This article from the London Review of books. has been floating around for a while and I was curious to see what dopers thought of it. Basically it paints a pretty damning portrait of an extermely powerful lobby (second only to the AARP in terms of influence according to the article) that influences America to act contrary to its own interest:
It’s long but well written and very important IMO. It is not anti-semitic, again, IMO, but opposed to the actions of a small powerful lobby not all of whose members are Jewish. Christian Zionists, for example, make up a signifigant number of AIPAC’s backers.
The authors also argue that the lobby’s actions are in fact bad for Israel in the long run, because they hamper efforts to arrive at a just peace. The longer tensions in the mid-east go on, the harder and harder it will be to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
The article has been causing a bit of controversy. The Washington Post put together a bunch of soundbites about it including one from, for some reason, David Duke. This annoyed me because it seems deliberatly inflammatory, as though they were hoping people would read the article and say “Well, if David Duke says nice things about it it can’t be true!” Who cares what David Duke thinks? It seems he didn’t actually read the article–he probably doesn’t have the mental acuity to read anything more involved than a neo-nazi tract–since the article is not anti-Jewish, and discounts the idea of a “Jewish conspiracy.” Most of the soundbites were pretty uninformative. All you can get from short paragraphs is “well, that’s what that guy thinks,” without understanding their reasons for thinking that.
So I’m curious what dopers think. Anyone have any criticisms of the article? Is there anything it says that is factually untrue, or at least are there flaws in its analysis? I’m curious because, while I’m more or less pro-Israel, it does seem to me that U.S. foreign policy descisions should be made with the best interests of the U.S. as the first concern. I’m not sure that’s happening with our policy towards Israel.
Um…why? I mean, considering the discrepancy between stated US foreign policy in the reason (i.e. promoting democracy) and actual practice (i.e. supporting dictators- Saudi monarchy, Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein) to put quotes around the word “democracy” to imply that this is a stated US goal, not one bourne out by their actions, seems perfectly reasonable to me.
As to the OP, while being just a leetle cynical about the British press (which tends to be fairly pro-Palestinian), the extract that I have read seems both reasonable and logical. And as for being attacked (either overtly or implictly) as being anti-semitic, well, that’s pretty standard for most criticism of policy involving Israel, and not worth seriously considering.
The “Christian Zionist” point, BTW, seems to me to be spot-on. I recall speaking to an American who assured me that it was our duty to promote the Israeli cause above all others, since the Second Coming (and the subsequent conversion of the Jews, of course) couldn’t happen until Jerusalem was in the hands of the Muslims.
I’m curious, though, as to whether the US Israeli policy can be entirely ascribed to this. I would have though that at least a portion of their policy, up to about 1973, was trying to promote Israel to counter Soviet influence among the Arab states. This issue obviously doesn’t apply today.
The article is obviously polemic in intent, and I don’t doubt factually wrong in places. However, it raises a major issue that goes virtually unaddressed in this country – why have we placed so many eggs in the Israel basket? What’s in it for the U.S.? When you consider the stakes (just how many trillions of dollars have we spent since 9/11?), you’d think we’d have more discussion about what our support for Israel gets us, and what it costs us. That’s from a realpolitik perspective; a moral perspective might have us wondering why the U.S. supports so unreservedly a country that has made ethnic discrimination its founding principle.
Can someone link me to some actual facts about how much, in dollar terms, the US devotes to Israel as opposed to (say) Egypt in aid and loan guarantees?
FWIW, this is from another article “polemic in intent,” from http://www.wrmea.com/html/us_aid_to_israel.htm (scroll down to middle of page, look for article “The Cost of Israel to U.S. Taxpayers: True Lies About U.S. Aid to Israel,” By Richard H. Curtiss:
I’m looking for some kind of chart showing a breakdown of U.S. foreign aid by country, but I can’t seem to find such a thing even on the website of the government agency USAid – http://www.usaid.gov/fani/overview/.
That’s the problem. All I can find is stuff which is intended as polemics, and generally as anti-Israel polemics.
I generally don’t trust articles of the foaming-at-the-mouth variety on this sort of subject. But surely it is necessary to have some actual facts and figures before embarking on the argument, either for or against.
