SOURCE
For many years the American media said that “Israel receives $1.8
billion in military aid” or that “Israel receives $1.2 billion in
economic aid.” Both statements were true, but since they were never
combined to give us the complete total of annual U.S. aid to Israel,
they also were lies—true lies.
Recently Americans have begun to read and hear that “Israel receives $3
billion in annual U.S. foreign aid.” That's true. But it's still a
lie. The problem is that in fiscal 1997 alone, Israel received from a
variety of other U.S. federal budgets at least $525.8 million above and
beyond its $3 billion from the foreign aid budget, and yet another $2
billion in federal loan guarantees. So the complete total of U.S. grants
and loan guarantees to Israel for fiscal 1997 was $5,525,800,000.
One can truthfully blame the mainstream media for never digging out
these figures for themselves, because none ever have. They were compiled
by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. But the mainstream
media certainly are not alone. Although Congress authorizes America's
foreign aid total, the fact that more than a third of it goes to a
country smaller in both area and population than Hong Kong probably
never has been mentioned on the floor of the Senate or House. Yet it's
been going on for more than a generation.
Probably the only members of Congress who even suspect the full total
of U.S. funds received by Israel each year are the privileged few
committee members who actually mark it up. And almost all members of the
concerned committees are Jewish, have taken huge campaign donations
orchestrated by Israel's Washington, DC lobby, the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or both. These congressional committee
members are paid to act, not talk. So they do and they don't.
The same applies to the president, the secretary of state, and the
foreign aid administrator. They all submit a budget that includes aid
for Israel, which Congress approves, or increases, but never cuts. But
no one in the executive branch mentions that of the few remaining U.S.
aid recipients worldwide, all of the others are developing nations which
either make their military bases available to the U.S., are key
members of international alliances in which the U.S. participates, or
have suffered some crippling blow of nature to their abilities to feed
their people such as earthquakes, floods or droughts.
Israel, whose troubles arise solely from its unwillingness to give back
land it seized in the 1967 war in return for peace with its neighbors,
does not fit those criteria. In fact, Israel's 1995 per capita gross
domestic product was $15,800. That put it below Britain at $19,500 and
Italy at $18,700 and just above Ireland at $15,400 and Spain at
$14,300.
All four of those European countries have contributed a very large
share of immigrants to the U.S., yet none has organized an ethnic group
to lobby for U.S. foreign aid. Instead, all four send funds and
volunteers to do economic development and emergency relief work in other
less fortunate parts of the world.
The lobby that Israel and its supporters have built in the United
States to make all this aid happen, and to ban discussion of it from the
national dialogue, goes far beyond AIPAC, with its $15 million budget,
its 150 employees, and its five or six registered lobbyists who manage
to visit every member of Congress individually once or twice a year.
AIPAC, in turn, can draw upon the resources of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a roof group set up
solely to coordinate the efforts of some 52 national Jewish
organizations on behalf of Israel.
Among them are Hadassah, the Zionist women’s organization, which
organizes a steady stream of American Jewish visitors to Israel; the
American Jewish Congress, which mobilizes support for Israel among
members of the traditionally left-of-center Jewish mainstream; and the
American Jewish Committee, which plays the same role within the growing
middle-of-the-road and right-of-center Jewish community. The American
Jewish Committee also publishes Commentary, one of the Israel lobby’s
principal national publications.
Perhaps the most controversial of these groups is B’nai B’rith’s
Anti-Defamation League. Its original highly commendable purpose was to
protect the civil rights of American Jews. Over the past generation,
however, the ADL has regressed into a conspiratorial and, with a $45
million budget, extremely well funded hate group.
In the 1980s, during the tenure of chairman Seymour Reich, who went
on to become chairman of the Conference of Presidents, ADL was found to
have circulated two annual fund-raising letters warning Jewish parents
against allegedly negative influences on their children arising from
the increasing Arab presence on American university campuses.
