Funding violence

The United States in 2016 signed a 10-year agreement with Israel promising to give $38 billion in taxpayer funds as military aid to a nation that already possesses one of the most sophisticated and well-armed militaries in the world. That’s roughly equivalent to “two tuition-free years for low- and middle-income students at historically Black, tribal and other minority-serving colleges” in the US, and more than one-third of the cost of making community college entirely free for Americans. But instead of buying Americans a free college education, those tax dollars are fueling mass killings of Palestinians.

Saree Makdisi, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA, and author of Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, explained to me in an interview that “the Israelis literally, materially, couldn’t do what they’re doing without the supply of weapons that comes from the US.” One estimate for the amount of aid that the US has cumulatively given Israel is nearly $150 billion. That’s enough to wipe out all of California’s student loan debts, freeing up nearly 4 million Californians from a financial chokehold.

Although corporate media outlets like to describe Israel’s assaults on Palestinians through euphemisms like ‘dispute’, ‘conflict’, or ‘clashes’, the lens we really ought to use is how our tax dollars are being weaponized. More specifically, do we want our tax dollars to be used to kill hundreds of Palestinians or to wipe out college debt for millions of Americans? It really is that simple. “Why are we spending money on somebody else’s war of aggression when we have desperate needs here at home in the US?” asked Makdisi.

One seemingly well-meaning analyst wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the best thing Americans could do about the ‘conflict’ is to ‘stay out of it’. Rob Eshman, the national editor of the Forward, made absolutely no mention in his op-ed of US military aid to Israel while he exhorted readers to question “whether taking sides alone, in the long run, helps achieve an end to the violence.” Eshman’s principle is sound even as his avoidance of relevant facts reveals his own bias. The United States as a whole could literally “stay out of it” by ending military aid to Israel, and potentially staunch the relentless killing of Palestinians.

US military aid to Israel is considered so sacrosanct that most commentators and media pundits choose to ignore it, accepting it as a natural aspect of American foreign relations.

Excerpted: ‘It’s Past Time to End U.S. Funding of Israeli Violence’

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