By Richard H. Curtiss
For many years the American media said that
"Israel receives $1.8 billion in military aid" or that
"Israel receives $1.2 billion in economic aid." Both
statements were true, but since they were never
combined to give us the complete total of annual
U.S. aid to Israel, they also were lies—true lies.
Recently Americans have begun to read and hear that
"Israel receives $3 billion in annual U.S. foreign aid."
That's true. But it's still a lie. The problem is that in
fiscal 1997 alone, Israel received from a variety of other
U.S. federal budgets at least $525.8 million above and
beyond its $3 billion from the foreign aid budget, and
yet another $2 billion in federal loan guarantees. So
the complete total of U.S. grants and loan guarantees
to Israel for fiscal 1997 was $5,525,800,000.
One can truthfully blame the mainstream media for never
digging out these figures for themselves, because none ever
have. They were compiled by the Washington Report on
Middle East Affairs. But the mainstream media certainly are
not alone. Although Congress authorizes America's foreign aid
total, the fact that more than a third of it goes to a country
smaller in both area and population than Hong Kong probably
never has been mentioned on the floor of the Senate or House.
Yet it's been going on for more than a generation.
Probably the only members of Congress who even suspect
the full total of U.S. funds received by Israel each year are
the privileged few committee members who actually mark it
up. And almost all members of the concerned committees are
Jewish, have taken huge campaign donations orchestrated by
Israel's Washington, DC lobby, the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or both. These congressional
committee members are paid to act, not talk. So they do and
they don't.
The same applies to the president, the secretary of state, and
the foreign aid administrator. They all submit a budget that
includes aid for Israel, which Congress approves, or increases,
but never cuts. But no one in the executive branch mentions that
of the few remaining U.S. aid recipients worldwide, all of the
others are developing nations which either make their military
bases available to the U.S., are key members of international
alliances in which the U.S. participates, or have suffered some
crippling blow of nature to their abilities to feed their people
such as earthquakes, floods or droughts.
Israel, whose troubles arise solely from its unwillingness to give
back land it seized in the 1967 war in return for peace with its
neighbors, does not fit those criteria. In fact, Israel's 1995 per
capita gross domestic product was $15,800. That put it below
Britain at $19,500 and Italy at $18,700 and just above Ireland
at $15,400 and Spain at $14,300.
All four of those European countries have contributed a very
large share of immigrants to the U.S., yet none has organized
an ethnic group to lobby for U.S. foreign aid. Instead, all four
send funds and volunteers to do economic development and
emergency relief work in other less fortunate parts of the world.
The lobby that Israel and its supporters have built in the
United States to make all this aid happen, and to ban discussion
of it from the national dialogue, goes far beyond AIPAC, with its
$15 million budget, its 150 employees, and its five or six
registered lobbyists who manage to visit every member of
Congress individually once or twice a year.
AIPAC, in turn, can draw upon the resources of the Conference
of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a roof
group set up solely to coordinate the efforts of some 52 national
Jewish organizations on behalf of Israel.
Among them are Hadassah, the Zionist women's organization,
which organizes a steady stream of American Jewish visitors
to Israel; the American Jewish Congress, which mobilizes
support for Israel among members of the traditionally
left-of-center Jewish mainstream; and the American Jewish
Committee, which plays the same role within the growing
middle-of-the-road and right-of-center Jewish community.
The American Jewish Committee also publishes Commentary,
one of the Israel lobby's principal national publications.
Perhaps the most controversial of these groups is B'nai B'rith's
Anti-Defamation League. Its original highly commendable
purpose was to protect the civil rights of American Jews.
Over the past generation, however, the ADL has regressed
into a conspiratorial and, with a $45 million budget, extremely
well-funded hate group.
In the 1980s, during the tenure of chairman Seymour Reich,
who went on to become chairman of the Conference of Presidents,
ADL was found to have circulated two annual fund-raising letters
warning Jewish parents against allegedly negative influences on
their children arising from the increasing Arab presence on
American university campuses.
