"...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."
http://www.wrmea.com/html/us_aid_to_israel.htm
"U.S Financial Aid To Israel:
Figures, Facts, and Impact
Summary
Benefits to Israel of U.S. Aid Cost to U.S. Taxpayers of U.S.
Since 1949 (As of November 1, 1997) Aid to Israel
Foreign Aid Grants and Loans Grand Total
$74,157,600,000 $84,854,827,200
Other U.S. Aid (12.2% of Foreign Aid) Interest Costs Borne by U.S.
$9,047,227,200 $49,936,680,000
Interest to Israel from Advanced Payments Total Cost to U.S. Taxpayers
$1,650,000,000 $134,791,507,200
Grand Total Total Taxpayer Cost per Israeli
$84,854,827,200 $23,240
Total Benefits per Israeli
$14,630
Special Reports:
Congress Watch: A Conservative Total for U.S. Aid to Israel:
$91 Billion - and Counting
Congressional Research Report on Israel: US Foreign
Assistance by Clyde Mark (213K pdf file)
U.S. Aid To Israel: The Strategic Functions
U.S. Aid to Israel: What U.S. Taxpayer Should Know
U.S. Aid to Israel: Interpreting the 'Strategic Relationship'
The Cost of Israel to U.S. Taxpayers: True Lies About U.S. Aid
to Israel
THE STRATEGIC FUNCTIONS OF U.S. AID TO ISRAEL
By Stephen Zunes
Dr. Zunes is an assistant professor in the Department of
Politics at the University of San Francisco
Since 1992, the U.S. has offered Israel an additional $2 billion annually
in loan guarantees. Congressional researchers have disclosed that
between 1974 and 1989, $16.4 billion in U.S. military loans were
converted to grants and that this was the understanding from the
beginning. Indeed, all past U.S. loans to Israel have eventually been
forgiven by Congress, which has undoubtedly helped Israel's
often-touted claim that they have never defaulted on a U.S. government
loan. U.S. policy since 1984 has been that economic assistance to Israel
must equal or exceed Israel's annual debt repayment to the United
States. Unlike other countries, which receive aid in quarterly
installments, aid to Israel since 1982 has been given in a lump sum at
the beginning of the fiscal year, leaving the U.S. government to
borrow from future revenues. Israel even lends some of this money back
through U.S. treasury bills and collects the additional interest.
In addition, there is the more than $1.5 billion in private U.S. funds that
go to Israel annually in the form of $1 billion in private tax-deductible
donations and $500 million in Israeli bonds. The ability of Americans to
make what amounts to tax-deductible contributions to a foreign
government, made possible through a number of Jewish charities, does
not exist with any other country. Nor do these figures include short- and
long-term commercial loans from U.S. banks, which have been as high
as $1 billion annually in recent years.
Total U.S. aid to Israel is approximately one-third of the American
foreign- aid budget, even though Israel comprises just .001 percent of
the world's population and already has one of the world's higher per
capita incomes. Indeed, Israel's GNP is higher than the combined GNP
of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. With a per
capita income of about $14,000, Israel ranks as the sixteenth wealthiest
country in the world; Israelis enjoy a higher per capita income than
oil-rich Saudi Arabia and are only slightly less well-off than most Western
European countries.
AID does not term economic aid to Israel as development assistance, but
instead uses the term "economic support funding." Given Israel's relative
prosperity, U.S. aid to Israel is becoming increasingly controversial. In
1994, Yossi Beilen, deputy foreign minister of Israel and a Knesset
member, told the Women's International Zionist organization, "If our
economic situation is better than in many of your countries, how can we
go on asking for your charity?"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
U.S. Aid to Israel: What U.S. Taxpayer Should Know
by Tom Malthaner
This morning as I was walking down Shuhada Street in Hebron, I saw
graffiti marking the newly painted storefronts and awnings. Although
three months past schedule and 100 percent over budget, the renovation
of Shuhada Street was finally completed this week. The project manager
said the reason for the delay and cost overruns was the sabotage of the
project by the Israeli settlers of the Beit Hadassah settlement complex in
Hebron. They broke the street lights, stoned project workers, shot out
the windows of bulldozers and other heavy equipment with pellet guns,
broke paving stones before they were laid and now have defaced again
the homes and shops of Palestinians with graffiti. The settlers did not
want Shuhada St. opened to Palestinian traffic as was agreed to under
Oslo 2. This renovation project is paid for by USAID funds and it makes
me angry that my tax dollars have paid for improvements that have been
destroyed by the settlers.
Most Americans are not aware how much of their tax revenue our
government sends to Israel. For the fiscal year ending in September 30,
1997, the U.S. has given Israel $6.72 billion: $6.194 billion falls under
Israel's foreign aid allotment and $526 million comes from agencies such
as the Department of Commerce, the U.S. Information Agency and the
Pentagon. The $6.72 billion figure does not include loan guarantees and
annual compound interest totalling $3.122 billion the U.S. pays on
money borrowed to give to Israel. It does not include the cost to U.S.
taxpayers of IRS tax exemptions that donors can claim when they donate
money to Israeli charities. (Donors claim approximately $1 billion in
Federal tax deductions annually. This ultimately costs other U.S. tax
payers $280 million to $390 million.)
When grant, loans, interest and tax deductions are added together for
the fiscal year ending in September 30, 1997, our special relationship
with Israel cost U.S. taxpayers over $10 billion.
Since 1949 the U.S. has given Israel a total of $83.205 billion. The
interest costs borne by U.S. tax payers on behalf of Israel are $49.937
billion, thus making the total amount of aid given to Israel since 1949
$133.132 billion. This may mean that U.S. government has given more
federal aid to the average Israeli citizen in a given year than it has given
to the average American citizen.
I am angry when I see Israeli settlers from Hebron destroy improvements
made to Shuhada Street with my tax money. Also, it angers me that my
government is giving over $10 billion to a country that is more
prosperous than most of the other countries in the world and uses much
of its money for strengthening its military and the oppression of the
Palestinian people.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
"U.S. Aid to Israel: Interpreting the 'Strategic Relationship"'
by Stephen Zunes
[...]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cost of Israel to U.S. Taxpayers: True Lies About U.S. Aid to
Israel
By Richard H. Curtiss
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 black-listing, 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 congressmembers 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 theWashington 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 attrocities. 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.
------------------
Richard Curtiss, a retired U.S. foreign service officer, is the
executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs."
--
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