I read somewhere (and it may be total trash, how would I know?) that Egypt receives loan guarantees, cash and other benefits in the same ballpark range as Israel. If true, or even remotely true, that would tend to undercut the “Israel lobby” argument, and indicate that other purposes were in play for financial support for Israel.
I checked AIPAC’s website – once might expect to find some corrective information there – but all I could find was this PDF file on “Foreign Aid” – http://aipac.org/leg-briefing%20book/7.%20Foreign%20Aid.pdf – which includes a pie chart at the bottom, breaking down U.S. foreign aid by nature/purpose, but not by country.
Not necessarily. I would argue that our outsize financial support to Egypt is a quid pro quo to them for maintaining non-hostile relations with Israel.
Of course, it’s more complicated than that, because the Israeli aid is a strict cash transfer (intended to allow Israel to repay US loans and purchase US goods and services), while the Egyptian aid is earmarked (so some of the aid has to go to Egyptian infrastructure improvements, some to education, some to family planning, some to democratic initiatives, etc.)
Yeah, that’s my feeling as well. Sure the piece is a polemic, and it would have been nice to see more facts and figures, (perhaps there were some in the original unedited version), but I think there’s an undeniable truth at it’s core.
It’s not just the aid that’s the problem, it’s also that the U.S. seems to take Israel’s side without reservation in its disputes with Palestinians. The fact is the Palestinians are treated horribly by the Israelis, a fact which is very much underreported in the U.S. I’ve spoken with several people who’ve traveled in the West bank and Gaza, and the picture they paint, with photos, is a lot worse than you get in the U.S. media. U.S. policy on Israel is completely one-sided, a fact which is neither moral nor practical for American interests. It’s not going to be good for Israel in the long run either.
I worry that AIPAC and it’s “Christian Zionist” friends are a huge obstacle for peace in that region.
About 75 mil in 2004-2005, doubling in 2006 to 150 mil.
If you click on the line items, you can see exactly what the money goes to, as well as who gets the money. For instance, under USAID’s Community Service Program, which in 2005 focused on improved schools and water infrastructure, you can see:
Although, you can see from the Democracy and Governance aid, some money did go to the PA:
So basically, we’re giving aid to the PA so they can pay off debts to Israel, and giving aid to Iisrael so they can pay off debts to us. What a world we live in, huh?
As pointed out earlier in the thread, much of our aid to Egypt is basically a bribe to get them to adhere to the peace agreement. Also, as I said, the problem isn’t aid, it’s policy. I’d personally be happy with the aid we send to Israel, if it came with huge strings attached, like making real concrete steps to set up a real Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. BTW, the Israeli settlements are gone from Gaza, but it is still under military occupation.
It seems to me that this cuts against the theory espoused by the paper in the OP - namely, that the financial aid given to Israel is not in the interests of peace, and not in the interests if the US, but rather dictated by an over-powerful “Israel Lobby” against the interests of peace and against US interests.
If Egypt is getting the same amount of aid as Israel, the notion that aid is apportioned or inspired by an “Israel lobby” surely loses force.
It appears to me that (and I had no idea before participating in this thread whether it was true or not) if (a) significantly more aid went to Israel than to other countries in the region, the theory was plausable; but (b) if Israel was only one recepient, along with others, and that aid is distributed between (say) Egypt and Israel rather evenly, that the theory is not plausable (except to those really wedded to it for ideological reasons).
Because if (b) is the case, then it appears to me on the actual evidence that a better explaination for the aid is that US policy makers have concluded that it is in their interests to use aid to maintain peace in the region by subsidizing the likely combattants - and I must say, it probably is, given the importance of the Suez Canal among other things. I recall the US reaction to the Suez Crisis here.
In short, the ostensible purpose for the aid makes more sense and is better suited to the actual evidence than the conspiracy theory. To my mind, absent contradictory evidence, that closes the case, given that the burden of proof ought rightfully be on those proposing a conspiracy.
Jordan is in no position to go to war with Israel, so it makes no sense to think of this as a “bribe to not go to war with Israel”.
Though of course these figures only show part of the story - as you say, it is just USAID. Are there any available comparative country figures for things like military aid? Total aid from all sources?
