U.S. may cut $1b in loan guarantees to Israel over West Bank settlements

The United States administration plans to cut about $1 billion from the balance of its loan guarantees to Israel because of its investments in the settlements. The balance currently stands at $4.6 billion.

Then, another $2 billion to rebuild Gaza. But, alas, this is only "loan guarantees" - I'm talking cold, hard cash...

U.S. Financial Aid To Israel: Figures, Facts, and Impact

"Although Israel is an "advanced, industrialized, technologically sophisticated country," it "receives more U.S. aid per capita annually than the total annual [Gross Domestic Product] per capita of several Arab states." Approximately a third of the entire U.S. foreign aid budget goes to Israel, "even though Israel comprises just…one-thousandth of the world's total population, and already has one of the world's higher per capita incomes.""

U.S. Aid to Israel: $108 Billion - A Conservative Estimate

Yes, Grandma I know - this is "a low down dirty shame." Especially when steam pipes are exploding in New York and bridges collapsing in Minnesota.

Washington Report, July 2006, pages 16-17
Congress Watch

By Shirl McArthur

Because of the uncertainties and ambiguities associated with U.S. aid to Israel, arriving at a precise figure for total direct U.S. aid to Israel probably is not possible. Parts of it are buried in the budgets of other government agencies—mostly the Defense Department (DOD)—or in a form not easily quantifiable—such as the early disbursement of aid, allowing Israel a direct gain and the U.S. Treasury a direct loss of interest on the unspent money. Given these caveats, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) conservatively estimates cumulative total direct U.S. aid to Israel at $107.961 billion.

For the complete report: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m35020&hd=&size=1&l=e

Oppose $30 Billion in Military Aid Package to Israel

by The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - August 3, 2007

[Editor's note: While there is no possibility that the Israeli Occupied Congress will not approve this appropriation, it is nevertheless important that members of Congress begin to hear from an outraged citizenry that those who continue to put Israel's interests above those of their American constituents will be considered as foreign agents who have broken their oath to defend the US Constitution. While it is important to attack this latest giveaway on its merits, it is time to raise the stakes. -- Jeff Blankfort]

The United States plans to increase military aid to Israel by 25 percent—from $2.4 billion to $3 billion per year, guaranteed for the next 10 years. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told reporters in Jerusalem on July 29 that President George W. Bush agreed to this new $30 billion military aid package when they met at the White House on June 19.

This agreement is appalling for many reasons:

U.S. taxpayers are being asked to donate $30 billion to help Israel buy weapons at a time when our own nation’s financial resources are stretched thin. According to a June 28, 2007 Congressional Research Service report, the U.S. has spent $611 billion on the “war on terror” since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, including $567 billion in Iraq alone. Our own economy, schools, and health care are in shambles thanks to this war that many, including President Bush, believe is being fought to protect Israel.

Israel routinely violates the U.S. Arms Export Control Act and Foreign Assistance Act by using U.S. weapons to commit human rights violations against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. Israel uses U.S. military aid to continue its illegal 40-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip. Israel illegally used U.S. weapons, including cluster bombs, when it carried out attacks on civilians in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon last summer.

To add insult to injury, Israeli and U.S. mainstream media are trying to confuse Americans by describing a proposed $20 billion U.S. military sales package to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries as “aid.” The distinction between possible arms deals with the Gulf and military aid to Israel has been deliberately blurred.

The United States is financially rewarding Israel at a time when the Jewish state is ignoring Arab peace overtures and intentionally starving Gazans. Israel is preventing humanitarian aid, salaries, food, water and electricity from reaching Palestinians imprisoned behind Gaza’s Israeli-controlled borders.

Write or telephone those working for you in Washington, DC demanding that the U.S. withhold all military aid to Israel until that country agrees to makes peace with its neighbors.

For more information on U.S. policy in the Middle East, subscribe to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs .

Write or Telephone Those Working for you in Washington.

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20500
(202) 456-1414

White House Comment Line: (202) 456-1111
Fax: (202) 456-2461

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
Department of State
Washington, DC 20520
State Department Public Information Line:
(202) 647-6575

Any Senator
U.S. Senate
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-3121

Any Representative
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-3121

E-Mail Congress and the White House E-mail Congress: visit the Web site <www.congress.org for contact information.
E-mail President Bush: president@whitehouse.gov
E-mail Vice President Cheney: vice.president@whitehouse.gov

New report documents past quarter century of Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians

"The Price We Pay" seeks to counterbalance influence of Jewish lobbies on US policy in Middle East, questions morality of American aid to Jewish state

by Yasmine Ryan - August 3, 2007

BEIRUT: Israel was once reprimanded by the United States for its use of cluster bombs in civilian areas. In 1984, The New York Times credited Franklin P. Lamb's first book with gathering the evidence that spurred former President Ronald Reagan's administration into cutting off Israel's supplies of US cluster bombs. A quarter-century on, Lamb returned to update "Israel's War in Lebanon" (South End Press, 1984) in the wake of last summer's war. The result is the substantial report "The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon (1978-2006)."

