In his recent State of the Union address,
President Obama pledged to “go through the budget line by line to
eliminate programs that we can’t afford and don’t work.” One week later,
he sent his FY2011 budget request to Congress, which included a
record-breaking $3 billion in military aid to Israel.
This requested increase in U.S. weapons to Israel – part of a ten-year
$30 billion agreement signed between the two countries in 2007 –
qualifies on both counts as a program that the United States can’t
afford and that doesn’t work in establishing a just and lasting peace
between Israelis and Palestinians.
Data published recently by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
shows that U.S. military aid to Israel comes at a financial and moral
price that this country cannot afford to pay. Its website reveals that
this same $3 billion earmark for Israel could be used instead to provide
more than 364,000 low-income households with affordable housing
vouchers, or to retrain 498,000 workers for green jobs, or to provide
early reading programs to 887,000 at-risk students, or to provide access
to primary health care services for more than 24 million uninsured
Americans.
If U.S. weapons were going to Israel for a good purpose, then perhaps a
coherent guns versus butter debate would be appropriate. However, Israel
repeatedly misuses U.S. weapons t… >>>
