U.S. FUNDS SHOULD NOT BE USED IN ISRAEL’S CONTINUING
ASSAULT ON CIVILIANS IN GAZA
BY
ALLAN C.BROWNFELD
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The October 7 assault on Israel by Hamas was a terrible terrorist attack. Israel had every right to respond. But now, six months later, its attacks on Gaza continue. More than 30,000 people have been killed, the overwhelming majority of them innocent civilians, including thousands of women and children. President Biden has expressed U.S. concern about the indiscriminate bombing of apartment buildings, churches, hospitals and mosques. Gaza is essentially being totally destroyed. Yet, sadly, the U.S. continues to finance this assault as Israel’s Prime Minister and his ultra-right wing cabinet continue to request and spend American taxpayers’ money while rejecting U.S. advice. The U.S. says that the way to lasting peace involves the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel—-the so-called “two state solution.” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says such a state will never come into existence while he is in power.
Few Americans understand how extreme Israel’s current government is. Consider The National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who had been previously described as a “political untouchable” due to his overt racism and was described as “the David Duke of Israel.” He first came to prominence as a 19-year-old in 1995 in the wake of a peace deal with the Palestinians signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. According to the Washington Post, “An outraged Ben Gvir brandished a car ornament reportedly ripped from Rabin’s Cadillac and said: ‘We got the car. We’ll get to Rabin too.’ Not long after, a right-wing Israeli extremist assassinated Rabin, and while Ben Gvir was not connected with the killing, he campaigned for the assassin’s release from prison.Ben Gvir himself has been prosecuted for inciting violence and is known to have displayed a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 massacred 29 Palestinian worshipers in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, on his wall.”
The Times of Israel referred to Ben Gvir and his allies as moving into areas “where only neo-fascists tread.” The paper outlined a number of positions supported by Jewish Power, Ben Gvir’s party, including encouraging Palestinian citizens of Israel to emigrate; annexing the West Bank; using live fire against Palestinian protestors; and overhauling Israel’s legal system to impede the high court from striking down legislation and giving the government the ability to pack the bench with ideological compatriots.
Consider the extent of U.S. financial support which Israel, a wealthy country, receives from the U.S. Israel. Between 1948 and 2022, Israel has received more than $300 billion (adjusted for inflation) in foreign aid—-more than any other country in the world. It now receives more than $3.8 billion annually. This aid includes numerous provisions that are not available to other recipients. According to the Congressional Research Service, these include providing aid “as all cash grant transfers not designated for particular projects , and transferred as a lump sum in the first month of the fiscal year, instead of in installments. Israel is allowed to spend about a quarter of the military aid for the procurement in Israel of defense articles and services…rather than in the U.S.”
Even long time supporters of Israel are expressing dismay. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman headlined a column, “The Israel We Knew Is Gone.” He recently wrote that, “Israel today is in grave danger. With enemies like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran, Israel should be enjoying the sympathy of much of the world, but it is not. Because of the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition have been conducting the war in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank, Israel is becoming radioactive.”
In Friedman’s view, “No fair-minded person could deny Israel the right of self defense after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. But no fair-minded person can look at the Israeli campaign…that has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza…and not conclude that something has gone terribly wrong there. The dead include thousands of children, and the survivors many orphans…This is a stain on the Jewish state.”
Jewish Americans are expressing growing dismay at what Israel is doing. A new group has been formed called Reform Jews For Justice. It declares: “As Reform Jews, we stand together for justice, in solidarity with Palestine. We unite in our values to call for a ceasefire, the release of hostages, and an end to U.S. military aid to Israel…Reform Jews who strive to live by the values of enacting justice and having mercy, we have come together to call on our movement to engage in solidarity with Palestine.”
A host of Jewish organizations—-Jewish Voice for Peace, Americans for Peace Now, IfNotNow among them—-argue that Israel’s treatment of ts indigenous Palestinian population violates basic Jewish moral and ethical values. In Israel itself many are speaking out against both the killing of civilians in Gaza and terrorist acts against Palestinians inthe occupied West Bank by ultra Orthodox militant settlers who speak openly of annexing this territory and expelling its Palestinian residents. Hebrew University professor of Jewish philosophy Moshe Halbertal says The attitudes toward Palestinians “is now morphing into something new—-a kind of general ultranationalism” that not only rejects any notion of a Palestinian state, but also views every Palestinian citizen of Israel as potential terrorists.”
Prof. Noah Feldman of the Harvard Law School and author of the book, “To Be A Jew Today,” declares that, “Today, progressive American Jews find it difficult to see Israel as a genuine liberal democracy, mostly because some three million Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli authority with no realistic prospect of liberal rights.”
Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians goes back to the very beginning of the state. Mark Ethridge, President Harry Truman’s delegate to the Palestine Conciliation Commission, wrote a letter to his wife on Feb. 14, 1949 after visiting a Palestinian refugee camp in Jericho: “I’ve never seen so many horrible things in one day in my life. Huge families live in one tent. But great numbers have not even a tent and live in the open. There are somewhere between 600 and 700,000Arabs who have been driven out of Israel or have left in terror. I don’t know any better parallel than the way we treated the American Indians. The disheartening thing is that I have not heard one Jewish official who seemed to have any sympathy or saw in it any parallel of persecution to what Hitler did to them. I have tried to make it plain to them that I have no sympathy with their attitude and that it is one thing they must do something about or answer to the conscience of the world.”
Today, many Israelis, although none in the current government, are deeply troubled by the mistreatment of Palestinians. Recently, an Israeli journalist won two major prizes at the Berlinale International Film Festival for his documentary about Israel’s expulsion of Palestinians from their West Bank villages. Yuval Abraham, is part of the team behind “No Other Land.” The documentary focuses on the Palestinian activist Basel Adra. In his acceptance speech, Abraham told the Berlin audience: “We are standing in front of you now. Me and Basel are the same age. I am Israeli, Basel is Palestinian. And in two days we will go back to a land where we are not equal. I am living under civilian law and Basel is under military law. We live 30 minutes from one another. But I have voting rights . Basel is not having voting rights. I’m free to move where I want on this land.Basel is, like millions of Palestinians, locked in the occupied West Bank. This situation of apartheid between us, this inequality it has to end.”
Basic American values are being violated by Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, by its more than 50 year occupation of the West Bank in violation of international law and by its continuing assault on civilians in Gaza, which many have categorized as “genocide.” U.S. taxpayers should not be called upon to pay for an enterprise such as this.
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Allan C.Brownfeld is a nationally syndicated columnist and editor of ISSUES, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism (
www.acjna.org).