Asked and answered.
I do agree that Israel is an important ally in the region, and I think it is reasonable to provide financial assistance from the existential threats that are posed by its being surrounded my countries which vary between gruding acceptance to openly hostile. I would also support defensive aid against Hamas, for example resupplying the iron dome.
However I am not seeing the value to the US of its sending supplemental offensive aide (e.g. artillery shells) being sent to Israel in support of their Gaza adventure. The Isreal military as it stands seems to have enough firepower for the job, and all supporting it does is make our world reputation worse.
Given their past and the determination of “never again” I can understand Israel’s desire to make it clear that “If you hit us we will hit back 20 times as hard”, as a form of deterrence. But I don’t think the US should be party to that.
I completely understand that desire. But i think it’s misguided. I don’t think it deters. I think it creates new enemies who are invested in hitting Israel back.
So I don’t think the US should be supporting that.
That being said, a lot of “support” isn’t easily separable like that. I’m really not sure where i stand on US support for Israel right now.
I can remember when $3.3B was a lot of money. Ah, those were the days!
Phrased this way, this is a gotcha question because the value of foreign aid cannot be, strictly speaking, monetized. Not that $3.3B is a lot of money these days: it’s 4.8% of all foreign aid in 2022. And as mentioned above, some of that money is returned as payments for U.S. military goods.
The rebuttal, as that link shows, is that we’ve given Israel more money than any other country, even when we were idiotically hauling bales of 100-dollar bills to Iraq. But that again reduces the question to a number. The number is not important. What’s important is the primary decision: whether to consider Israel a special case worthy of outlier support in the first place.
History is important here. When the U.S. became one of the first countries to recognize Israel in 1948, it did so against the looming background of the holocaust. Israel was a special case, a unique exercise in hope after a unique crime. Powerful voices in the U.S. called for assistance, although the State Department was deeply antisemitic and the public largely indifferent. The Arab countries did not yet dominate oil production and had no tradition of democratic government. Creating democracy was the postwar creed of American foreign policy (although like all religions adhered to only when convenient) so putting all our weight behind Israel seemed a national imperative.
The world has changed over 75 years, of course, so it’s legitimate to ask why we continue this policy. Part of the answer is that once a policy is formed, it persists unless massive events coalesce to change it. Another part is that doing so is cheap, basically change from under the sofa cushions. Public opinion also matters; the Roper link above shows that the public greatly supports Israel over the Arab Nations. That Israel is like us is critical. Israel is a modern, democratic, technologically advanced, western country in a region where no more examples can found. (It’s also like us in that its politics have turned insane in recent years, which is beginning to matter.)
Keeping Israel as a western nation is good geopolitics. The best investment return for foreign aid comes when nothing happens; that is, when the peace holds, countries start moving toward better relations, international trade flourishes, sparks of democracy appear in non-democratic countries. Exactly the situation in the Middle East before the Hamas attack. Hamas was built around Israel being the cartoon baddie that the Arab world despised. Deprive them of that and the Arab world might wonder why they were throwing their billions of military aid to foment war against someone they didn’t want attacked. Hamas had a handy anniversary to exploit and a government in Israel that was the weakest in decades.
Bam. All that diplomatic effort vanished in a second. Israel quite rightly understood that one Hamas success would breed a succession of them. It felt it had the high ground. Mission: destroy Hamas. Hamas understood this better than anyone in the U.S. That’s why it’s been burrowing into Gazan cities for years. The resulting reality, shown minute by minute in harrowing images, tossed Israel from its high ground.
What to do? Destroying Hamas without destroying Gaza was a physical impossibility. So Gaza is getting destroyed. People in the U.S. can’t stomach watching this. Neither can I. But nobody has offered an alternative. This is a real-life trolley problem.
Absolutely none of this horror changes the geopolitical position, however. Israel is still Israel; the Arab world is still the Arab world. U.S. military aid was given to Israel precisely for this purpose; that they are using it correctly strengthens the result rather than diminishes it. The internal politics of Israel will surely be ripped apart. Who and what replaces Netanyahu is a mystery.
Nevertheless, the answer to what the U.S. taxpayer receives parallels the answer to aid to Ukraine: A world in which Putin and Hamas aren’t the winners. Cheap at twice the price.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. This thread was started by a mod who pulled a side conversation out of a larger thread. Which was warranted, but had I intended to start this thread I would have done so with a different question/post. I think you have hit on some good discussion points here that might drive the thread in a better direction.
