Since October 7, 2023, the US has provided Israel with more than $22 billion in military aid, Israel Hayom reported Wednesday, citing data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The stepped-up US military aid to Israel has supported the genocidal war in Gaza, Israel’s war in Lebanon, military operations in the occupied West Bank, and attacks on Syria, Iran, and Yemen.
According to SIPRI, from 2019 to 2023, US weapons accounted for 69% of Israel’s arms imports. Since October 7, that number has risen to 78%, demonstrating Israel’s significant reliance on US military aid.
In October 2024, Brown University’s Costs of War Project said the US had provided Israel with $17.9 billion in military aid in the first year of the onslaught in Gaza. Since then, Israel has signed a $5.2 billion contract with Boeing to purchase F-15 fighter jets, a deal funded by the US, bringing total US military aid since October 7, 2023, to over $22 billion.
The Costs of War report also said US military operations in the Middle East to support Israel cost American taxpayers at least $4.8 billion, a number that must have also risen since the US has continued to bomb Yemen and deployed a THAAD air defense system to Israel.
Israeli officials have been candid about how reliant they are on US support. An Israeli Air Force official told Haaretz that without US military aid, Israel would not be able to sustain operations in Gaza for more than a few months.
While Biden played along with the left, pretending to oppose Israel's aggression, he gave Israel everything they wanted, and stopped them from doing nothing. I read that the aid is actually $28 billion, including the regular $4 billion a year. Biden gave them 5-7 times more aid than normal.
Meanwhile, anti-Trumpers claim Trump is a zionist tool. But Trump has criticized Netanyahu severely, and wanted the fighting to end.
Based on what I see here, the aid, the actions, the posturing, Israel is doing as much as it can before Trump arrives. That is why Israel has been bombing Syria hard, for no reason.
He didn't. Bliken ("Biden" never had any power in his senile dementia) never pretended to oppose Israel in anything: since day one the White House made very clear that their backing of Israel was total… and that cost Kamala the election, because who can be leftist and support the worst genocide in 80 years?
Trump is of course yet another Zionist and Zionist oligarchs have backed him even more than Biden/Harris. Adelson is particularly notorious but overall the right wing has less problems with supporting racism, colonialism and genocide than the left, it's more coherent with their ideological foundations.
Trump used to be best friend with Netanyahu, Zionists are in general (at least in Palestine) happier with Trump than with the Dems, no matter how hard these have backed Israel in everything, including the relentless genocide. The only thing that may have changed is that, in his previous incarnation, the in-law proconsul for the Middle East used to be an Israeli (Ivanka's husband) and now it is a Lebanese. It's unclear if that will make any difference at all.
To call the massacre of civilians in Gaza the worst genocide in 80 years is a bit of a stretch. The period includes the Vietnam/Cambodian/Laotian genocide. the Rwandan genocide, the Bengali genocide in East Pakistan as well as the genocides in Darfur, Sudan and the Congo. So there have been genocides with more victims. But the documentation of the Gaza genocide by al-Jazeera and courageous Palestinian journalists who are risking death to get the story out is unprecedented. What is also unprecedented is that this is the most "democratic" genocide in history. The members of the leading ethnic group in Israel repeatedly and knowingly voted for genocide and apartheid before that. In other genocides the world held the leaders responsible. But anyone who served in the IDF inside Gaza during the current genocide deserves to be prosecuted as a war criminal unless they can prove they opposed the war.
IDK, maybe it’s debatable but I don’t think most of those you mention were true “genocides”, even if they were “democides”. Genocide is the intentional destruction of a nation, ethnicity or people and none of your instances are in that category (except arguably the “Rwandan genocide”, which IMO was little more than class/caste war, as the Tutsis are the landowner upper caste of Rwandan society, much as the Brahmins and Ksatriyas are the upper caste of Indian society and not a true ethnicity).
At least in my memory (and I was born in 1968), nothing at all compares with the ongoing Palestinian genocide, which aims to murder at least 2.3 million people in Gaza (and has probably already killed half a million, the “official count” is not at all even a body count anymore as the authorities of Gaza have been all but destroyed and most of the dead pile up under the rubble or under the land the Zionist bulldozers pulled on them, sometimes when still alive). And I say “at least” because I’m persuaded that the 4 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Jerusalem are next in the final solution plan that the USA and Israel have devised.