More recently, FBI raids on ADL’s Los Angeles and San Francisco offices
revealed that an ADL operative had purchased files stolen from the San
Francisco police department that a court had ordered destroyed because
they violated the civil rights of the individuals on whom they had
been compiled. ADL, it was shown, had added the illegally prepared and
illegally obtained material to its own secret files, compiled by
planting informants among Arab-American, African-American,
anti-Apartheid and peace and justice groups.
The ADL infiltrators took notes of the names and remarks of speakers
and members of audiences at programs organized by such groups. ADL
agents even recorded the license plates of persons attending such
programs and then suborned corrupt motor vehicles department employees
or renegade police officers to identify the owners.
Although one of the principal offenders fled the United States to
escape prosecution, no significant penalties were assessed. ADL’s
Northern California office was ordered to comply with requests by
persons upon whom dossiers had been prepared to see their own files, but
no one went to jail and as yet no one has paid fines.
Not surprisingly, a defecting employee revealed in an article he published in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
that AIPAC, too, has such “enemies” files. They are compiled for use
by pro-Israel journalists like Steven Emerson and other so-called
“Terrorism experts,” and also by professional, academic or journalistic
rivals of the persons described for use in blacklisting, defaming, or
denouncing them. What is never revealed is that AIPAC’s “opposition
research“ department, under the supervision of Michael Lewis, son of
famed Princeton University Orientalist Bernard Lewis, is the source of
this defamatory material.
But this is not AIPAC’s most controversial activity. In the 1970s,
when Congress put a cap on the amount its members could earn from
speakers’ fees and book royalties over and above their salaries, it
halted AIPAC’s most effective ways of paying off members for voting
according to AIPAC recommendations. Members of AIPAC’s national board of
directors solved the problem by returning to their home states and
creating political action committees (PACs).
Most special interests have PACs, as do many major corporations, labor
unions, trade associations and public-interest groups. But the
pro-Israel groups went wild. To date some 126 pro-Israel PACs have been
registered, and no fewer than 50 have been active in every national
election over the past generation.
An individual voter can give up to $2,000 to a candidate in an election
cycle, and a PAC can give a candidate up to $10,000. However, a single
special interest with 50 PACs can give a candidate who is facing a
tough opponent, and who has voted according to its recommendations, up
to half a million dollars. That’s enough to buy all the television time
needed to get elected in most parts of the country.
Even candidates who don’t need this kind of money certainly don’t
want it to become available to a rival from their own party in a primary
election, or to an opponent from the opposing party in a general
election. As a result, all but a handful of the 535 members of the
Senate and House vote as AIPAC instructs when it comes to aid to Israel,
or other aspects of U.S. Middle East policy.
There is something else very special about AIPAC’s network of political
action committees. Nearly all have deceptive names. Who could possibly
know that the Delaware Valley Good Government Association in
Philadelphia, San Franciscans for Good Government in California, Cactus
PAC in Arizona, Beaver PAC in Wisconsin, and even Icepac in New York
are really pro-Israel PACs under deep cover?
Hiding AIPAC’s Tracks
In fact, the congress members know it when they list the
contributions they receive on the campaign statements they have to
prepare for the Federal Election Commission. But their constituents
don’t know this when they read these statements. So just as no other
special interest can put so much “hard money” into any candidate’s
election campaign as can the Israel lobby, no other special interest has
gone to such elaborate lengths to hide its tracks.
Although AIPAC, Washington’s most feared special-interest lobby, can
hide how it uses both carrots and sticks to bribe or intimidate members
of Congress, it can’t hide all of the results.
Anyone can ask one of their representatives in Congress for a chart
prepared by the Congressional Research Service, a branch of the Library
of Congress, that shows Israel received $62.5 billion in foreign aid
from fiscal year 1949 through fiscal year 1996. People in the national
capital area also can visit the library of the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) in Rosslyn, Virginia, and obtain the
same information, plus charts showing how much foreign aid the U.S. has
given other countries as well.
