Could Israel continue to survive without US support?
Forgive my ignorance on this subject, I am not even sure what support we give Israel?
Supposedly back in 1973 the Israelis “blackmailed” the US, threatening to use their nuclear arsenal if Nixon didn’t send support. That’s according to Seymour Hersh, anyway. I don’t know if I trust him, or the site that links to that article, the ‘Future Watch.’ Kinda quacky, if you ask me.
In any case, you present a pretty good question, I’m not sure what we give Israel other than diplomatic support anymore. Here is a pretty good history type thingy, if you like.
We give them several billion in foreign aid, besides the diplomatic support.
“Foreign aid”; well “military aid” is more appropriate.
sorry randy, no matter how much I dislike how the Israeli government is misbehaving in the Palestinian conflict, I can’t let that one go.
Of the 13 billion aid Israel receives yearly from the US, only 1 billion is direct military aid.
Yes, 1 billion is still a heft sum, but you can’t equate “foreign aid” with “military aid”.
http://www.counterpunch.org/alam04052003.html
have a look at link above. I have posted this before (but in a different thread). It gives you a time line in regards with US aid to Israel, and the author is giving his own reasons and deductions as to why US and Israel became such close allies.
It’s very interesting
“The record of American assistance to Israel shows that the special re-lationship did not develop until the late 1960s. US aid flows to Israel remained well below $100 million annually until 1965, and, more importantly, very little of this was for military hardware. The aid flows doubled in 1966, increased six fold in 1971, and five fold again in 1974 when it rose to $2.6 billion, going up to $5 billion in more recent years. Further, this aid was disbursed mostly in the form of grants, and nearly all of it was spent on military hardware. Indeed, these terms indicate a very “special relationship,” not available to any other country.”
“People who argue that the US special relationship with Israel was prompted by its victory in 1967 should also note that its near-defeat in 1973 led, the following year, to a more than five-fold increase in the US aid package to Israel to $2.6 billion. Egypt took this message to heart, deciding that it would be futile to challenge this special relationship any further. In 1978, it signed a separate peace with Israel, after US promised to sweeten the deal with an annual aid package of $2 billion. It’s chief rival eliminated, Israel’s hegemony over the Middle East was now more secure.”
This will all be entirely academic quite soon. We are assured that since Iraq is out of the picture, peace, love and harmony shall prevail over this previoiusly troubled region. Sharon, that “Man of peace”, will soon make nice. The lion shall lie down with the lamb, if the lamb shall be heavily sedated.
All that was missing was a “road map”. Now, they have one! Well, that’s all sorted out, then. Nothin’ but blue skies ahead!
elfje:
You are probably right given the literal meanings of “military aid” and “foreign aid”.
But I do believe that “military aid” is an appropriate enough shorthand for “financial aid, used for military purposes”. From your quotes:
“[US financial aid to Israel has been about] $5 billion in more recent years. Further, this aid was disbursed mostly in the form of grants, and nearly all of it was spent on military hardware.”.
More appropriate so than “foreign aid”, a term that is so easily confused with third world / poverty / humanitarian aid.
yup, I can agree with that.
Those numbers are inaccurate.
This year, Israel will receive $600 million in Economic Support Funds, $60 million in refugee assistance, and $2.1 billion in Foreign Military Financing, plus an additional $1 billion in emergency FMF aid that was contained in the wartime supplemental appropriations bill.
See http://thomas.loc.gov for the text of H.J. Res 2 and HR 1559.
$13 billion would constitute about 85 percent of all funds that the US uses for foreign aid, including support to the United Nations.
I’m guessing yes. Israel hasn’t been in a war where multiple countries gang up on it since 1973. I think the fact that they have nuclear weapons is a deterrent.
Plus Israel has signed peace agreements with Egypt & Jordan. Now that Iraq is gone, 3 of its major enemies have either signed peace agreements or experienced regime change.
their military expenditures are $9 billion a year according to the CIA world factbook. The US gives them about $2.1 billion, so they could just add another $2.1 billion of their own $122 billion GDP towars military if they lost the US’s $2.1.