I guess you were not old enough to remember the insanity of the war against the people of Vietnam that included levels of deliberate mass murder not seen since WWII or since (thankfully). The Bengalis were the underclass in Pakistan, but they were the majority and their slaughter was horrific until the Bengali resistance and the Indian invading army put an end to it. The Palestinian genocide is the most publicized genocide in history. But the massacres in Africa since Rwanda definitely qualify as genocides. And the worst genocide is always the one where your relatives were among the victims. Genocides are not planned in advance. They develop out of a hatred and dehumanization of the victims coupled with frustration by the oppressor. Even Hitler did not plan the Nazi Holocaust in advance. It developed step by step as the war turned against the Germans. In Vietnam the persistence of the resistance led to unimaginable atrocities as the US military and political leadership simply could not accept defeat by a third world national liberation movement.
I’m 56, so Vietnam happened when I was very young or not even born yet. However I’m aware of the brutality of Vietnam/Indochina colonial war and also to some extent of the brutal Pakistani terrorism against Bangladeshis, yet these are not genocides, because genocide entails the intent of fully or partly destroying a nation and neither Vietnamese nor East Bengalis were ever in danger of such total annihilation in full or part. The wars were for their submission to or liberation from foreign oppression but not existential in the way that the genocides of Palestine or also Bosnia, Armenia, etc. have been.
If anything I’d compare with Bosnia but even that was limited in comparison with what is happening in Palestine right now under our noses. The USA and Israel clearly intent to annihilate the Palestinian People and are largely achieving it. It’s the worst genocide since the Jewish Holocaust and only compares with this one in dimension and horror.
Right on Maju!
All wars are fought for material wealth, the Zionists want the land that belongs to the Palestinian people, and the Americans want to control natural resources oil and other natural minerals. It is never for ideals like freedom, democracy, human rights of any kind, it is always about material wealth.
But ideals are sold to justify to them and their parents what young men are expected to die for.
Revolutionary wars are fought for both, ask in Rojava.
Ideals are the tools needed to sell bloody wars to motivate and justify the slaughter for the young conscripts who are forced to do the bloody deeds.
True, but revolutionaries don't fight for ideals, human rights are reality for them, something that was taken away from them like their properties.
For way too many such things are not just “ideals” but worse: “utopian ideals”.
You do have a point: I sometimes say that communists are “radical conservatives”, “ultra-reactionaries” even, because we want to restore pre-class society and not just restore disgusting and obsolete patriarchal landownerism-warlordism as your typical “conservative” wants. These probably feel that they’ve lost something (Capitalism decodes Landownerist traditions and corrupts its institutions) but they can’t even conceive “primitive communism”, so brainwashed they are.
I think it takes insane, made regimes to wage war, common sense would prevent every war, no material wealth, more land and more natural resources can justify the human losses of life and all the suffering and destruction, buying what is needed is cheaper than any war. Greed and megalomania must pay a big role to motivate war mongers. What makes them tick?
Release all hostages,and Israel out of Gaza-very simple. The brave Iraeli soldiers who wentinto Gaza to save hostages are heroes.
The Israeli soldiers who are murdering civilians in Gaza are war criminals and should join Netanyahu and Gallant at the Hague and share cells with them in prison.
And back to 1967 (or 1948??) borders? Empty all settlements? Free and unencumbered motion in and out of Gaza?
No more occupation?
"Very simple?"
My guess is that your offer is "very simple"
but it is not justice but amounts to going back to the equivalent of the Stanford Prison experiment.
Going back to the 1967 or 1948 borders is not going to happen. I do agree that Israel should leave Gaza once the kidnapped victims are released. And once Israel leaves, motion in and out Gaza should be free via the sea or if Egypt allows it via Egypt. The border between Gaza and Israel should remains closed with nothing crossing the border. No people, no goods, no electricity, no water should ever cross the border.
Get real, Gaza is and was hermetically sealed by air, water, and land like no other prison on earth.
It takes an insane mind to repeat what caused the outbreak in the first place, do you understand what human rights are and self defense?
I forgot, for people like you, Palestinians are not human. Why not, is their blood not red like yours and they feel no pain?
No it was not hermetically sealed. 10,000 people from Gaza worked in Israel every day before Oct 7, 2023. You can look that fact up.
