does not fit those criteria. In fact,
Israel's 1995 per capita gross domestic product was
$15,800. That put it below Britain at $19,500 and Italy
at $18,700 and just above Ireland at $15,400 and Spain
at $14,300.
All four of those
European countries have contributed a very large share
of immigrants to the U.S., yet none has organized an
ethnic group to lobby for U.S. foreign aid. Instead, all
four send funds and volunteers to do economic
development and emergency relief work in other less
fortunate parts of the world.
The lobby that Israel
and its supporters have built in the United States to
make all this aid happen, and to ban discussion of it
from the national dialogue, goes far beyond AIPAC, with
its $15 million budget, its 150 employees, and its five
or six registered lobbyists who manage to visit every
member of Congress individually once or twice a year.
AIPAC, in turn, can
draw upon the resources of the Conference of Presidents
of Major American Jewish Organizations, a roof group set
up solely to coordinate the efforts of some 52 national
Jewish organizations on behalf of Israel.
Among them are
Hadassah, the Zionist women's organization, which
organizes a steady stream of American Jewish visitors to
Israel; the American Jewish Congress, which mobilizes
support for Israel among members of the traditionally
left-of-center Jewish mainstream; and the American
Jewish Committee, which plays the same role within the
growing middle-of-the-road and right-of-center Jewish
community. The American Jewish Committee also publishes
Commentary,one of the Israel lobby's principal national
publications.
Perhaps the most
controversial of these groups is B'nai B'rith's
Anti-Defamation League. Its original highly commendable
purpose was to protect the civil rights of American
Jews. Over the past generation, however, the ADL has
regressed into a conspiratorial and, with a $45 million
budget, extremely well-funded hate group.
In the 1980s, during
the tenure of chairman Seymour Reich, who went on to
become chairman of the Conference of Presidents, ADL was
found to have circulated two annual fund-raising letters
warning Jewish parents against allegedly negative
influences on their children arising from the increasing
Arab presence on American university campuses.
More recently, FBI
raids on ADL's Los Angeles and San Francisco offices
revealed that an ADL operative had purchased files
stolen from the San Francisco police department that a
court had ordered destroyed because they violated the
civil rights of the individuals on whom they had been
compiled. ADL, it was shown, had added the illegally
prepared and illegally obtained material to its own
secret files, compiled by planting informants among
Arab-American, African-American, anti-Apartheid and
peace and justice groups.
The ADL infiltrators
took notes of the names and remarks of speakers and
members of audiences at programs organized by such
groups. ADL agents even recorded the license plates of
persons attending such programs and then suborned
corrupt motor vehicles department employees or renegade
police officers to identify the owners.
Although one of the
principal offenders fled the United States to escape
prosecution, no significant penalties were assessed.
ADL's Northern California office was ordered to comply
with requests by persons upon whom dossiers had been
prepared to see their own files, but no one went to jail
and as yet no one has paid fines.
Not surprisingly, a
defecting employee revealed in an article he published
in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs that
AIPAC, too, has such "enemies" files. They are
compiled for use by pro-Israel journalists like Steven
Emerson and other so-called "terrorism
experts," and also by professional, academic or
journalistic rivals of the persons described for use in
black-listing, defaming, or denouncing them. What is
never revealed is that AIPAC's "opposition
research" department, under the supervision of
Michael Lewis, son of famed Princeton University
Orientalist Bernard Lewis, is the source of this
defamatory material.
But this is not AIPAC's
most controversial activity. In the 1970s, when Congress
put a cap on the amount its members could earn from
speakers' fees and book royalties over and above their
salaries, it halted AIPAC's most effective ways of
paying off members for voting according to AIPAC
recommendations. Members of AIPAC's national board of
directors solved the problem by returning to their home
states and creating political action committees (PACs).
Most special interests
have PACs, as do many major corporations, labor unions,
trade associations and public-interest groups. But the
pro-Israel groups went wild. To date some 126 pro-Israel
PACs have been registered, and no fewer than 50 have
been active in every national election over the past
generation.
An individual voter can
give up to $2,000 to a candidate in an election cycle,
and a PAC can give a candidate up to $10,000. However, a
single special interest with 50 PACs can give a
candidate who is facing a tough opponent, and who has
voted according to its recommendations, up to half a
million dollars. That's enough to buy all the television
time needed to get elected in most parts of the country.
Even candidates who
don't need this kind of money certainly don't want it to
become available to a rival from their own party in a
primary election, or to an opponent from the opposing
party in a general election. As a result, all but a
handful of the 535 members of the Senate and House vote
as AIPAC instructs when it comes to aid to Israel, or
other aspects of U.S. Middle East policy.
