Love of the Land: Aid to Israel: The Story in Numbers

Aid to Israel: The Story in Numbers

David Hazony
Contentions/Commentary
12 January '10

While everyone over here in Israel is tittering over the question of whether George Mitchell did or did not threaten to cut back on American aid to Israel if there is no progress in peace talks, it might be worth getting a little perspective on what those numbers actually look like, both for Israelis and for Americans.

In 1985, the year Israel started receiving such high levels of American aid, U.S. taxpayers gave Israel about $3.4 billion in economic and military grants. That year, Israel’s GDP stood at about $24.1 billion in current dollars. American aid constituted about 14 percent of Israel’s GDP — an enormous amount of support for a country struggling with both a severe economic crisis and an ongoing war in Lebanon.

In 1996, the year Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress and declared his aim of ending Israel’s dependence on American aid, total grants came to $3.1 billion, while Israel’s GDP stood at $105 billion. U.S. aid was then only about 3 percent of Israel’s GDP.

In 2008, U.S. aid was down to about $2.4 billion, while Israel’s GDP was up to $199 billion. We’re talking about 1.2 percent of Israel’s GDP.

So whereas nobody would consider $2.4 billion a trivial amount of money, the economic significance of that aid has dropped dramatically, as far as Israelis are concerned. Israel’s “dependence” on American aid is not zero, but it’s heading there.

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Love of the Land: Aid to Israel: The Story in Numbers

Love of the Land: Defending Lebanon Or Israel?

Defending Lebanon Or Israel?

David Schenker
Forbes.com
07 January '10

In December, the Lebanese Web site Qifa Nabki featured a satirical "news story" discussing U.S. arms transfers to Lebanon. According to the article, the U.S. gifted "cutting edge" military material to the Lebanese Armed Forces that included camouflage-print bandages and, more menacingly, the USS Tadpole, a decommissioned World War II vessel that "until recently had been used for target practice by U.S. Navy gunners in Norfolk."

Humor aside, the article highlights a serious and increasingly prevalent critique of U.S. military assistance. Since the 2005 Cedar Revolution and the balloting that brought to power the only pro-West democratically elected government in the Arab world, Lebanon received nearly $500 million worth of military material from Washington. Yet many in Lebanon are concerned that U.S. weaponry enables the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to defend the state neither from Israel nor from local al-Qaida affiliates.

This line of thinking has some prominent and diverse proponents. In 2008, leader of the Shiite militia Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah complained that U.S. support for Israel prevented the transfer of sophisticated weapons to the LAF; in 2009, Minister of Defense Elias Murr implicitly criticized Washington for not providing fighter jets. "If we had aircraft," during the 2007 fighting against Islamist militants, "we would not have lost one martyr from the army," he said. This past December, from the White House podium, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman asked for increases in U.S. military assistance to finally enable the LAF to "defend Lebanon from enemy attacks and confront terrorism."

U.S. officials deny Lebanon is being given short shrift, but the perception articulated by Nasrallah and Sulieman is partly correct and stems from a fundamental Lebanese misreading of U.S. policy priorities: While U.S. taxpayer generosity, currently slated at over $100 million this year, will enhance LAF domestic counterterrorism capabilities, it is not meant--and will never be meant--to help Lebanon deter or defend against Israeli strikes.

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Love of the Land: Defending Lebanon Or Israel?