The US gives Israel record military aid annually, and that aid is always growing. One of the biggest avenues for growth is funding for Israel’s missile defense systems. This year, Congress has committed $705 million to this scheme, up from just about $550 million last year.
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman issued a statement of thanks to the US Congress for the funding, saying that Israel’s enemies would be “surprised” at how good the missile defense systems work with all this money.
While US officials have often emphasized the money going to longer-range missile defense for Israel, in practice much of the money goes to extremely short-range Iron Dome system, which is useful primarily for shooting down the makeshift rockets from the Gaza Strip.
This has been costly, with Iron Dome interceptors costing $50,000 each, and shooting down trivially cheap pieces of metal. Israel wasted $1 million worth of these interceptors over the weekend when the system went off on its own and started firing wildly into the air.
No rockets hit, so some Israeli media concluded intercepts were “successful.” In reality, the Iron Dome system picked up some gunfire in Gaza, mistook the bullets for missiles, and just started firing like crazy. Israeli officials say this is “not a bug.”
Surely Adelson, Saban, Ellison, Arad, Streisand and the rest of them can come up with that money on their own instead of the American taxpayer having to pay for that crap.
The central bank is not American. It is owned by the group members of whom you just mentioned are connected. Its primary owners are in London and Europe. Please understand that it’s not American taxpayer money. They did not create it and have no say in where it is distributed. This is American law re: Federal Reserve System.
Sure, but in spite of all the money-printing that is going on, the US government still taxes people, especially the middle class and uses that money in ways that go against the interests of the US and of the middle class.
Imagine what $705M could do for the citizens of the US – you know, the people who paid their taxes.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the money US taxpayers are required to submit was actually used to benefit the US taxpayers?
I totally agree with you. The thing is how to put an end to Israel’s hold on our government?
Register AIPAC and all the other Israeli government extensions as foreign agents – and then vote all their enablers out of Congress.
You’d have an empty Congress! Perhaps you would be better off, when you see the “laws”passed and consider the 99% of Americans who never benefit.
telling aipac to register as a foreign agent got jfk killed.
The good thing about helping fund things like this in Israel, is that then Israel is happy to share its enemies with us.
“Defense”, just like the US “defense”, used for offensive takeovers of the land of others while designating any response as “terrorism”.
ISRAEL FIRST!
MIGA – Make Israel Great Again!
The United States has become a pariah nation with it’s continued support of a quote “thuggish police state”, a “despotic theocracy” and “the vanguard of a pernicious empire that is expanding its power and influence in the Middle East”unquote. Those were Mike Pompeo’s words, but he described Iran in stead of Israel. Obviously Mr. Pompeo is misinformed and our gullible, corrupt politicians in Washington will continue to support this “pernicious empire” with our hard earned tax payer money. Our policies are unconscionable and highly deplorable. The USA should NOT give ONE SINGLE DIME ever again to Israel.
those who voted for this must be immediately terminated for violating their job descriptions.