There is something else
very special about AIPAC's network of political action
committees. Nearly all have deceptive names. Who could
possibly know that the Delaware Valley Good Government
Association in Philadelphia, San Franciscans for Good
Government in California, Cactus PAC in Arizona, Beaver
PAC in Wisconsin, and even Icepac in New York are really
pro-Israel PACs under deep cover?
Hiding AIPAC's Tracks
In fact, the
congressmembers know it when they list the contributions
they receive on the campaign statements they have to
prepare for the Federal Election Commission. But their
constituents don't know this when they read these
statements. So just as no other special interest can put
so much "hard money" into any candidate's
election campaign as can the Israel lobby, no other
special interest has gone to such elaborate lengths to
hide its tracks.
Although AIPAC,
Washington's most feared special-interest lobby, can
hide how it uses both carrots and sticks to bribe or
intimidate members of Congress, it can't hide all of the
results.
Anyone can ask one of
their representatives in Congress for a chart prepared
by the Congressional Research Service, a branch of the
Library of Congress, that shows Israel received $62.5
billion in foreign aid from fiscal year 1949 through
fiscal year 1996. People in the national capital area
also can visit the library of the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) in Rosslyn, Virginia,
and obtain the same information, plus charts showing how
much foreign aid the U.S. has given other countries as
well.
Visitors will learn
that in precisely the same 1949-1996 time frame, the
total of U.S. foreign aid to all of the countries of
sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean
combined was $62,497,800,000--almost exactly the amount
given to tiny Israel.
According to the
Population Reference Bureau of Washington, DC, in
mid-1995 the sub-Saharan countries had a combined
population of 568 million. The $24,415,700,000 in
foreign aid they had received by then amounted to $42.99
per sub-Saharan African.
Similarly, with a
combined population of 486 million, all of the countries
of Latin America and the Caribbean together had received
$38,254,400,000. This amounted to $79 per person.
The per capita U.S.
foreign aid to Israel's 5.8 million people during the
same period was $10,775.48. This meant that for every
dollar the U.S. spent on an African, it spent $250.65 on
an Israeli, and for every dollar it spent on someone
from the Western Hemisphere outside the United States,
it spent $214 on an Israeli.
Shocking Comparisons
These comparisons
already seem shocking, but they are far from the whole
truth. Using reports compiled by Clyde Mark of the
Congressional Research Service and other sources,
freelance writer Frank Collins tallied for theWashington
Report all of the extra items for Israel buried in the
budgets of the Pentagon and other federal agencies in
fiscal year 1993.Washington Report news editor Shawn
Twing did the same thing for fiscal years 1996 and 1997.
They uncovered $1.271
billion in extras in FY 1993, $355.3 million in FY 1996
and $525.8 million in FY 1997. These represent an
average increase of 12.2 percent over the officially
recorded foreign aid totals for the same fiscal years,
and they probably are not complete. It's reasonable to
assume, therefore, that a similar 12.2 percent hidden
increase has prevailed over all of the years Israel has
received aid.
As of Oct. 31, 1997
Israel will have received $3.05 billion in U.S. foreign
aid for fiscal year 1997 and $3.08 billion in foreign
aid for fiscal year 1998. Adding the 1997 and 1998
totals to those of previous years since 1949 yields a
total of $74,157,600,000 in foreign aid grants and
loans. Assuming that the actual totals from other
budgets average 12.2 percent of that amount, that brings
the grand total to $83,204,827,200.
But that's not quite
all. Receiving its annual foreign aid appropriation
during the first month of the fiscal year, instead of in
quarterly installments as do other recipients, is just
another special privilege Congress has voted for Israel.
It enables Israel to invest the money in U.S. Treasury
notes. That means that the U.S., which has to borrow the
money it gives to Israel, pays interest on the money it
has granted to Israel in advance, while at the same time
Israel is collecting interest on the money. That
interest to Israel from advance payments adds another
$1.650 billion to the total, making it
$84,854,827,200.That's the number you should write down
for total aid to Israel. And that's $14,346 each for
each man, woman and child in Israel.
It's worth noting that
that figure does not include U.S. government loan
guarantees to Israel, of which Israel has drawn $9.8
billion to date. They greatly reduce the interest rate
the Israeli government pays on commercial loans, and
they place additional burdens on U.S. taxpayers,
especially if the Israeli government should default on
any of them. But since neither the savings to Israel nor
the costs to U.S. taxpayers can be accurately
quantified, they are excluded from consideration here.