In my solution, Gaza will be free to live as they chose. Just don't attack Israel and don't depend on Israel for anything. True freedom.
You should be asking Hamas why they don't consider Palestinians as human. They use them as shield and their deaths as propaganda points. Hamas would rather hold less than 100 Israelis as prisoners and bargaining chips at a daily price of 20 plus Palestinians killed. Hamas is willing to let them die rather than surrender and end their suffering. Of course the well off, nearly 100,000, Palestinians simply left Gaza while the poor Palestinians suffer.
You make no sense at all, go kick Trump out of his Mar-a-Lago in Fl. Tell him to get out because you want it. He will tell you, come take it and I kiss your A**.
Americans kill people if they wring the wrong doorbell, don't you know that? Your home is your castle, but that is not true for Palestinians because they are not human, their blood is green, they feel no pain. You are willing to watch the butchery of a nation and give a standing ovation to the butcher.
"forgot, for people like you, Palestinians are not human. Why not, is their blood not red like yours and they feel no pain?"
good try, but pretty sure 'shared humanity' is way beyond an emotionally stunted geek like tb…
Going back to the 1967 or 1948 borders are the options that would allow the survival of Israel as a Jewish supremacist ethno-state.
There are other options, but none that allow that particular outcome.
Going back to the 1967 or 1948 borders are the options that would allow the survival of Israel as a Jewish supremacist ethno-state.
There are other options, but none that allow that particular outcome.
Bombing and killing, denying food, water, medical care, shelter and more to unarmed civilians including babies does not heroes make.
It takes cowardly, sadistic, evil Jeffrey Dahmer multiplied by the thousands.
The same brave Israelis who fired on unarmed captured Israelis waving white flags? The same ones who snipe children, medics, and journalists? The same ones who targeted the World Kitchen convoy?
Israel should release Palestinian Prisoners that have been held hostage long before 10/7/23, that led to Hamas holding Israeli Hostages. Bibi is more interested in war and genocide than getting hostages released, Israeli and foreign, held by Hamas.
That is not what they went in for. It is all about the Gaza property for which they are expected to possibly die for.
The beach property is what BlackRock is waiting for, the real war booty. And there are the construction corporations and the profits they will make removing mountains of rubble and building hotels and resorts. Can't wait.
Who and where are these brave Israelis?
The IDF consists of scum bags, maybe there are a few exceptions, would you know of any?
"But anyone who served in the IDF inside Gaza during the current genocide deserves to be prosecuted as a war criminal unless they can prove they opposed the war' That is nonsense. How is the bombing of Gaza any different than bombing of Germany and Japan during WW2?
Two wrongs don't make a right. The holocaust does not make Gaza right.
Morally they are the same, it is all about killing, but Gaza is more brutal and sadistic.
It is called war. War is never and never will be morally right. When Hamas made the foolish decision to go war with Israel on Oct 7, Hamas leaders knew that Israel would hit back hard. But Hamas wanted their one day killing spree.
That is what you believe, who told you that is all Hamas wanted?
Israelis want their killing spree, regardless how long it will take to get the beach and the oil. They say so.
You know, why are the Palestinians wrong fighting for what belongs to them? Hamas was foolish to fight for real human rights? The American Indians were fighting for their land, how stupid of them, now they live on reservations, would they have been better off not to fight for their property? Only the robbers are right because they have the guns and the Indians had bows and arrows?
To say the Palestinians are stupid to not give the robbers their land, property that belongs to them?
Why don't the Israelis buy land from people who want to sell? Why do they keep Palestinians in a cage and then kill them, women and children included, all to rob the Palestinians? What happens to bank robbers, or killers who kill you to get your expensive car? Would you like it and let him have it? Is that your logic?
Who even is Amerindian, today? They were largely absorbed in all but name, outside of Alaska where a tiny few live.
There are big reservations in the South West, NM and Arizona.
Yea, but many look white. Many US whites are 2%.
In the US, everyone has been white since 1865, since “white” was historically merely a descriptor for someone who couldn’t legally be held as chattel.
Whites were slaves too. Your facts are frequently off.
The Indians on reservations are doing all they can to preserve their culture and history, they are the survivors of the genocide the white people did to them. They still wear the scars of all the broken treaties the white men broke, they know what was done to them. And we do know how bloody the civil rights movement was and still we have to deal with racism, while black people now are members of the upper class.
