I often hear or read people saying, in effect, that Israel is totally dependent on US foreign aid. Also, that it is dependent upon “American weapons,” which doesn’t make sense to me since the last I heard Israel manufactures its own small arms (Tavor, Galil, IMI) and also manufactures its own nuclear missiles, electronic systems and tanks. (Are they talking about the planes that the Air Force uses when they say this?)
The notion is that were it not for the US enabling it with foreign aid and military support, Israel would collapse.
I even hear this from the same people who insist that America is a “puppet” of Israel. That, I must say, I cannot even begin to understand.
Could someone who knows a lot about Israel’s economy and military address this often-heard claim?
Simply Israel couldnt affor all that military spending without the huge financial support of the US. Usually from there you have the conclusion, that that support brings the result of Israel being able to be totally unilateral with its neighbours and the Palestinians.
Without US support, Israel would actually be forced to seriously negotiate with its neighbours and the Palestinians. Something Israel has the luxury to ignore for the moment.
Kinda hard to get a firm number for total US aid to israel. Direcet military aid in Obama’s 2011 budget is 3 billion, which is 1.5% of Israeli GDP or 5% of their total gov’t expenditures. There’s also a bunch of stuff thats difficult to quantify, like loan guarantees and aid to the Palestinians (does aid to an occupied territory count as aid to the occupying country?).
But in anycase, I don’t think the amount of aid relative to the size of Israels economy or gov’t is enough to make them “dependent”, though its probably enough to sting their tax-payers/bondholders if it were withdrawn.
Unless I missed something, I don’t think this is true. US aid simply isn’t that large enough relative to the Israeli economy.
ETA: All the numbers are from wikipedias israel pages.
Loss of US aid would sting obviously, but it is not even close to being an existential threat to Israel.
The proof of this is historical. In 1948 (before it was even a country) Israel won its war of independence with all of its neighbours. In 1967, with Syria and Egypt in alliance, later joined by Jordan, and with no military aid from the US whatsoever (though it did receive loans and equipment sales prior to 1974, the effect was cancelled by the fact its Arab enemies received three times as much), Israel famously defeated all of its enemies in six days.
It is true that conditions can change, but to date all of the changes have been in favour of Israel’s strategic situation in terms of regular warfare. Israel’s neighbours are disunited like never before. The Egypt-Syria alliance is history, for example. The Israeli economy has grown more high-tech and first-world-like, increasing its relative power vs. its neighbours. On their own, the Palestians do not pose any conventional military threat whatsoever.
In short, military aid to Israel only started after the period where its neighbours posed an existential threat. It makes no logical sense to believe that Israel could not now survive without it.
That would be totally ignoring that before the stern Israel-US alliance of today, Israel had no major allies. Which is totally wrong. It’s just that with the US at its ally now, it doesnt care about having any other.
Israel is a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) - essentially, a club of wealthy and upper-middle-income countries that works to develop economic and trade policies for their mutual benefit. Israel isn’t really a “developing” state in any meaningful sense - it’s a developed country with a robust national economy. If the US cut off aid, the IDF would have some serious short-term problems, as a lot of its hardware is bought from the US. But the domestic Israeli defense industry is quite sophisticated (the Merkava, for example, is a fine tank), and the long-term impact would be minimal.
This isn’t to say that it would be meaningless for Israel to lose American support - we’re an important ally, and the fact that other states can’t be openly hostile to Israel without sacrificing their relationship with the US is important. But it would be a mistake to view Israel as utterly, or even largely, dependent upon the US.
Really? Which major allies came to Israel’s defence in 1948, 1967 or 1973 - aside from the US?
The only time when Israel had “allies” was in the abortive grab for the Suez Canal in 1956, in concert with the UK and France. Which of course damaged relations with the US under the Eisenhower administration, who forced all three to withdraw.