I won’t repeat all of my earlier arguments, but I do know and understand the reasons that the US supported the foundation of Israel in 1947, as well as the multitude of reasons that we have continued to support Israel since then. I believe you have hit on a key point where you say: “once a policy is formed, it persists unless massive events coalesce to change it.” What I believe is that the current Israeli policy in Gaza qualifies as a massive event.
In short, I’m done standing by while my money goes to fund an endless blood feud. You point to the long history of the US-Israel relationship, and I will rebut that Israel has failed at solving the same problem for 75 years. Yes, it is an important relationship, but I also see no need for the US to continue to invest in an ongoing failure. There have been times when the US has pulled out of bad situations before - recently in Afghanistan and of course in Vietnam. Those are situations where the US had invested much more, particularly when measured in the lives of American service people, than it has invested in Israel. But the decision was made that continuing to follow the same policy was folly.
I would also like to look at your question whether to consider Israel a special case worthy of outlier support in the first place. For me, the answer right now is now. Especially when your closing argument is: “the answer to what the U.S. taxpayer receives parallels the answer to aid to Ukraine: A world in which Putin and Hamas aren’t the winners.” To me it is telling that the greatest value you place on the US taxpayer’s investment is on the defeat of Hamas instead of the continuance of Israel.
Hamas is horrible, and yes, they need to be eliminated, but beyond that agreed upon fact, Israel does not have an answer for what happens next. Nor have they for 75 years. We don’t need to relitigate the entire Israel/Palestine question, and I appreciate that it is not an easy one to answer. But you, like many others on this site, continually refer to Israel’s role as a western democracy in a troubled region. OK, fine - then they need to act like one. And that means taking the first step, and that means making sacrifices, and that means making unpopular decisions. None of which I have seen from Israel or more importantly its government in about 15 years. Instead, they have become a regional bully, causing as much of the unrest in the region as their opponents. They are actively oppressing millions of people in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel proper, and with their apartheid system, I am not sure they even qualify as a democracy anymore. In short, what may have once made Israel as special case, or a special place, is no longer present, and I don’t believe that they are worthy of our special investment.
If the US is going to continue to send military aid to Israel, I believe that it needs to come with conditions as to what the future of the region will look like. To those who will reply that Israel can’t guarantee that future I say tough shit, that is what they are getting paid for. We put conditions on aid all of the time, and Israel is certainly not special in that case.
Exactly. This:
Isn’t what’s happening with Israel, Egypt or Jordan. The US taxpayers aren’t paying or giving these countries billions of dollars a year to do whatever they want with. They are being extended United States Foreign Military Financing with which to purchase goods and services from the US defense industry.
So, the most direct answer to the question is jobs in the US defense industry. Because that’s where the money is ultimately going. Israel, Egypt and Jordan are the middlemen in this equation. Make of that what you will, but the US isn’t giving money and getting nothing in return.
But then the question becomes “why should we the US taxpayers give this specific $3.3 billion to the defense industry?”. Can we create/support more jobs with this money if it was used elsewhere?
There are several other wars going on where the US could give out free gun coupons, Israel isn’t the only customer in the world. Or similarly, we could give out $3.3 billion in aid to other countries to buy non military US goods. That part of the equation isn’t really my question, and I think that we can all agree that there are plenty of places the US could send $3.3 billion in aid that would be beneficial to both the recipient country as well as US industry that doesn’t involve killing thousands of civilians with no end game in sight.
Totally valid question. As I said, make of it what you will. “Should we shave $3.3 billion off of what is by far the largest defense budget in the world” is a different question than “should we stop giving money to foreign countries” though, which isn’t what is actually going on. It isn’t like the Iraqi rebuilding effort where billions of dollars were literally packed in shrink wrap, put on pallets, flown into the country on C-130s where most of it promptly disappeared.
I appreciate your frustration and concern. I myself hate having to sink into realpolitik just days after the death of the war criminal Kissinger. Unfortunately, mention of his name should remind you that the U.S. has exhibited abhorrent behavior for many decades. Do we then write off the U.S. for everything else it is?
And do we ignore the larger picture? Iran-backed Yemenese Houthi forces are trying to shut down shipping through the Suez Canal. Nothing about Israel is just about Israel.
Yes, scream about the carnage. I have no answers for that, or excuses. But until someone comes up with an answer to an unanswerable issue, this is the course.
