U.S. Military Aid To Israel: Debating An Increase

This article was posted on the pages of YAHOO.

By DAVID MAKOVSKYon March 16, 2016 at 10:00 AM

When Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu cancelled his planned visit to Washington recently, many speculated that he was protesting the continued lack of agreement on the amount of U.S. military aid to be embodied in a new ten-year memorandum of understanding (MOU). Vice President Joe Biden, who enjoys a close friendship with Netanyahu, visited Israel last week and urged the prime minister to finalize a deal at the level favored by the Obama administration. Although Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon will meet with Defense Secretary Ash Carter at the Pentagon this week, the MOU talks have been spearheaded by the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office, so the Carter-Yaalon talks are unlikely to be a game-changer.

U.S. aid rose dramatically in the wake of Israel’s 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, yet the first MOU on military aid was not signed until two decades later in 1998, for $21.3 billion over ten years. The second MOU was signed in August 2007, for $30 billion over ten years. The mutual advantage of signing such MOUs is that they inject predictability into the process so that aid levels do not have to be negotiated each year.

Did you read that? Netanyahu is protesting the amount of Aid Israel is receiving. It’s like you see a beggar on the street, you give him $5.00. Instead of saying thank you, he says, what is this cheap skate?? you should give me at least $50.00, and you say, please accept this $5.00 and I promise to give you what you ask for next time. That’s exactly what Joe Biden was doing when visited Israel.

It seems like the US and the Israeli governments don’t think that the amount of arms that Israel is currently receiving from the United States is not killing enough innocent Palestinians so the increased it by 33%. Trigger happy Israel put those arms to a bad use, killing more and more Palestinians and destroying more and more of their properties. I bet George Bush and Dick Chaney are sleeping soundly and dreaming about all the blood of innocent people spilled on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank. Truth to tell, I, as an American, am ashamed to say that these two thugs used to run my country.

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