- Dr. Zunes is an assistant professor in the Department
of Politics at the University of San Francisco
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- Since 1992, the U.S. has offered Israel an additional
$2 billion annually in loan guarantees. Congressional researchers have
disclosed that between 1974 and 1989, $16.4 billion in U.S. military loans
were converted to grants and that this was the understanding from the beginning.
Indeed, all past U.S. loans to Israel have eventually been forgiven by
Congress, which has undoubtedly helped Israel's often-touted claim that
they have never defaulted on a U.S. government loan. U.S. policy since
1984 has been that economic assistance to Israel must equal or exceed Israel's
annual debt repayment to the United States. Unlike other countries, which
receive aid in quarterly installments, aid to Israel since 1982 has been
given in a lump sum at the beginning of the fiscal year, leaving the U.S.
government to borrow from future revenues. Israel even lends some of this
money back through U.S. treasury bills and collects the additional interest.
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- In addition, there is the more than $1.5 billion in private
U.S. funds that go to Israel annually in the form of $1 billion in private
tax-deductible donations and $500 million in Israeli bonds. The ability
of Americans to make what amounts to tax-deductible contributions to a
foreign government, made possible through a number of Jewish charities,
does not exist with any other country. Nor do these figures include short-
and long-term commercial loans from U.S. banks, which have been as high
as $1 billion annually in recent years.
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- Total U.S. aid to Israel is approximately one-third of
the American foreign-aid budget, even though Israel comprises just .001
percent of the world's population and already has one of the world's higher
per capita incomes. Indeed, Israel's GNP is higher than the combined GNP
of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. With a per capita
income of about $14,000, Israel ranks as the sixteenth wealthiest country
in the world; Israelis enjoy a higher per capita income than oil-rich Saudi
Arabia and are only slightly less well-off than most Western European countries.
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- AID does not term economic aid to Israel as development
assistance, but instead uses the term "economic support funding."
Given Israel's relative prosperity, U.S. aid to Israel is becoming increasingly
controversial. In 1994, Yossi Beilen, deputy foreign minister of Israel
and a Knesset member, told the Women's International Zionist organization,
"If our economic situation is better than in many of your countries,
how can we go on asking for your charity?"
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- http://palestinefreevoice.blogspot.com/2006/11/true-lies-about-us-aid-to-israeli-war.html
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