Visitors will learn that in precisely the same 1949-1996 time frame,
the total of U.S. foreign aid to all of the countries of sub-Saharan
Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean combined was
$62,497,800,000--almost exactly the amount given to tiny Israel.
According to the Population Reference Bureau of Washington, DC, in
mid-1995 the sub-Saharan countries had a combined population of 568
million. The $24,415,700,000 in foreign aid they had received by then
amounted to $42.99 per sub-Saharan African.
Similarly, with a combined population of 486 million, all of the
countries of Latin America and the Caribbean together had received
$38,254,400,000. This amounted to $79 per person.
The per capita U.S. foreign aid to Israel’s 5.8 million people during
the same period was $10,775.48. This meant that for every dollar the
U.S. spent on an African, it spent $250.65 on an Israeli, and for every
dollar it spent on someone from the Western Hemisphere outside the
United States, it spent $214 on an Israeli.
Shocking Comparisons
These comparisons already seem shocking, but they are far from the
whole truth. Using reports compiled by Clyde Mark of the Congressional
Research Service and other sources, freelance writer Frank Collins
tallied for the Washington Report all of the extra items for Israel
buried in the budgets of the Pentagon and other federal agencies in
fiscal year 1993.Washington Report news editor Shawn Twing did the same
thing for fiscal years 1996 and 1997.
They uncovered $1.271 billion in extras in FY 1993, $355.3 million in
FY 1996 and $525.8 million in FY 1997. These represent an average
increase of 12.2 percent over the officially recorded foreign aid totals
for the same fiscal years, and they probably are not complete. It’s
reasonable to assume, therefore, that a similar 12.2 percent hidden
increase has prevailed over all of the years Israel has received aid.
As of Oct. 31, 1997 Israel will have received $3.05 billion in U.S.
foreign aid for fiscal year 1997 and $3.08 billion in foreign aid for
fiscal year 1998. Adding the 1997 and 1998 totals to those of previous
years since 1949 yields a total of $74,157,600,000 in foreign aid grants
and loans. Assuming that the actual totals from other budgets average
12.2 percent of that amount, that brings the grand total to
$83,204,827,200.
But that’s not quite all. Receiving its annual foreign aid
appropriation during the first month of the fiscal year, instead of in
quarterly installments as do other recipients, is just another special
privilege Congress has voted for Israel. It enables Israel to invest the
money in U.S. Treasury notes. That means that the U.S., which has to
borrow the money it gives to Israel, pays interest on the money it has
granted to Israel in advance, while at the same time Israel is
collecting interest on the money. That interest to Israel from advance
payments adds another $1.650 billion to the total, making it
$84,854,827,200.That’s the number you should write down for total aid to
Israel. And that’s $14,346 each for each man, woman and child in
Israel.
It’s worth noting that that figure does not include U.S. government
loan guarantees to Israel, of which Israel has drawn $9.8 billion to
date. They greatly reduce the interest rate the Israeli government pays
on commercial loans, and they place additional burdens on U.S.
taxpayers, especially if the Israeli government should default on any of
them. But since neither the savings to Israel nor the costs to U.S.
taxpayers can be accurately quantified, they are excluded from
consideration here.
Further, friends of Israel never tire of saying that Israel has never
defaulted on repayment of a U.S. government loan. It would be equally
accurate to say Israel has never been required to repay a U.S.
government loan. The truth of the matter is complex, and designed to be
so by those who seek to conceal it from the U.S. taxpayer.
Most U.S. loans to Israel are forgiven, and many were made with the
explicit understanding that they would be forgiven before Israel was
required to repay them. By disguising as loans what in fact were grants,
cooperating members of Congress exempted Israel from the U.S.
oversight that would have accompanied grants. On other loans, Israel
was expected to pay the interest and eventually to begin repaying the
principal. But the so-called Cranston Amendment, which has been
attached by Congress to every foreign aid appropriation since 1983,
provides that economic aid to Israel will never dip below the amount
Israel is required to pay on its outstanding loans. In short, whether
U.S. aid is extended as grants or loans to Israel, it never returns to
the Treasury.
