Paying Tribute
And when you ask ’em, “How much should we give?”
Ooh, they only answer, “More, more, more, more”Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fortunate Son
This seems like a good opportunity to revisit an old topic.
USAID or United States Agency for International Development is the Federal agency that oversees much of the U.S. foreign “aid” disbursements. It isn’t a small amount of money…
The President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 Budget Request for the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is $63.1 billion for foreign assistance and diplomatic engagement, which includes $32 billion in foreign assistance for USAID fully- and partially-managed accounts, $3 billion (10 percent) above the FY 2023 Adjusted Enacted level.
https://archive.ph/lpYSj
In 2022 and 2023 so far, the biggest beneficiary of this aid was
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s personal slush fundUkraine’s valiant freedom fighters. That makes 2022/23 outliers because in most years, one nation stands above all the rest as a recipient of American “aid”. You know who it is.
Calls for more aid to Israel came quickly in the wake of a terrorist attack by Hamas on the country this weekend, and President Biden has said military assistance is on its way. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier, has already been dispatched to the region, and more aid in the form of equipment, resources and munitions is expected to arrive in coming days.
The U.S. commitment to aiding Israel has long-standing roots. The United States has given Israel more than $260 billion in combined military and economic aid since World War II, plus about $10 billion more in contributions for missile defense systems like the Iron Dome, a U.S. News analysis finds. That’s the most granted to any country throughout that time frame, and around $100 billion more than Egypt, the second-highest recipient historically.
For nearly three decades – from fiscal years 1974 to 2002 – Israel was the top recipient of U.S. aid, the longest-standing duration for a top aid recipient dating back to 1946, according to figures from ForeignAssistance.gov. While 2003 to 2020 saw the most aid going to either Iraq or Afghanistan, Israel nevertheless remained a top three aid recipient throughout that time.
https://archive.vn/c5nSt
What makes this especially galling is that Israel isn’t some poor third world nation, despite the ads aimed at gullible Christians begging for money to help poor Russian Jews emigrate to “The Holy Land”. Indeed, Israel is one of the wealthiest nations in the world. I wrote about this back in 2018: Why Are We Sending Foreign Aid To Other Nations? Especially Wealthy Nations?
“Conservatives” love to denounce foreign aid, just not 100% of the time. Just recently there was some news, although it is kind of hard to find, that the U.S. Senate approved a new bill, Senate Bill 2497, sponsored by Senator Marco Rubio, called the “United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2018“. It can be kind of hard to dig out the actual amounts involved but there are little things like amending the agreement to provide money to Israel by “(A) by striking “equal to—” and inserting “not less than $3,300,000,000.”;” which in essence means that $3.3 billion annually is the absolute minimum we can send to Israel. According to USAID, Israel has pretty consistently received between $2.4 and $3.7 billion in aid from the U.S. since at least 2001, even though Israel is considered a “high income” nation, in the top of four possible categories. Just for some perspective, there are around 9 million people in Israel so $3.8 billion works out to around $400 for every man, woman and child in Israel paid for by the citizens of the United States to the tune of around $11 from every citizen of the U.S. Or another way of looking at it is that this amounts to around $23,000 per Jewish family in Israel over the course of a decade. $23,000 per family being sent to an already wealthy nation, paid for by current and future tax-payers in America.
But that begs the question. Why are we sending aid, and not a small amount of aid, to Israel, a nation that has a gross domestic product around $350 billion with a population of only around 9 million people which gives it a per capita GDP higher than France, Germany, Japan and the U.K.? Israel is a highly developed nation, with a strong economy and a powerful military that has nuclear weapons. We even have a permanent military base in Israel to serve as a “trip-wire” in case some other nation attacks Israel. How does it make sense for a nation $21 trillion in debt to send $3 billion to Israel, a sum which is less than 1% of their GDP?
The per capita income in Israel is one of the highest in the world and yet that same nation is the recipient of hundreds of billions of dollars in “aid”.
That is “conservatism” for ya. All of their “principles” go out the window when it comes to Our Greatest Ally. Foreign aid is bad except for Israel. The ADL is a far-left organization but when they talk about Israel Their words come down from on high like they were written on tablets of stone. Need to take Jesus to the heathen but not the Jews, They are “God’s Chosen People” and get a free pass despite what the New Testament clearly says. When it comes to Israel the average normiecon loses any sense of perspective.
As to why we send “aid” to Israel, and more than we do to shitholes that really need aid, is quite simple:
The billions we send to Israel isn’t aid. It is tribute.
Merriam-Webster defines tribute in several ways but the critical one is highlighted below:
a payment by one ruler or nation to another in acknowledgment of submission or as the price of protection
That is about the most accurate definition. The “protection” isn’t military of course, Israel would never lift a finger to help the U.S. if we were in need. The protection is for U.S. politicians. If you want to be an elected official in most places in America, you have to bend the knee to Israel, agree to “support” Israel no matter what They do and if you are really ambitious you need to put on the little hat and go pretend to pray at the Wailing Wall. I couldn’t find a pic of Joe Biden at the Wailing Wall but I did find without any trouble the four Presidents before him doing their little dog and pony show for their Israeli masters:
American politicians wearing the hat and pretending to pray at a wall is a sign of submission, not really different from a dog rolling onto his back and exposing his belly.
The payments to Israel of around $3 billion is a lot to be sure but Israel has a GDP of over $500 billion and a large chunk of the money we give them turns around and is used to buy armaments from the U.S. It doesn’t seem like it makes a huge difference, and it doesn’t. What it does is demonstrate that Israel can make U.S. politicians continue to send them billions per year even when it makes little sense, except maybe as a round-about payment to defense contractors, for one reason and one reason only:
Our payments to Israel proves that Israel can make us pay them
It is a sort of humiliation ritual, like American Presidents praying at the wailing wall, all of whom claim to be Christians and yet they cover their heads in direct violation of the commandment of Paul:
Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven.
1 Corinthians 11:4-5
Still they show up, and put on the little headcover and do their pantomime at the Wailing Wall and then promise to support Israel to AIPAC and never, ever consider cutting aid to Israel because they know if they don’t promise that, then the Israel lobby will kneecap them and they will never win elected office again. Unless you are in a protected Congressional district like Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib, you can’t cross the Israeli lobby.
That is why we pay Israel over $3 billion every year. It is a tribute to a foreign power that while much smaller and weaker than us still manages to control the American goliath by controlling our political class. America is a vassal state of Israel and likely always will be short of a different foreign power overthrowing us. I suspect the average Israeli despises Americans, seeing us as fools and finding the Christian faith of most Americans to be revolting, but taking a great deal of pleasure from their humiliation of our people by forcing us to send them tribute.
With Greatest Allies like Israel, who needs enemies?