In many cases they have more rights than other Americans, today. Certainly they were wronged, but everyone gets wronged. Regardless, many of them look white. Some of them accepted their slaves as members; some didn’t. Populations change.
It’s not so easy to give out justice.
But our regimes don’t make an effort, all they want is more deregulations, enough government to cut taxes and more funding for the military feeding the MIC shareholders which they belong to, a club of spoiled billionaires who own the government and the nation.
Why would those in power behave differently?
I readily agree they were wronged horribly. What I dispute is that it’s easy to fix that. I’ve generally wanted a focus on reducing poverty of American citizens, especially via UBI. That would include them.
The rich rarely get punished. Attempts at punishing the bad guys tends to focus on the wrong people.
I agree it is not easy to fix, but our governing powers don’t even make an attempt to improve the relationship with the people. That is true for the nation as a whole, we have homeless people, and people lacking health insurance, poverty where we look and in DC they look for more wars.
They’re essentially Americans with extra rights, today.
"Why don't the Israelis buy land from people who want to sell" If you knew the history of Israel, the Israelis did buy the land from Palestinians when they first moved to Palestine starting around 1882. As time when on the Palestinians and Israelis began to fight each other so the UN divided Palestine into two areas. But Arabs did not accept that deal and they invaded the new nation of Israel. The Arabs lost and Israel won more land in the war. Then the "genius" Nassar closed the Straits of Tiran to Israel in May of 1967, thus starting another Arab vs Israel war in which Jordan lost the West Bank to Israel and Syria lost the Golan Heights. Israel did not rob the land from Palestinians, the Arabs lost the land in wars they started.
NO COMMENT.
Your knowledge of the history of Israel/Palestine is extraordinarily lacking. Yes, Jews did buy land from Palestinians for decades leading up to 1948, and guess how much land they owned in 1948? 5-7%. However, the UN Partition Plan in 1947 allocated 55% of the land to Jews. What indigenous people would agree to give up that much land to people from another continent? Palestinians obviously rejected it and the Jews began ethnically cleansing the Palestinians in late 1947. By May of 1948, before any substantial Pali resistance had been mounted, and before any poorly equipped and organized Arab armies had entered the fray, 250,000 Palestinians had already been displaced.
Regarding Nasser, Menachem Begin openly admitted that the Israelis started the 1967 war.
Is it that you’re really this ignorant to Israel’s past, or is lying just intrinsic to your nature? I honestly can’t tell.
There is a difference between war and what Israel is doing. The fact that you can't grasp that is the problem. Or, i should say, the fact that you DON'T want to grasp that is the problem. Any human being with an ounce of empathy and a functioning brain can see how over the top Israel has gone with their wanton brutality.
"How is the bombing of Gaza any different than bombing of Germany and Japan during WW2?"
How is Israel's depraved mass murder of civilians "any different" than the US's WWII depravity?
Cause half a century ago, the ICC criminalized US-WWII-type atrocities…
…so Israel's mass murders of Gazan civilians are now ICC war crimes – and the US is an accessory.
That's how Israel's US-enabled, targeted mass murder of Gazan civilians is "different."
I'm Indian and I was born in '63 and remember a little bit about the 1971 Bangladesh War. Nixon was the President at the time and Kissinger was the Secretary of State.
Pakistan persecuted the people in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). People were fleeing to India in large numbers and it was overwhelming for India and it declared war on Pakistan and won.
I remember very little about the Vietnam War, the USA used chemical weapons in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. That is one of the factors that caused North Vietnam to win the war.
Vietnam invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge, China was upset and bombed some Vietnamese Villages near its border and in Russia, there was a protest outside the Chinese Embassy.
Vietnam was the last war with draftees and real journalists.
The USA fights proxy-wars on other continents, at no time did an invading enemy break as much as a window pane, while they sanctioned and bombed and left scorched earth behind, and the allies fund the wars, like the NATO members do and someone should tell and remind President Trump. Biden destroyed the German/EU economy they have no money to pay more while the US MIC makes the profits.
The CIA is meddling in NATO member states like they do in any other nation.
North Vietnam did not win the war because the USA used weed killing chemicals to destroy forests. (A dumb idea). North Vietnam won because they were willing to fight harder and longer than the USA was willing to fight.