Brief sidebar to your question of writing off the US for everything else it is. A major discussion for me at work these days is how shall we celebrate America’s 250th birthday? What do freedom and liberty and other buzzwords of the Revolution mean today? Link below for some of that discussion.
Part of my current mindset is very realpolitik, even Kissingeresque. Sometimes you need to extract yourself from a losing policy, even when it means screwing over a long time ally. See: Viet Nam, South. There is a lot going on in the Middle East that is important to America. I would much rather we were investing in those things than Israel pacifying Gaza. Again. Even, for example, the Israeli - Saudi negotiations that were derailed by the Hamas attack, and yes I do appreciate the relationship between those two.
I do genuinely want the mindless slaughter to end, but I also have a realpolitik reason for asking the US to stop spending on the war. If everyone is agreed that neither Israel nor Palestine will surrender, why waste our money there? Do any of you really believe that Israel would surrender if we pulled our military funding? If the killing is going to continue no matter what the US does, shouldn’t we be investing our time and energy in a place where we can make a difference?
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/unfinished-america-at-250.htm
Does anyone here believe that Ukraine would surrender if we pulled our military funding?
These are the wrong questions. The non-emotional questions look at the long term.
What would happen to U.S. influence in the Middle East if America stopped funding Israel? Would that require stopping funding to all other nations in the area since none of them are going to stop who they are killing? If Arab nations will continue to be funded how would that encourage rebel groups and terrorist organizations? Who benefits from the lack of U.S. presence in Israel? Would this encourage the declaration of victory by anti-U.S. actors? How would this impact on the groups working for democracy? If we justify a pullout by saying we pulled out of Afghanistan how would that look to women around the world? What would the impact of an abandonment be on the rest of the world? If we say we are moving the money to use against China and Russia, wouldn’t that look ridiculous if those nations gained influence in the area?
Those are just political questions. Questions about world finance don’t have the emotional impact, but are already at play. Before Hamas, Arab nations were working to increase trade with Israel: how would this differ? Would global trade, trade routes, and supply chains suffer? Where would the billions for the future war we are pulling away from originate, and what impact would that have?
I don’t have answers for these questions, which is one reason I’ve stayed out of these discussions. But I do have an answer for the one specific question in your OP, albeit one that you did not intend to stand as an OP. Nevertheless, you’ve doubled down on it since. Which makes it all the more urgent to state that abandoning Israel would be as counterproductive in the long run as abandoning Ukraine.
From the sister thread
Can we play this out to its conclusion?
US pulls out of the Middle East, eventually Arab nations overwhelm Israel, with the help of Russia. Russian influence in the Middle East increases.
Now what? What does that mean for the US?
Will Russia control oil to such a degree that it will starve the US? Does the US have enough oil to sustain itself? (AFAIK US is an exporter of oil)
In a world were the US is a net exporter of oil, what does losing influence in the Middle East mean? China seems to not have much influence in the middle east and they seem to be doing OK.
I don’t have the answers to the above questions. I’m not an expert in geopolitics, which is why I’m asking here, since I assume a few of you know more about how this will play out.
Non emotionally, I still think we are making a poor investment by supporting Israel’s current effort in Gaza. I concede that we can’t stop the killing in Israel. I didn’t say we would pull out of the Middle East or even stop supporting military operations overall. While I am opposed to the senseless killing in Gaza and want it to stop, I fully appreciate that wars happen, and that US uses military force, both overtly and covertly, around the globe. It’s lovely that people are under the impression I am calling for change strictly for humanitarian reasons, but I can be a cold and calculating bastard. It is those who say we must support Israel just because it is the land of their people, or the birthplace of the baby Jesus who are acting emotionally. There are plenty of people’s homelands the US is willing to stand back, and watch burn because it isn’t in our interests to get involved.
You laid out a good number of reasons for us to continue to support Israel, and you are absolutely correct that the US can’t just pull out of the entire region. However, there are steps that could be taken to maintain our presence in the region that don’t involve the US supplying funding and weapons to kill Palestinians. Furthermore, I think that many in the US have overvalued Israel’s importance to America because of their own emotional connections to Israel.
Israel has been a major international focus for 75 years for obvious reasons. For about 50 years, US investment there played into our broader cold war policies. There were also the related but regionally specific post-colonial policies of filling the gap as policeman of the world, although we were plenty willing to try non-Israeli partners at first like with Operation Ajax in Iran and the heyday of Miles Copeland playing in the sand.
