Opinion Editorials, February 2012

The 2013 US Budget:

Difficult Cuts for Americans, Gravy for Israel

By Josh Ruebner

Redress, Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, February 27, 2011

Josh Ruebner argues that while the Obama administration is making budget cuts that are impoverishing and threatening the health and wellbeing of Americans, it is simultaneously increasing the US taxpayers’ subsidy to the Israeli war machine, helping it retain and colonize illegally-occupied Palestinian territories and commit grievous violations of Palestinian human rights – all contrary to US foreign policy objectives.

Speaking before students at Northern Virginia Community College on 13 February, President Obama unveiled his 2013 budget request, in which he proposed “some difficult cuts that, frankly, I wouldn’t normally make if they weren’t absolutely necessary. But they are.” These budget cuts are unavoidable, the president argued, because “the truth is we’re going to have to make some tough choices in order to put this country back on a more sustainable fiscal path”. In a sad commentary on the misplaced priorities of the Obama administration, however, these “tough choices” will affect the delivery of basic services to US citizens while the Israeli military hits the jackpot at taxpayer expense.

As part of its budget request, the White House released a 205-page document detailing the cuts, consolidations and savings the Obama administration is proposing. These proposed cuts include 5 million dollars to the US Department of Agriculture to analyse food-borne pathogens, potentially making the US food supply even less safe than it already is after 30 people died last year as a result of eating listeria-infected cantaloupe; a 359-million-dollar cut to the Environmental Protection Agency to provide grants to states for water infrastructure projects when an estimated 1.7 million Americans shockingly lack access to basic water and sanitation services, according to the Water Infrastructure Network; and a whopping 360-billion-dollar cut over 10 years in Medicare, Medicaid and other health programmes, even though the World Health Organization rates the US health system as only 37th globally in health care performance.

Given these “difficult cuts” to the budget, it is easy to agree with Israeli journalist Ran Dagoni, who wrote last year in the Israeli business newspaper Globes, that the “time has come to bid goodbye to the military aid that the US extends to Israel, that generous package that enables the Israeli taxpayer to share the cost of procuring equipment for the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] with the US taxpayer”. After all, Israel – the 28th wealthiest country in the world in 2011, with a per capita gross domestic product greater than South Korea and Saudi Arabia, according to the International Monetary Fund – hardly needs US charity more than we need safe food, clean water and health care.

Yet, instead of reducing or even just freezing levels of US military aid to Israel, President Obama wants to provide Israel with 3.1 billion dollars of US taxpayer-funded weapons next year, an increase from 3.075 billion dollars in 2012, making the State Department’s claim that this budget request “maintains last year’s record funding levels” for Israel both immodest and inaccurate. By comparison, of the nine other Middle East countries receiving US military aid, the budget request for eight of them is unchanged from last year’s budget while the request for Tunisia declined.

Were Israel using these weapons for legitimate purposes and to further US foreign policy objectives, then perhaps a persuasive case could be constructed for why the United States does not need to make any budgetary “tough choices” when it comes to Israel. However, Israel misuses US weapons, in violation of US laws, to commit grave and systematic human rights abuses against Palestinians in furtherance of its 44-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, and its illegal colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. From 2000 to 2009, the United States provided Israel with more than 24 billion dollars of military aid and delivered more than 670 million weapons, rounds of ammunition, and related military equipment. During that same period, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, Israel killed at least 2,969 Palestinians “who did not take part in the hostilities and were killed by Israeli security forces (not including the objects of targeted killings)."

Israel often kills Palestinians with these same US weapons provided at taxpayer expense. Such was likely the case last December when an Israeli soldier fired a high-velocity tear gas canister at 28-year-old Mustafa Tamimi, a resident of the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, who was protesting against Israeli settlers seizing land on which his village’s natural spring is located. The canister, fired from an Israeli armoured vehicle, struck the activist in the face. He died the next day from his wounds. Strong evidence exists that the tear gas canister that killed Mustafa was made by Combined Systems, Inc. of Jamestown, Pennsylvania, and likely could have been one of more than 595,000 tear gas canisters and other “riot control” equipment, valued at more than 20.5 million dollars, which were funded by US taxpayers and given to the Israeli military between 2000 and 2009.

Not only does US military aid to Israel make US taxpayers complicit in Israel’s human rights abuses of Palestinians; it also acts as a disincentive for Israel to work in tandem with the Obama administration to achieve stated US foreign policy goals of freezing Israeli settlement expansion, ending Israeli military occupation, and establishing a Palestinian state and a just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The United States cannot afford the moral and economic costs of providing ever-increasing amounts of US taxpayer-funded weapons to Israel. In this era of “tough choices” for the budget, here is a clear-cut example of a subsidy that should be ended.

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah & ccun.org.

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