Further, friends of
Israel never tire of saying that Israel has never
defaulted on repayment of a U.S. government loan. It
would be equally accurate to say Israel has never been
required to repay a U.S. government loan. The truth of
the matter is complex, and designed to be so by those
who seek to conceal it from the U.S. taxpayer.
Most U.S. loans to
Israel are forgiven, and many were made with the
explicit understanding that they would be forgiven
before Israel was required to repay them. By disguising
as loans what in fact were grants, cooperating members
of Congress exempted Israel from the U.S. oversight that
would have accompanied grants. On other loans, Israel
was expected to pay the interest and eventually to begin
repaying the principal. But the so-called Cranston
Amendment, which has been attached by Congress to every
foreign aid appropriation since 1983, provides that
economic aid to Israel will never dip below the amount
Israel is required to pay on its outstanding loans. In
short, whether U.S. aid is extended as grants or loans
to Israel, it never returns to the Treasury.
Israel enjoys other
privileges. While most countries receiving U.S. military
aid funds are expected to use them for U.S. arms,
ammunition and training, Israel can spend part of these
funds on weapons made by Israeli manufacturers. Also,
when it spends its U.S. military aid money on U.S.
products, Israel frequently requires the U.S. vendor to
buy components or materials from Israeli manufacturers.
Thus, though Israeli politicians say that their own
manufacturers and exporters are making them
progressively less dependent upon U.S. aid, in fact
those Israeli manufacturers and exporters are heavily
subsidized by U.S. aid.
Although it's beyond
the parameters of this study, it's worth mentioning that
Israel also receives foreign aid from some other
countries. After the United States, the principal donor
of both economic and military aid to Israel is Germany.
By far the largest
component of German aid has been in the form of
restitution payments to victims of Nazi attrocities. But
there also has been extensive German military assistance
to Israel during and since the Gulf war, and a variety
of German educational and research grants go to Israeli
institutions. The total of German assistance in all of
these categories to the Israeli government, Israeli
individuals and Israeli private institutions has been
some $31 billion or $5,345 per capita, bringing the per
capita total of U.S. and German assistance combined to
almost $20,000 per Israeli. Since very little public
money is spent on the more than 20 percent of Israeli
citizens who are Muslim or Christian, the actual per
capita benefits received by Israel's Jewish citizens
would be considerably higher.
True Cost to U.S.
Taxpayers
Generous as it is, what
Israelis actually got in U.S. aid is considerably less
than what it has cost U.S. taxpayers to provide it. The
principal difference is that so long as the U.S. runs an
annual budget deficit, every dollar of aid the U.S.
gives Israel has to be raised through U.S. government
borrowing.
In an article in the
Washington Report for December 1991/January 1992, Frank
Collins estimated the costs of this interest, based upon
prevailing interest rates for every year since 1949. I
have updated this by applying a very conservative 5
percent interest rate for subsequent years, and confined
the amount upon which the interest is calculated to
grants, not loans or loan guarantees.
On this basis the $84.8
billion in grants, loans and commodities Israel has
received from the U.S. since 1949 cost the U.S. an
additional $49,936,880,000 in interest.
There are many other
costs of Israel to U.S. taxpayers, such as most or all
of the $45.6 billion in U.S. foreign aid to Egypt since
Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979 (compared to $4.2
billion in U.S. aid to Egypt for the preceding 26
years). U.S. foreign aid to Egypt, which is pegged at
two-thirds of U.S. foreign aid to Israel, averages $2.2
billion per year.
There also have been
immense political and military costs to the U.S. for its
consistent support of Israel during Israel's
half-century of disputes with the Palestinians and all
of its Arab neighbors. In addition, there have been the
approximately $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees and
perhaps $20 billion in tax-exempt contributions made to
Israel by American Jews in the nearly half-century since
Israel was created.
Even excluding all of
these extra costs, America's $84.8 billion in aid to
Israel from fiscal years 1949 through 1998, and the
interest the U.S. paid to borrow this money, has cost
U.S. taxpayers $134.8 billion, not adjusted for
inflation. Or, put another way, the nearly $14,630 every
one of 5.8 million Israelis received from the U.S.
government by Oct. 31, 1997 has cost American taxpayers
$23,240 per Israeli.
It would be interesting
to know how many of those American taxpayers believe
they and their families have received as much from the
U.S. Treasury as has everyone who has chosen to become a
citizen of Israel. But it's a question that will never
occur to the American public because, so long as
America's mainstream media, Congress and president
maintain their pact of silence, few Americans will ever
know the true cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Curtiss,
a retired U.S. foreign service officer, is the executive
editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.