France, while it was willing enough to sell Israel Mirage fighters and even conspire with Israel in the 1956 war, was otherwise not an “ally”. It did not provide military aid or support Israel in its existential wars - notably, in 1967, rather than supporting Israel, France turned against Israel and imposed an arms embargo on her.
The French 4th Republic certainly was an ally of Israel. Joint development in air force (which was always key to Israel military strategy), development of the Israeli bomb. Israel could sure count more seriously in those years on France than on the US (hence the Suez alliance was not an accident, just the continuation of a pre existing policy). If I remember well Czechoslovakia was also a key ally of Israel, delivering them much needed guns in time of serious need.
And until recently Turkey was a little more than just neutral towards Israel as well.
An “ally” proposes somewhat more of a relationship than simply being willing to sell military equipment. In normal usage, it means someone willing to go to war, or at least do something, to protect the other party. France, the Czechs, the UK and Turkey - none of these werew “allies”, with the sole exception of the '56 conflict. None were willing, or in a position, to step in and protect Israel from Arab aggression.
I already noted the sale of Mirages. That does not an ally make.
The Czechs were not “allies”. They were merely willing to sell arms to the naceant Israeli state. Note that they did not give away their weapons, any more than did France.
While French co-operation in nuclear matters is interesting, it has no bearing on any of the wars at issue - none of which were effected by an Israeli nuclear deterrent, which probably did not exist in 1967 (and certainly did not deter Nassar).
The Turks, while more friendly aforetimes, were hardly an “ally”.
In short, none of the alleged “allies” were in a position to, or indeed did, step in to deter Arab aggression in those wars that threatened its existence particularly 1948 and 1967. Israel fought those alone, utterly unsupported by “major allies”.
Israel had no major allies in the past, in the sense used here - willing to come to the aid of Israel with force, or even prop Israel up with subsidies.
I disagree that being willing to sell Israel weapons makes any country an “ally”, or even a “supporter”.
France for example made Israel pay in advance for the weapons it bought; when in 1967 De Gaulle embargoed Israel, he kept the purchase price as well - leading to the famous “Boats of Cherbourg” incident, where Israel successfully stole the boats it had paid for.
Most folks that hold the opinion that the US is a puppet to Israeli interests (often coded in the term “ZOG”, which means “Zionist Occupied Government” are nutjobs, with a racist axe to grind.
Remember: you cannot rationally argue a person out of a position they did not rationally get themselves into.
Yeah, I was wondering about that. Back to the issue at hand -
Admittedly, this is just a guess, but based on my familiarity with the way the Israeli public thinks, I feel you’ve got this exactly backward. In order for Israel to make peace it has to feel secure enough to take that risk, and when Israelis don’t feel secure they react with aggression, rather than conciliation. The alliance with the U.S. is what got us as far as we have; I suspect that if it weren’t for America’s support - moral rather than material - things would be a lot worse here in the Middle East, especially for the Palestinians.
It’s probably true that the Israelis exercise more restraint for fear of a U.S. wrist-slapping (really the worst they have to fear) than they might if they were (as they would have been at certain times) all on their own. It’s speculative but I’d imagine that using the nukes has burned a hole in the minds of many a general, with cooler heads (barely?) prevailing at the political level.
How do I know Israel is somewhat to very dependent on the U.S.?
(a) AIPAC wouldn’t be a good investment if lockstep support from the U.S. (both parties) weren’t fairly crucial. That’s a lot of money (I realize it’s not per se from Israel, but AIPAC’s donors are not exactly discouraged by the Israeli government).
(b) The persistent/rampant spying on/in the U.S. indicates that Israel thinks the U.S. has information, etc. it needs/wants.
(c) While I consider the UN a bit of (a lot of) a joke, there’s no question that the U.S.'s always-ready Security Council veto has preserved Israel from a bunch of resolutions that would be, at minimum, diplomatically embarrassing or otherwise inconvenient.
He was a dick, I suppose . . . what does that matter now?!