More recently, FBI raids on ADL's Los Angeles and San Francisco
offices revealed that an ADL operative had purchased files stolen
from the San Francisco police department that a court had ordered
destroyed because they violated the civil rights of the individuals
on whom they had been compiled. ADL, it was shown, had added
the illegally prepared and illegally obtained material to its own
secret files, compiled by planting informants among
Arab-American, African-American, anti-Apartheid and
peace and justice groups.
The ADL infiltrators took notes of the names and remarks of
speakers and members of audiences at programs organized by
such groups. ADL agents even recorded the license plates of
persons attending such programs and then suborned
corrupt motor vehicles department employees or renegade
police officers to identify the owners.
Although one of the principal offenders fled the United States to
escape prosecution, no significant penalties were assessed. ADL's
Northern California office was ordered to comply with requests by
persons upon whom dossiers had been prepared to see their own
files, but no one went to jail and as yet no one has paid fines.
Not surprisingly, a defecting employee revealed in an article he
published in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs that
AIPAC, too, has such "enemies" files. They are compiled for use
by pro-Israel journalists like Steven Emerson and other so-called
"terrorism experts," and also by professional, academic or
journalistic rivals of the persons described for use in black-listing,
defaming, or denouncing them. What is never revealed is that
AIPAC's "opposition research" department, under the supervision
of Michael Lewis, son of famed Princeton University Orientalist
Bernard Lewis, is the source of this defamatory material.
But this is not AIPAC's most controversial activity. In the 1970s,
when Congress put a cap on the amount its members could earn
from speakers' fees and book royalties over and above their
salaries, it halted AIPAC's most effective ways of paying off
members for voting according to AIPAC recommendations.
Members of AIPAC's national board of directors solved the
problem by returning to their home states and creating
political action committees (PACs).
Most special interests have PACs, as do many major
corporations, labor unions, trade associations and
public-interest groups. But the pro-Israel groups went wild.
To date some 126 pro-Israel PACs have been registered, and
no fewer than 50 have been active in every national election
over the past generation.
An individual voter can give up to $2,000 to a candidate in
an election cycle, and a PAC can give a candidate up to
$10,000. However, a single special interest with 50 PACs
can give a candidate who is facing a tough opponent, and who
has voted according to its recommendations, up to half a
million dollars. That's enough to buy all the television time
needed to get elected in most parts of the country.
Even candidates who don't need this kind of money certainly
don't want it to become available to a rival from their own
party in a primary election, or to an opponent from the
opposing party in a general election. As a result, all but a
handful of the 535 members of the Senate and House vote as
AIPAC instructs when it comes to aid to Israel, or other aspects
of U.S. Middle East policy.
There is something else very special about AIPAC's network of
political action committees. Nearly all have deceptive names.
Who could possibly know that the Delaware Valley Good
Government Association in Philadelphia, San Franciscans
for Good Government in California, Cactus PAC in Arizona,
Beaver PAC in Wisconsin, and even Icepac in New York are
really pro-Israel PACs under deep cover?
Hiding AIPAC's Tracks
In fact, the congressmembers know it when they list the
contributions they receive on the campaign statements
they have to prepare for the Federal Election Commission.
But their constituents don't know this when they read these
statements. So just as no other special interest can put so
much "hard money" into any candidate's election campaign
as can the Israel lobby, no other special interest has gone
to such elaborate lengths to hide its tracks.
Although AIPAC, Washington's most feared special-interest
lobby, can hide how it uses both carrots and sticks to bribe or
intimidate members of Congress, it can't hide all of the results.
Anyone can ask one of their representatives in Congress for
a chart prepared by the Congressional Research Service, a
branch of the Library of Congress, that shows Israel received
$62.5 billion in foreign aid from fiscal year 1949 through fiscal
year 1996. People in the national capital area also can visit the
library of the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) in Rosslyn, Virginia, and obtain the same information,
plus charts showing how much foreign aid the U.S. has given
other countries as well.
