Israel is such a special place that it can even turn Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) into a fiscal conservative. At the J Street conference this week, Sanders discussed cutting aid to Israel.
“We have the right to say to the Israeli government that … our people believe in human rights … in democracy, we will not accept authoritarianism or racism … we demand that the Israeli government sit down with the Palestinian people and negotiate an agreement that works for all parties … I would use the leverage — $3.8 billion is a lot of money, and we cannot give it carte blanche to the Israeli government.”
Though his blood pressure seems to rise when talking about aid to Israel, he is much more at ease providing <a href="https://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-latin-america/">aid</a> to Latin American nations “even when we may not agree with everything they do.” Nonetheless, Sanders is certainly right: The U.S. absolutely has the right to dole out money as it chooses. But it is worth taking a stroll down memory lane to recall why it is that the United States began giving aid — both monetary transfers and weapons sales — to Israel.
Origins of U.S. Aid to Israel
Historically, there are <a href="http://data.statesmanship.org.il/site/2014/US%20aid%20to%20Israel%20new.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3N_l0U4aV5-tVfCm4gvRoe_kvkKSfXD9YUot1KjN9kwE4kBxIiMTSmTAs">two</a> main reasons:
<ol>
<li>Strategic Asset: In the late 1950s, Israel was recognized as a potential strategic asset that could advance U.S. interests in the region. This recognition has only grown over the years. Suffice it to mention Israel’s destruction of Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs over the decades, and Israel’s value becomes self-evident.</li>
<li>Nuclear Weapons: Once the United States understood that Israel had nuclear weapons (Israel’s policy is ambiguous on the subject), it wanted to ensure that Israel would never incorporate those weapons in its arsenal — and thus to provide it with the necessary means to fight and win with conventional weapons against Israel’s quantitively larger enemies surrounding them. In a 1987 interview to the Christian Science Monitor, Amos Rubin, economic adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, echoed this point: “If left to its own, Israel will have no choice but to fall back on a riskier defense which will endanger itself and the world at-large. … To enable Israel to abstain from dependence on nuclear arms calls for two to three billion dollars per year in U.S. aid.”</li>
</ol>
History of U.S. Aid to Israel
The first major weapons sales from the U.S. to Israel happened in the early 1960s, when it agreed to sell anti-aircraft missiles to Israel. In the mid-1960s, the U.S. agreed to sell tanks, and in the late 1960s, aircraft. Aid in the form of military grants, as opposed to loans, began in the early 1980s after the Camp David Agreements with Egypt. Since 1997, Israel has been steadily receiving $3 billion in aid annually; with the last agreement signed during the Obama administration, the dollar value was slightly raised, but with a few pernicious caveats added.
Israel is often touted as receiving the most foreign aid of any country, which is true but also misleading. U.S. army installments in the Yellow Sea, Korea, southeast Asia, Persian Gulf, and all throughout Europe are a few examples of the massive military investment expended to help keep global peace. These expenditures come from the military budget, as opposed to the foreign aid budget, involve boots on the ground, and cost far more than the aid to Israel. This point is made in a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/36-Billion-Dollar-Bargain-Assistance/dp/0231071965">book</a> called “The 36 Billion Dollar Bargain,” where a cost-benefit analysis is conducted concerning the U.S. aid to Israel vis-à-vis other areas in the world.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that it might not be a wise idea for the government of Israel to reassess its need for aid from the United States, and initiate ways to restructure or ultimately reduce the aid.
Unintended Consequences of Cutting U.S. Aid to Israel
For Bernie and friends, who get ulcers when thinking about aid to Israel, it might be prudent to think of potential ramifications that would result from cutting aid to Israel — for whatever reason they may conjure.
If they are unhappy with Israel’s policies now, they will only become unhappier. Israel’s reliance on U.S. aid and support can sometimes distort its military policy. Instead of crushing Hamas, for example, Israel fights with weaker, more symbolic policies and rely heavily on Iron Dome and other missile defense systems in lieu of more concrete deterrence.
In a scenario without U.S. aid, Israel would be unable to afford unending cycles of violence with the Palestinians and other enemies. Today, the Palestinians send a $10 kite bomb and Israel responds with a tank shell; Palestinians send a homemade rocket and Israel responds with an F-16. And those costs are peanuts compared to the three major Israeli military operations with Gaza over the last decade. Squeezed on aid, Israel would be forced to take decisive action in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and other places. It would need to actually win wars and do so quickly. Israel’s policies would become that much harsher toward the Palestinians, as there would be no room for error.
Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria, as well as its blockade on Gaza is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytWmPqY8TE0">sound policy</a> and backed up by <a href="http://jcpa.org/article/status-of-settlements-in-international-law/">international law</a>. Yet the dangers of the Middle East may not be clear to someone sunbathing on Lake Champlain (Vermont), or for someone who put <a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/">foreign policy</a> as the 17th out of 31 policy topics on his campaign website. Indeed, Israel does not have the luxury of putting <a href="https://corybooker.com/issues/">animal rights</a> as the top policy issue, as another 2020 Democrat did.
Aid to Israel Benefits the U.S.
In reality, military aid to Israel has generated many security and economic benefits for the United States. Too bad for Israel that Sanders probably hates all the American companies who have benefited. From weapons improvements, increased product sales, close cooperation between the militaries, and research and development cooperation, aid to Israel has not been a handout — it is has been a good <a href="https://breakingdefense.com/2018/09/aid-to-israel-isnt-foreign-aid-its-an-investment/">investment</a> for the U.S.
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Gideon Israel is the founder and president of the <a href="https://www.jw-center.org/">Jerusalem-Washington Center</a>, which works to strengthen the relationship between the U.S. and Israel.

