My understanding is most the aid given to Israel is spent on American military equipment. Israel is ok with it because they get free military equipment, and the US likes it because it funnels aid money to the military.

The US also likes the live testbed for anti-insurgency tech.

Defense contractors, surely, not the US military?

> Defense contractors, surely, not the US military?

Both. We get allied assets in the region. We also get purchasing volume for military hardware, which feeds R&D budgets for things we want.

answering to your other comments as well, Israel fulfils American interest in the area as I understand it. It is the best freedom-per-dollar the US can get, except maybe south-Korea. between all of American attempts to establish their dominance and their believes in the world, you pointed to one of their more successful investments. for this topic. If you want to reduce the violence in the area of the middle east, joint local economical ventures are a perfectly good start. hopefully one day with Lebanon too. disclaimer I'm Israeli.

As an American I don't want my interests fulfilled at the expense of other's human rights, basic peace and sovereignty.

I'm not going to debate US politics with American but this page [0] shows me Israel is not exception in American policy. As I said before probably one of the few successful attempt to encourage a democracy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_United_S...

I don't know what point you're trying to make with that link. The US normally sanctions countries committing human rights violations, it doesn't typically fund them. Israel is an outlier there.

I'm not sure what the point of that link was, either.

But I'd point out that America has A LOT of blood on its hands. A half million Iraqi's being the most recent, Vietnamese before that, and Koreans before that. Still going strong with drone strikes. Banana republics in central America, mucked around in south America. Proxy wars in Africa. Keeping the Middle East destabilized. The average American seems to support all of the above, which just means it will continue.

I don't want to say that America is an evil country, but it is the biggest and violates the rights of a lot of people (to say the least) in pursuit of its interests. It's an empire warping the world to its desires. Economically (as you mentioned), culturally, and militarily. That's what big powerful countries do.

I agree. I'd also add that America was created with the genocide of Native people, built up with slavery and we currently have the largest prison population in total and per capita of any nation on the planet. It's hard not to say that America is an evil country, if you're one of the many people it's hurt, it very much is.

Israel isn't particularly funded by the US. They receive a small amount of money from the US, as do about 100 other nations around the world, including several prominent nations that have historically disliked Israel (see: Egypt, Pakistan).

Israel is now one of the most prosperous nations in world history. Their GDP per capita will soon be among the highest of any nation. They passed Japan, Britain and France recently on that metric; next they'll pass Canada and Germany. They're entirely free-standing economically at this point and do not require US funding (even though the US will obviously continue to have deep economic ties with Israel, including militarily).

The US gives Israel billions of dollars every year:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel–United_States_relatio...

here's a better link, i think (Sam i am).

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf

Thanks. From the link:

In 2016, the U.S. and Israeli governments signed their third 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on military aid, covering FY2019 to FY2028. Under the terms of the MOU, the United States pledged to provide—subject to congressional appropriation—$38 billion in military aid ($33 billion in Foreign Military Financing grants plus $5 billion in missile defense appropriations) to Israel. This MOU followed a previous $30 billion 10-year agreement, which ran through FY2018.

Israel and Egypt are always pointed to as recipients of greatest US aid. But that is only because the US military that is stationed in South Korea, Japan, and a bunch of other countries is not counted as aid. And all that military is very expensive, like in the tens of billions or maybe even hundreds. I don't know how much it costs to maintain an aircraft carrier fleet to protect the Arabs from the Persians.

And on a similar note, when comparing overall spending on the military, the perception of the size of the US military is inflated because in China and many other countries there's a draft, so they pay their soldiers next to nothing while the US has to pay theirs a prevailing wage, which is somewhere around the highest in the world.

My pleasure! Always happy to discuss facts.

The US has given Egypt $80 billion over the last 40 years, which is about what the US has given Israel over 70 years.

Of course the US gives Israel some money still, mostly related to its on-going military relationship with Israel in developing weapons systems and technology. There isn't anybody in this thread that doesn't already know that. And the US gives money to a lot of other nations too.

None of that negates what I so precisely worded to try to avoid this follow-up response. I failed unfortunately.

Israel has a $400 billion GDP at this point. As I noted, the US does not particularly fund Israel. US funding to Israel represents a now trivial part of their economic system. They do not require the US, they are free-standing.

Israel received $3.8b in the covid bill passed a few days ago. If they don't need it, send it back because we could sure use it here.

> Of course the US gives Israel some money still, mostly related to its on-going military relationship with Israel in developing weapons systems and technology

This is the problem I have with funding Israel. We're literally giving them money to commit war crimes and illegal military action. We should be sanctioning them (if we want to be consistent), not funding them.

War crimes and illegal military action seem to very much be the preferred business of the American military-industrial complex. Most of the US foreign aid given to Israel can only be spent on purchasing US military hardware. The people who benefit from funneling additional billions into the MIC are the same ones that benefit from ongoing American military actions on foreign soil...