And this is related to the OP, how? Let’s see, you object to the war in Iraq. Fair enough. You also apparently object to the “road map” towards a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a negotiated and hopefully peaceful solution. So what’s your third choice?
Absolutely yes. While the economic hit of being cut off from a couple of billion in aid from the US would hurt a bit, Israel has made quite an effort to not rely on any single supplier for it’s defense. Until the 1950’s or 60’s, France was a major if not the primary supplier of arms for Israel. That was cut off when France decided to stop selling arms in the middle east (that policy has since changed). Israel had already made it a point to buy from diverse sources, so the French cut-off didn’t hurt that badly. Since then, Israel has built up a large defense industry of it’s own in order to be as self reliant as possible. Israel makes it’s own tanks, supersonic combat aircraft, small naval vessels, missiles (air-to-air, air-to-ground, surface-to-air, anti-ship, etc), small arms, ammunition, electronics, you name it. Even if Israel was given no external monetary assistance and couldn’t buy arms from any foreign source, they could provide for their own defense. It’s more economical to get freebies from the US, but they could do it on their own.
As to flat out survival, Israel could defeat Syria on it’s own quite handily. Even if face with an old-school Egypt, Jordan and Syria vs. Israel war, my money would be riding on Israel. Israel’s survival hasn’t seriously been at risk since 1948. Even the danger that Israel faced in 1973 wasn’t nearly as bad as it is sometimes made out to be.
Then there always is the nuclear arsenal as a last resort, of course.
sorry, I was slightly off:
it’s 10 Billion in total, but still 1 billion being military aid:
"For Israel: $1 billion in military aid, which reportedly may only be spent on the costs Israel has incurred preparing to defend itself from Iraqi attacks. Israel will also receive $9 billion in loan guarantees, to be available through fiscal year 2005. "
from this site:
http://www.fas.org/gulfwar2/at/
What exactly does this mean? I was unaware that Israel was somehow ‘hegemonic’ in the Middle East.
What is a “loan guarantee” and how does it differ from an outright grant? It is basically a pre-approved loan or is more like co-signing a loan?
Not sure if it somehow differs in the US but for the rest of us it means that if the borrower does not repay their loan then the loan-guarantor (the US taxpayer in this case) will. Similar to your parents guaranteeing your bank overdraft (if you are that lucky!).
BTW in my opinion you should include in your aid calculations that effect of personal donations by US taxpayers being tax deductible - the effect of this is surely yet more US aid. As far as I am aware Israel enjoys a unique status in having this benefit - not being a charity which are the only organisations that enjoy sure status in most countries.
Can any US dopers confirm my final para above - and/or put a USD figure on the cost to the tax payer of personal donations to Israel being tax deductible?
If I recall correctly the war spending bill included a fair chunk of change to Israel :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2882681.stm
10 billion to be exact.
You can bet that the Israeli gov’t has all kinds of contingency plans in place for this scenario. They haven’t survived this far by being stupid! We can argue all we want about whether aid is humanitarian or military, but money is fungible and anything we give them for one purpose frees up money they can spend on something else.
The “nuclear blackmail” thought is interesting. It wouldn’t even have to be explicit for us to be worried. If Israel were attacked with any real coordinated effort from the Arab world, they surely would lob a few nukes right at some major population centers.
And I’d like to join Finagle in thanking Elucidator for adding that insightful, fact filled post. Thank God he didn’t use this as yet another excuse to post a vacuous slam at Bush.
Could Canada continue to survive without U.S. support? How about Mexico? Or Venezuela? or…
I don’t think (or at least I’d like to hope) that Israel’s nuclear trigger finger is quite that twitchy, though it wouldn’t even need a coordinated effort. My own worst fears in the 1991 Gulf War, or for that matter a worst case scenario in the most recent one, was large amounts of nerve gas landing via scud in an Israel. I can’t imagine any other reaction than that of glassing Baghdad, and that’s not a happy thought.
Israel was attacked in a pretty well coordinated manner in 1973. Egypt and Syria were both fully mobilized while Israel had given it’s own partial mobilization order four hours before hostilities. The Egyptian crossing of the Suez canal was a massive military feat that tends to be unerapprecriated. Even then, survival wasn’t the issue, or the goal.