North Vietnam became more willing to fight because the USA used weed killing chemicals to destroy Vietnam's Cambodia's and Laos's people and landscapes. That made more people in those countries support North Vietnam and that helped it win the war.
They are all evil, but for all we know the Israelis are the top of the line when it comes to brutality/sadism. Pol Pot was brutal, more brutal/sadistic than the Israeli Zionists?
Trump criticizing Netanyahu is hardly anything to get excited about. Especially since the only thing that seemed to piss him off was Netanyahu congratulating Biden on winning the election. And him wanting the fighting to end would be something to cheer if he hadn't chastised Biden/Harris for temporarily cutting off 2,000 lb shipments. Plus, he urged Israel to "get the job done" because it was bad PR. And never mind his choice of Huckabeee as ambassador to Israel. For the life of me I can't understand how people can be conned by this piece of shit one more time.
Hope springs eternal on both sides.
Oye vey!
Too much optimism ED!
;-}
Not me. Just pointing out the tribes who haven’t come to the conclusion yet that the system is corrupt and corrupting, and voting doesn’t/can’t change that.
2025 looks bad, we need to hang on to some hope to hold on to our sanity.
In Gaza babies freeze to death, when we think it can't get worse it does get worse.
The hope lies within the masses. A couple of general strikes. But it can’t happen with divide and conquer.
We don’t have a free press anymore, we don’t debate because we lack credible information. MSM is beating the propaganda drums for the official narrative manipulating the minds of people who are concentrated to put food on the table and pay the bills.
"Too much optimism"
depends if he was thinking of the whole couplet –
Hope springs eternal in the human breast/
Man never is, but always to be blessed.
And don't forget the "the all hell to pay" threat he made against Hamas and Gaza.
Shouldn't you be citing things that you and Trump don't agree on?
Trump will support Israel to the fullest. Like so many Trump supporters you just pretend that Trump does not mean what he says. He does.
How does anyone know what Trump means? Even he does not know, but we do know what he did when he was in office. He moved the embassy and approved the Golan annexation and NEVER said NO.
If one pays attention to what Trump says, he means it. He is not always successful in getting what he wants, but he will try. If he fails, that is when he and his supporters claim the he really did not mean what he says.
BS
And you'll support him when he does that. It's odd that you don't like Trump. He's just like you.
We are seemingly gluttons for our own punishment…
Americans are generous to a fault.
Much is based on ignorance the ruling elite takes advantage of to manipulate people who struggle to pay the mortgage and put food on the table.
https://www.presstv.ir/Live
”How man roads must a man walk down?! Before you can call him a man?! The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind!… The answer is blowing in the wind…”
There is never enough of US taxpayer money for Israel.
And this while the national debt is in the stratosphere.
No problem…! US knows printing well…!
The printer is about to croak, the sooner the better.
I'm sure us Americans are glad that our money is being used to good purposes like killing civilians and causing ethnic cleansing rather than useless things like taking care of actual Americans and repairing crumbling infrastructure, otherwise there's be a hue and cry like you wouldn't believe, right?
Only US citizens can bring its military down…!
And why would they do that?
Why should we support a military that doesn’t support American interests?
And why not? The MIC made enough money, and the printing machine broke down.
Why not? Because Americans are happy with our military. When the jets fly over a football the fans chant USA, USA, USA. They don't boo. And parking lots have spots reserved for the people who served in the military. And stores have discounts for them. You can see the support for the military all around you if you just look. Now tell me why US citizens will bring down the military?
The military has trouble filling the ranks with recruits, we don’t have a draft. The military is bombing civilians and not fighting conventional wars against another army.
The US is using proxies and sells the products of the MIC, which is very profitable, that requires a manipulated public, arm chair warriors like you. Any military victims in your family?
That's called jingoism and it certainly is NOTHING to be proud of.
Because US barbarity is second only to Israel and that is embarrassing, if one can think.
We are creating more problems than we can solve…
Sentient beings.
Royalty sits on the Hill. The masses below eat gruel and thank Royalty for its generosity. SSDD. SSDY.SSDC.SSDM.
(day, year, century, millennium)….
Unfortunately humans and bovines are fundamentally stupid at crowd levels. Or as the Hottentots might have said, 1,2,…., many.