Visitors will learn that in precisely the same 1949-1996 time
frame, the total of U.S. foreign aid to all of the countries of
sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean combined
was $62,497,800,000--almost exactly the amount given to
tiny Israel.
According to the Population Reference Bureau of Washington,
DC, in mid-1995 the sub-Saharan countries had a combined
population of 568 million. The $24,415,700,000 in foreign aid
they had received by then amounted to $42.99
per sub-Saharan African.
Similarly, with a combined population of 486 million, all of
the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean together
had received $38,254,400,000.
This amounted to $79 per person.
The per capita U.S. foreign aid to Israel's 5.8 million people
during the same period was $10,775.48. This meant that for
every dollar the U.S. spent on an African, it spent $250.65 on
an Israeli, and for every dollar it spent on someone from the
Western Hemisphere outside the United States, it spent
$214 on an Israeli.
Shocking Comparisons
These comparisons already seem shocking, but they are far
from the whole truth. Using reports compiled by Clyde Mark
of the Congressional Research Service and other sources,
freelance writer Frank Collins tallied for theWashington
Report all of the extra items for Israel buried in the budgets
of the Pentagon and other federal agencies in fiscal year 1993.
Washington Report news editor Shawn Twing did the same
thing for fiscal years 1996 and 1997.
They uncovered $1.271 billion in extras in FY 1993,
$355.3 million in FY 1996 and $525.8 million in FY 1997.
These represent an average increase of 12.2 percent over
the officially recorded foreign aid totals for the same fiscal
years, and they probably are not complete. It's reasonable
to assume, therefore, that a similar 12.2 percent hidden
increase has prevailed over all of the years Israel has
received aid.
As of Oct. 31, 1997 Israel will have received $3.05 billion in
U.S. foreign aid for fiscal year 1997 and $3.08 billion in foreign
aid for fiscal year 1998. Adding the 1997 and 1998 totals to
those of previous years since 1949 yields a total of
$74,157,600,000 in foreign aid grants and loans. Assuming
that the actual totals from other budgets average 12.2 percent
of that amount, that brings the grand total to $83,204,827,200.
But that's not quite all. Receiving its annual foreign aid
appropriation during the first month of the fiscal year,
instead of in quarterly installments as do other recipients,
is just another special privilege Congress has voted for Israel.
It enables Israel to invest the money in U.S. Treasury notes.
That means that the U.S., which has to borrow the money it
gives to Israel, pays interest on the money it has granted to
Israel in advance, while at the same time Israel is collecting
interest on the money. That interest to Israel from advance
payments adds another $1.650 billion to the total, making it
$84,854,827,200.That's the number you should write down
for total aid to Israel. And that's $14,346 each for each man,
woman and child in Israel.
It's worth noting that that figure does not include U.S.
government loan guarantees to Israel, of which Israel has
drawn $9.8 billion to date. They greatly reduce the interest
rate the Israeli government pays on commercial loans, and
they place additional burdens on U.S. taxpayers, especially if
the Israeli government should default on any of them. But
since neither the savings to Israel nor the costs to U.S. taxpayers
can be accurately quantified, they are excluded from consideration here.
Further, friends of Israel never tire of saying that Israel has never
defaulted on repayment of a U.S. government loan. It would be
equally accurate to say Israel has never been required to
repay a U.S. government loan. The truth of the matter is
complex, and designed to be so by those who seek to conceal
it from the U.S. taxpayer.
Most U.S. loans to Israel are forgiven, and many were made with the
explicit understanding that they would be forgiven before Israel was
required to repay them. By disguising as loans what in fact were
grants, cooperating members of Congress exempted Israel from
the U.S. oversight that would have accompanied grants. On other
loans, Israel was expected to pay the interest and eventually to
begin repaying the principal. But the so-called Cranston
Amendment, which has been attached by Congress to every
foreign aid appropriation since 1983, provides that
economic aid to Israel will never dip below the amount
Israel is required to pay on its outstanding loans. In short,
whether U.S. aid is extended as grants or loans to Israel,
it never returns to the Treasury.