Extensive documentation from a wide range of sources has been compiled, alongside photographic evidence and personal testimonies. "The Price We Pay" is a well-researched and comprehensive historical record of the damage inflicted on Lebanon by its southern neighbor in the summer of 2006.

The report is written with a clear objective in its sights and makes no bones about it. Lamb is director of Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace (ACMEP), an organization based in Washington which aims to counterbalance the influence of the pro-Israel lobby on US policy in the Middle East. It is particularly concerned with the provision and subsequent use of American weapons by Israel. Last Friday, Israel officially banned "The Price We Pay."

Above all, "The Price We Pay" questions the morality and legality of the $15.1 million per day in US aid that Israel receives, more than half of which Israel spends on arms and munitions. Beyond this, Israel receives military technology and training and additional grants and special considerations.

For Lamb and ACMEP, the monetary aid would be better spent domestically, and they seek to demonstrate in their report where that cash is going. They condemn the US government's "foreknowledge, acquiescence and complicity in Israel's pre-planned invasion." The war began last July 12 when Hizbullah launched a cross-border raid in which eight Israeli soldiers died and two were captured by Hizbullah, after which Israel responded with air strikes.

One of the most significant points made in the report is the impunity with which Israel has historically deployed US weapons in stark breach of US laws and bilateral agreements between the two allies.

Lamb proposes that aid sanctions be imposed upon Israel for its improper use of American weapons, in accordance with the 1976 US Arms Export Act, the Foreign Assistance Act and the 1996 Interference with Humanitarian Relief Act.

Historical precedence, from the administration of former President Gerald Ford onward, makes this an unlikely possibility, Reagan's ban on cluster bombs excepted. Lamb told The Daily Star that he hoped to complement the increasing momentum of the international campaign to ban cluster bombs. The tome will also be made accessible to members of the US Congress, as was its predecessor.

Given its strong political bias, the work's tone of moral outrage - and at times bitter sarcasm - is not too surprising. For instance, playing ironically upon a headline used by an Israeli tabloid (on American policy during the summer war), the author writes "Take your time, a majority of our Congress repeated as they stumbled over each other jockeying for a good position in line for Israel-lobby cash to fund their next elections."

Potent information is underlined with powerful colors and photographs. A man in Qana appears in a photograph with pictures of his children, who were killed by an Israeli Army attack. "1,250 CIVILIANS KILLED, 416 ARE CHILDREN" reads the capitalized text on the opposite page. A pie chart underlines the assertion that 83 percent of Israel's weapons come from America.

The report also disputes claims that the destruction was simply inevitable collateral damage. Rather than a military strategy which targeted the Hizbullah-led Lebanese resistance, Lamb asserts that "the extensive destruction of public works, power systems, civilian homes and industry was deliberate and an integral part of the military strategy."

The appendix includes a list of attacks on Lebanese civilians, a list of some of the unexploded American weapons in civilian areas of South Lebanon and a list of Lebanese factories damaged by US weapons. There is also a list of US companies which contribute significantly to Israel's arsenal - often courtesy of the American taxpayer.

One chapter focuses on the psychological-operations campaign against the Hizbullah-led resistance, conducted last year by the Israeli Army with US aircraft, propaganda and artillery shells. Lamb suggests that the primary psychological target was the Israeli population rather than the Lebanese, because the leaflets were presented widely on Israeli television and some of those dropped on Lebanese soil were in Hebrew.

Lamb is no newcomer to Lebanon. He first came here in 1982 as a member of a US Congress fact-finding mission and has returned many times since. It was on this initial visit that he and another US citizen, Janet Stevens, founded ACMEP at the American University of Beirut on August 12, 1982.

This date has been labeled by some as Black Thursday because of Israel's 11-hour bombardment of Beirut that left more than 500 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians dead. Outraged by what they were witnessing, ACMEP's founders began a campaign to end their country's role in such attacks. They sought to halt the sale of American weapons and military aid to Israel.

Stevens, a fixer for The Washington Post at the time, was killed in the US Embassy bombing on April 18, 1983.

Twenty-five years later, Lamb has returned to Lebanon to author another installment in their campaign. "The Price We Pay" is available in Lebanese bookstores, and an Arabic version is due out soon, as is the second English edition in the US.

Not all Americans, then, are content to continue the alliance with Israel or to accept justifications like the one made by Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon last July 27 that "all those now in South Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hizbullah." Whether this is enough to put an end to America's frequently loading Israel's gun is another matter.

Source: The Daily Star