…cite please.
The overwhelming majority of US military aid to Israel (and Egypt) aren’t direct sales. When Sadat kicked out the Soviet advisors, cut off Egypt from the Soviet Union, made peace with and recognized Israel in exchange for the return of the Sinai Peninsula with the Camp David Accords, Egypt was left with a lot of Soviet hardware they no longer had any source of replacements or spare parts for. One of the carrots to get Egypt to be drawn into the US sphere of influence and feel its security needs were being met after making peace with Israel was the US agreement to provide Foreign Military Financing of about $3 billion per annum. To get Israel to feel that aid to Egypt wasn’t a threat to it, the US extended another about $3 billion in FMF per annum to Israel.
Israel doesn’t “need” the aid for a given definition of “need,” they survived just fine without it prior to Camp David and have a very robust domestic military industrial sector capable of making everything from small arms to tanks to advanced guided missiles of all kinds. They even ventured into making their own jet combat aircraft based on the French Mirage at one point.
To head off any misunderstanding of Foreign Military Financing, either scroll back in this thread to posts I made around December 19th, or to cover it briefly, FMF is basically the US government giving foreign governments a credit card with which to buy products and services from the US defense sector. The US isn’t giving them billions in aid to do whatever they want with. The US government is paying US defense contractors to provide them with approved military products and services.
Replying to BB’s request for a cite, I assume Rat* is talking about this.. The UNRWA is the main body responsible for distributing humanitarian aid within Palestine, and until recently had about 13,000 employees in Palestine, 12 of whom, yes, 12, as in >.01% of them, were accused by Israel of participating in the 10/7 attacks, although AFAIK Israel has only produced actual evidence against two of them.
Based on this unmistakable evidence that the agency is completely controlled by terrorists, Israel demanded that its allies stop funding UNRWA, and most of them did, although most of them other than the US have since reconsidered.
This decision to prevent humanitarian aid from getting through to civilians was, of course, based on Israel’s legitimate need for self-defense against terrorism, and did not in any way constitute a cynically racist attempt to use mass starvation as a method of collective punishment, in flagrant violation of international law.
*No offense is intended here, it’s just that his avatar is cooler, and easier to type, than his username.
Thank you, Sir.
…they actually haven’t (as of yet) provided actual evidence for any of them.
The original statement is unsupported by the evidence.
And it just shows how far US’s support of Israel goes. A mere allegation, unsupported by any evidence, was enough for the US to suspend funding.
But allegations that Israel tortured UNRWA staffers?
Not enough to even raise an eyebrow in Washington.
I don’t trust Al Jazeera any more than I trust Israeli news sources.
It doesn’t mean that .01% are working with Hamas, it means that .01% have been caught, or rather, accused.
They may not have been working for Hamas; they may have thought it was a great chance to murder Jews.
…you don’t have to trust Al Jazeera. They are citing the UNRWA report, dated Feb 29th, originally reviewed by Reuters. As for allegations of torture?
“I don’t trust Al Jazeera, but here’s my cite to the New York Post” LOL.
The claim was that “Arabs working for the UN participated in murdering, raping and abducting Israelis.” That’s an inflammatory accusation that, considering the stakes, one would hope would have more evidence behind it than a New York Post article. Imagine America defunding an agency over that.