Israel enjoys other privileges. While most countries receiving U.S.
military aid funds are expected to use them for U.S. arms, ammunition
and training, Israel can spend part of these funds on weapons made by
Israeli manufacturers. Also, when it spends its U.S. military aid money
on U.S. products, Israel frequently requires the U.S. vendor to buy
components or materials from Israeli manufacturers. Thus, though Israeli
politicians say that their own manufacturers and exporters are making
them progressively less dependent upon U.S. aid, in fact those Israeli
manufacturers and exporters are heavily subsidized by U.S. aid.
Although it’s beyond the parameters of this study, it’s worth
mentioning that Israel also receives foreign aid from some other
countries. After the United States, the principal donor of both economic
and military aid to Israel is Germany.
By far the largest component of German aid has been in the form of
restitution payments to victims of Nazi atrocities. But there also has
been extensive German military assistance to Israel during and since the
Gulf war, and a variety of German educational and research grants go
to Israeli institutions. The total of German assistance in all of these
categories to the Israeli government, Israeli individuals and Israeli
private institutions has been some $31 billion or $5,345 per capita,
bringing the per capita total of U.S. and German assistance combined to
almost $20,000 per Israeli. Since very little public money is spent on
the more than 20 percent of Israeli citizens who are Muslim or
Christian, the actual per capita benefits received by Israel’s Jewish
citizens would be considerably higher.
True Cost to U.S. Taxpayers
Generous as it is, what Israelis actually got in U.S. aid is
considerably less than what it has cost U.S. taxpayers to provide it.
The principal difference is that so long as the U.S. runs an annual
budget deficit, every dollar of aid the U.S. gives Israel has to be
raised through U.S. government borrowing.
In an article in the Washington Report for December 1991/January 1992,
Frank Collins estimated the costs of this interest, based upon
prevailing interest rates for every year since 1949. I have updated this
by applying a very conservative 5 percent interest rate for subsequent
years, and confined the amount upon which the interest is calculated
to grants, not loans or loan guarantees.
On this basis the $84.8 billion in grants, loans and commodities Israel
has received from the U.S. since 1949 cost the U.S. an additional
$49,936,880,000 in interest.
There are many other costs of Israel to U.S. taxpayers, such as most
or all of the $45.6 billion in U.S. foreign aid to Egypt since Egypt
made peace with Israel in 1979 (compared to $4.2 billion in U.S. aid to
Egypt for the preceding 26 years). U.S. foreign aid to Egypt, which is
pegged at two-thirds of U.S. foreign aid to Israel, averages $2.2
billion per year.
There also have been immense political and military costs to the U.S.
for its consistent support of Israel during Israel’s half-century of
disputes with the Palestinians and all of its Arab neighbors. In
addition, there have been the approximately $10 billion in U.S. loan
guarantees and perhaps $20 billion in tax-exempt contributions made to
Israel by American Jews in the nearly half-century since Israel was
created.
Even excluding all of these extra costs, America’s $84.8 billion in aid
to Israel from fiscal years 1949 through 1998, and the interest the
U.S. paid to borrow this money, has cost U.S. taxpayers $134.8 billion,
not adjusted for inflation. Or, put another way, the nearly $14,630
every one of 5.8 million Israelis received from the U.S. government by
Oct. 31, 1997 has cost American taxpayers $23,240 per Israeli.
It would be interesting to know how many of those American taxpayers
believe they and their families have received as much from the U.S.
Treasury as has everyone who has chosen to become a citizen of Israel.
But it’s a question that will never occur to the American public
because, so long as America’s mainstream media, Congress and president
maintain their pact of silence, few Americans will ever know the true
cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers
