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Israel Lobby wants the next multibillion dollar US aid package for the
Jewish state to "span 25 years, rather than 10" in order to "insulate
the relationship against future US political vagaries and
uncertainties."
Extrapolating out the current commonly cited
(yet dramatically understated) funding level the US provides Israel of
$3.8 billion a year, that means Israel wants the next aid package to be
almost $100 billion.
>From Jewish Insider, "U.S., Israel should begin thinking about next MOU, analysts say":
The current 10-year, $38 billion Memorandum of Understanding
between the U.S. and Israel, which provides $3.8 billion in military
aid and missile-defense funding to Israel annually, is set to run out in
2028. But some policy analysts say that now is the time for Washington
and Jerusalem to begin thinking about what the next MOU should entail.
Jewish Insider asked several senators, including key defense leaders,
this week about the prospect of the next MOU, but none offered specific
recommendations or indicated that they'd begun thinking in detail about
the upcoming negotiations. Multiple lawmakers said they'd been more
focused on the near-term issues Israel is facing.
But one issue that is troubling senators: some voices on the
anti-Israel right, who have advocated for a decreased U.S. role in the
Middle East and a pullback on U.S. aid to Israel, have taken prominent
roles within the Defense Department, and could potentially influence the
talks.
One Republican senator, speaking on condition of anonymity, told JI that
several GOP lawmakers planned to keep a close eye on MOU negotiations
to ensure recent isolationist Pentagon hires did not try to interfere
with talks. "It's on our radar, big time," the senator said. "We're
engaged on this." Note: the GOP senator is hiding his identity while working to advance the interests of a foreign power.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, who had a lead
role in negotiating the current MOU, wrote an op-ed in late January
calling for the U.S. to start considering the next MOU. He said in an
interview with JI that, to keep to the same timeline on which the last
MOU was signed, the U.S. and Israel need to begin considering funding
levels and requests now, a process that will take time.
A report compiled by a Foundation for Defense of Democracies committee
led by senior fellow Jacob Nagel, who was a lead Israeli negotiator on
the 2016 MOU, which came into effect in 2018, also said that
negotiations on the MOU should begin as early as the middle of this
year, with the goal of completing them before the midterm elections. Israel
wants to limit how much aid money they're required to spend on US
defense companies and instead just keep as much of our money as
possible for themselves, Jewish Insider reports:
David Makovsky, the Ziegler distinguished fellow and
director of the Koret Project on Arab-Israeli Relations at The
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told JI that he expects
Israel to raise the issue of offshore procurement — funds from the U.S.
that Israel can use to buy weapons from its domestic defense industry —
in the new negotiations.
Nagel said in a memo that was one of the most difficult issues in the negotiations for the current MOU.
That funding was gradually reduced to zero over the course of the
current MOU, requiring Israel to spend its annual $3.3 billion in
military funding entirely in the U.S. by the end, but Makovsky said that
ammunition shortages Israel has faced in its current wars make it a
"safe bet" that Israel will try to add back some funding in the new MOU
to support its own defense industry.
John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National
Security of America, said JINSA believes the new MOU should focus less
on direct military funding and more on bilateral U.S.-Israel cooperation
"that incorporates Israel more formally and securely into U.S.-led
global competition against China, Russia, Iran," creating a more
formalized partnership along the lines of the U.S.' AUKUS agreement with
the United Kingdom and Australia.
Hannah said that should include more co-development and co-production of
new technologies, bringing Israel more deeply into U.S. defense
production lines and supply chains and greater intelligence sharing
between the U.S. and Israel.
And he said that the next agreement should span 25 years, rather than
10, "to help facilitate such long-term cooperation, and to insulate the
relationship against future U.S. political vagaries and uncertainties." The US has given Israel over $328 billion in direct aid since 1946, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
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The billions of dollars in aid the US provides to Egypt and Jordan is also effectively bribes paid out to their leaders to normalize relations with the Jewish state.
If you add in the $2 trillion the US spent on the war in Iraq to ensure Israel's security, you'll see it's a truly astronomical amount of money, blood and treasure the US has given the Jewish state -- but it's never enough.
Most Americans, and especially the young, are sick and tired of funding Israel's wars and want all aid to the Jewish state to come to an end.
Nonetheless, even though the majority of Americans want to stop sending aid to Israel,
we have almost zero representation in Congress and it's looking like
the Israel Lobby is planning to loot us more than ever in what they may
view as one last kleptocratic cash grab. |