Israel enjoys other privileges. While most countries receiving
U.S. military aid funds are expected to use them for U.S. arms,
ammunition and training, Israel can spend part of these funds
on weapons made by Israeli manufacturers. Also, when it
spends its U.S. military aid money on U.S. products, Israel
frequently requires the U.S. vendor to buy components or
materials from Israeli manufacturers. Thus, though Israeli
politicians say that their own manufacturers and exporters
are making them progressively less dependent upon U.S.
aid, in fact those Israeli manufacturers and exporters are
heavily subsidized by U.S. aid.
Although it's beyond the parameters of this study, it's worth
mentioning that Israel also receives foreign aid from some
other countries. After the United States, the principal donor
of both economic and military aid to Israel is Germany.
By far the largest component of German aid has been in the
form of restitution payments to victims of Nazi attrocities.
But there also has been extensive German military assistance
to Israel during and since the Gulf war, and a variety of
German educational and research grants go to Israeli
institutions. The total of German assistance in all of these
categories to the Israeli government, Israeli individuals and
Israeli private institutions has been some $31 billion or
$5,345 per capita, bringing the per capita total of U.S. and
German assistance combined to almost $20,000 per Israeli.
Since very little public money is spent on the more than 20
percent of Israeli citizens who are Muslim or Christian, the
actual per capita benefits received by Israel's Jewish citizens
would be considerably higher.
True Cost to U.S. Taxpayers
Generous as it is, what Israelis actually got in U.S. aid is
considerably less than what it has cost U.S. taxpayers to
provide it. The principal difference is that so long as the U.S.
runs an annual budget deficit, every dollar of aid the U.S.
gives Israel has to be raised through U.S. government
borrowing.
Frank Collins estimated the costs of this interest, based upon
prevailing interest rates for every year since 1949. I have
updated this by applying a very conservative 5 percent
interest rate for subsequent years, and confined the amount
upon which the interest is calculated to grants, not loans
or loan guarantees.
On this basis the $84.8 billion in grants, loans and commodities
Israel has received from the U.S. since 1949 cost the U.S. an
additional $49,936,880,000 in interest.
There are many other costs of Israel to U.S. taxpayers, such
as most or all of the $45.6 billion in U.S. foreign aid to Egypt
since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979 (compared to
$4.2 billion in U.S. aid to Egypt for the preceding 26 years).
U.S. foreign aid to Egypt, which is pegged at two-thirds of
U.S. foreign aid to Israel, averages $2.2 billion per year.
There also have been immense political and military costs to the
U.S. for its consistent support of Israel during Israel's
half-century of disputes with the Palestinians and all of its
Arab neighbors. In addition, there have been the
approximately $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees and
perhaps $20 billion in tax-exempt contributions made to
Israel by American Jews in the nearly half-century since
Israel was created.
Even excluding all of these extra costs, America's $84.8 billion in
aid to Israel from fiscal years 1949 through 1998, and the
interest the U.S. paid to borrow this money, has cost
U.S. taxpayers $134.8 billion, not adjusted for inflation. Or
, put another way, the nearly $14,630 every one of 5.8 million
Israelis received from the U.S. government by Oct. 31, 1997
has cost American taxpayers $23,240 per Israeli.
It would be interesting to know how many of those American
taxpayers believe they and their families have received as
much from the U.S. Treasury as has everyone who has chosen
to become a citizen of Israel. But it's a question that will
never occur to the American public because, so long as
America's mainstream media, Congress and president
maintain their pact of silence, few Americans will ever know
the true cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers.
Richard Curtiss, a retired U.S. foreign service officer, is the
executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
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