by Eyal Granat
On Facebook, I often read comments by Americans who claim the United States is “sponsoring” Israel, and it shouldn’t - or I read that Israel is funded by the United States (because, of course, the “Jews” and their lobby control the US Congress and government).
There is a weird notion many Americans have, that their government is naively altruistic or just plain stupid or corrupt; that it is helping Israel for no reason, sending them the money of American tax payers.
Additionally, there is the notion that Israel is an ungrateful parasite, an out-of-control rogue who just takes money away from the benevolent super power.
I believe many Americans don’t really understand their country foreign relations policy; they think it acts as a “Santa Claus” in the world, sending everyone gifts.
I will explain the situation to you from a different perspective, an Israeli POV.
The foreign aid to Israel from America is about 1 billion dollars a year, in NIS terms it’s about 3.6 billion NIS, let’s say it is 4 billion NIS. With this foreign aid, Israel is obliged to buy American weapon systems and ammunition - it is really a subsidy the United States gives to its own military industrial complex, overriding the impossibility of direct subsidy, which your own laws and regulations forbid.
Israel has its own military industry, its one of the world’s largest weapon exporters. It could manufacture its own weapons without US help. The Israeli 4th generation tank “Merkava” is manufactured in Israel, it has an assault rifle called “Tavor”, its drones are manufactured in Israel, the anti-missiles “Arrow” and “Iron Dome” are manufactured in Israel, and so on.
USA weapons are not just a subsidy, they are also a means of control. Just this week President Obama stopped the shipment of “Hellfire” missiles to Israel, because he disagreed with the way Israel is defending itself against the attack of Hamas from Gaza. In the middle of a war, President Obama decided to pull his leverage on Israel, because he wanted Israel to surrender to Hamas’s ceasefire terms. Even President Morsi of Egypt defined the ceasefire terms as preposterous.
The United States did not become a super power by being benevolent and altruistic. USA policy is all about its own interests. Controlling Israel helps the United States to secure its own interests in the Middle East - this greatly effects the price of oil and the US economy.
Israel doesn’t need US foreign aid, and can probably do even better without it. But… it’s similar to how a big Mafia boss can come to you and offer to take some money from a robbery - refusing to take the funding it is not that much about the money, but because you don’t want the Mafia boss to get angry at you.
1 billion dollars is a lot, 4 billion NIS, but Israel’s defense budget is approximately 70 billion NIS, and its annual budget is about 300 billion NIS. Just to give you another scale of comparison, the Bank of Israel has in reserve about 90 billion dollars, to keep the rate of exchange of NIS to dollars low, to support the exporters in Israel.
1 billion dollars a year - a “coupon” for American weapons - is not something that Israel must have in order to survive. In actuality, this buys Israel’s compliance to US demands.
It might look to Americans like Israel controls the US, but the reality is… it is the other way around, the US is the only thing that stops Israel from winning against Hamas.
As for the Jewish or Israeli lobby “controlling” the US government, unfortunately, that is not true. Jews are among the financial and intellectual elite in America, and in many other western countries, but most of them are actually not strong supporters of Israel. The majority of the Jews in the US voted for Obama, who is the most anti-Israeli president ever. Also, Jews assimilate - most of them identify with their own nation much more than with Israel. Many are even like George Soros, a Jew who funds anti-Israeli organizations.
The Jewish lobby is really not that strong, and even if it was, they are primarily American patriots before they are “pro-Israel.”
The real lobby Americans should fear is the lobby of Arab oil countries from the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Unlike jews, radical Islamists will never really be part of American life and will never assimilate because they despise everything in the western way of life. The Arab lobby should be a major concern of
Americans, because Arab interests often oppose the interests of the United States, and not only on Israeli matters.