In more recent times, things in the region have changed, as have global politics. Thankfully, Israel is no longer at war with all of its neighbors. The fact that Egypt is not even allowing Palestinians into the country, forget about fighting for them, shows there has been a sea change in the region. While Israeli’s themselves are certainly in danger from Hamas and other terrorists, I don’t believe that Israel itself as a nation is actually threatened at this time. Despite rumblings from Iran, the Gaza War is really more of a civil war within Israel than a regional war that threatens Israel’s existence. I do realize that there have been attacks from outside of Israel, but those are by terrorist organizations, not nations, and civil wars often spill over into neighboring countries for bases of operations. A possible compromise would be for the US to keep the 5th Fleet parked of Israel to keep Iran in line but tell Israel that the cost of internal security it up to them.
Next, despite all of the money we have poured into Israel, we actually haven’t used them as a base of US operations in the region because of the added angst that putting the US military in Israel would entail. In fact, we asked Israel to refrain from taking part in the multiple wars we fought in the region over the past 30 years, which somewhat negates their value as an ally in the region.
Because of that, the US now has military bases in several other nations including Qatar and Saudi Arabia. We now have better relations with those nations, and in several cases have become intertwined with their military operations, allowing us new ways of military force projection in the region without including Israel. Instead of investing in Israel killing Palestinians more efficiently, we could invest in some of our other regional partners to try to eliminate some of the other US threats in Syria and Iran.
Also, among the top 5 in receiving US aid (non-active war years division) are Egypt and Jordan, we could increase our investments there or other MENA nations, looking to continue to influence them to remain out of Israel, and also try to influence them to become more democratic.
Several of the points that you made, though not all, end up falling into the same category of many of the arguments that have been made on this site about why the US must give Israel aid now for their war in Gaza - the US has to continue sending aid because of how important Israel is to us. However, the nose of “the US has to support Israel because they are a key ally” is running directly into the tail of “Israel is a key foreign ally because of how much the US has invested there.” This wouldn’t be the first time that the US has fallen into the sunk cost fallacy trap.
So, I have looked at the long-term questions in a non-emotional way, though you may still disagree with my take. To me, the people who are over emotional here are the ones who either have a personal or religious tie to Israel. Or those who look at my questions and just shrug fatalistically while saying, “whelp its Israel, what else can we do?” We don’t have to blindly and unconditionally fund every military action Israel decides to undertake. We could stop funding their actions in Gaza, or we could place conditions on that aid. “Hey Bibs, we will give you a billion in aid for every 50,000 settlers that leave the West Bank.” There is a wide range of options that don’t entail just handing over a blank check.
Maybe this is a separate thread. But this article seemed interesting.
You cited an article by John Bolton? What, Henry Kissinger wasn’t available? Oh, wait.
I know. But which parts of the actual article do you disagree with?
I understand the perils of sunk costs. Even a quick read through history shows that the failure to recognize that thinking has been the driving force behind almost all geopolitics. Russia is providing a history-book level example right now.
However, nothing about the ongoing tragedy changes either Israel’s place in the world order or the opposing Arab forces’ places. (Sorry to Iran for including it in the catch-all of Arab.) Therefore it’s a mistake to view our ongoing support as a sunk cost.
This is a reasonable start toward thinking of a new relationship, although one that has to wait for the end of the war. Too much earlier verbiage smacked of declaring that since they were both going to fight anyhow we should just leave and let 'em at it. The endless stalemate is no longer viable. A winner has to emerge, and that winner cannot be a terrorist organization armed with missiles funded through other nations who are engaged in a proxy war against the U.S.
Um, the part in which he directly calls for war with Iran?
Oh, and is this the same John Bolton who two whole days ago was quoted as saying this?
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown, who arrived in Tel Aviv on Monday, are expected to press Israeli leaders to transition to a new phase of the war after weeks of heavy bombardment and a ground offensive.
John Bolton, former U.S. national security advisor, deems the push “unfair” and inconsistent with President Joe Biden’s initial support for Israel. He highlights Biden’s acknowledgment of Israel’s objective to eliminate Hamas as a political and military force, stating it will take “as long as it takes.”
“I think this is very politically motivated. I think it has to do with the split within the Democratic Party,” Bolton said. I think as a military matter, makes no sense at all when you’re engaged directly in combat in a very complex environment like this, the idea that you can phase in time and calibrate the way we appear to be asking the Israelis to do is just unrealistic and unfair.”