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ISRAEL: How Bernie Sanders Could Actually Hurt The Palestinians

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Last week, Trump Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt announced that he was leaving his position. While still too early determine, Jason Greenblatt&#8217;s biggest achievement may prove to be his involvement in a group that facilitated the death of the Oslo &#8220;peace process&#8221; framework and created the space for new paradigms for addressing the broader Arab-Israel conflict.
Skeptics may query: Almost three years of the Trump administration have passed and only the economic part of the so-called &#8220;deal of the century&#8221; has been revealed; what have Jared Kushner, Greenblatt, and company accomplished?
Two and half decades ago, the Oslo Accords were signed. On paper, it was meant to be a temporary framework for a final status agreement that would be agreed upon within five years. In reality, it was the beginning of an industry, albeit with good intentions, that has consistently undermined Israel&#8217;s legitimacy and distanced any chance for an agreement between the Palestinians and Israelis for at least a generation. This industry is made up of think tanks, consultants, NGOs, international organizations, career bureaucrats who have made their living on the false premises that an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is just a matter of straightening out small details. It&#8217;s an industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars — private donors and government appropriations that have enriched the wrong people, given false impressions of the likelihood of a settlement, stimulated Palestinian violence, and are now responsible for the political obliteration of the Israeli Left.
The Oslo industry is nothing less than a carrier group sailing in the open waters, guarding in its holy of holies the &#8220;land-for-peace&#8221; paradigm. Its behemoth strength was even able to overtake the Bush administration, which at one point tried to change the paradigm. The Oslo carrier group quickly swallowed up the idea and regurgitated it with a plan that fit its own paradigm.
The Oslo industry has retained its hegemony as the only game in town for the past two decades — so much so that differing ideas and alternate paradigms are met with suspicion. Having been demonized and relegated as the propaganda of radicals, mainstream publications rarely entertain these alternate ideas.
Needless to say, this industry could not have consolidated its power toward the end of the 1990s without help from the Israeli government to keep the Oslo framework on life support as buses blew up, pedestrians were gunned down, and cafes were ravaged. Indeed, as Oslo was about to utter its last words, the Israeli government shocked it back to life with a 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza that bewildered many.
Into this hegemony and industry entered Kushner, Greenblatt, and their group. While the details of the political side of the Trump plan have yet to be revealed, the economic plan — lengthy and detailed — gives insight that this plan was a case study as to how to create the foundations for a prosperous society. It was the culmination of a two-year learning session trying to draw on the lessons of history. The input of all players was to have a stake in making this plan work.
To the Palestinian Authority&#8217;s (PA) dismay, the PA realized that it was actually being asked to provide constructive solutions that could help its people, and to internalize that it doesn&#8217;t possess an inalienable right to all of Judea and Samaria (i.e., the &#8220;West Bank&#8221;). Unlike past peace plans, there was no predetermined outcomes, and there was also a penalty for not participating.
By writing a lengthy plan, both economically and politically, and including all the regional actors who bear responsibility for perpetuating the Palestinian quagmire, the Trump peace plan will become a paradigm that future presidential administrations will be unable to ignore. It is not an executive summary that can be easily dismissed as recyclable ideas regurgitated from two decades of failures.
The strength in the plan is that there was a real effort to find solutions — and to base it on empirical evidence. Ideology didn&#8217;t guide the plan; rather, it has been an effort in conflict resolution where all sides are consulted. Though future administrations may reflexively shun anything that came out of the Trump administration, intellectually honest statesmen may just be tempted to enter a secure room while nobody is watching, learn the plan, and try to build on some of the ideas presented therein.
To be brutally honest, the Trump plan will probably fail, because the Palestinian Authority — or any Palestinian leadership — cannot make peace at this juncture, and the generosity of Israeli governments to relinquish large swaths of its heartland has substantially contracted since then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s 97% withdrawal offer in 2001. In fact, it&#8217;s the opposite: Palestinian terror, in all its malicious forms — missiles, mortars, suicide bombers, bus bombs, random shootings, lynchings, kidnappings, and more — has convinced many Israelis that there is no peace partner.
If one were looking for an overnight revolution to change the Oslo paradigm to one that has the potential to work, it&#8217;s not going to happen. But should the Trump administration receive a second term, this plan, spearheaded by Kushner and Greenblatt, will become the beginning of a paradigm change that will facilitate a process for more realistic ideas to succeed.
The Trump plan will offer new proposals grounded in reality that will open the waters for new ideas and paradigms to be built upon its foundations — a clear and present danger to the Oslo framework. Metaphorically, the plan will become a group of torpedoes hitting the hull of aircraft carrier Oslo. And once that happens, and while that happens, the many ideas and paradigms which have been disparaged, shunned and kept at bay, will begin to occupy the waters of public discourse. This will lead to a more earnest and reality-based discussion of the ideas that can provide for a better future in the Middle East. When that happens, we can look back and say that it was the hard work of Kushner, Greenblatt, and company that first put this process in motion.
Gideon Israel is the founder and president of the <a href="https://www.jw-center.org">Jerusalem-Washington Center</a>, which works to strengthen the relationship between the U.S. and Israel.

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ISRAEL: Jason Greenblatt Has Done Crucial Work For The Trump Administration

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ISRAEL: How Bernie Sanders Could Actually Hurt The Palestinians

ISRAEL: Jason Greenblatt Has Done Crucial Work For The Trump Administration