The companies and workers who get that money pay local, state and federal taxes and all the companies they do business with also pay those taxes so the money continues to circulate through our economy without any of it leaving. So this represents a redistribution of federal money.
Nonsense. No net economic benefit comes from giving handouts to Israel. All of the positives you've disingenuously attributed to our aid-giving are insignificant compared to the advantages that would come from keeping that money for ourselves or exchanging it fairly.
If you want to discuss what the Israelis do with the weapons, you have to be a little more specific than just drooling out slogans. For example, how is the recent operation in Gaza after eight years of rocket and mortar attacks different from the US invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11?
-America: 3,000 civilians killed in a few hours.
-Israel: <30 civilians killed over the span of 8 years.
-America: No direct control over Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.
-Israel: Occupying power, imposer of a crippling and completely inhumane blockade, responsible for displacing the refugees that now populate Gaza, user of collective punishment.
-America: Attempting to rebuild and bring some semblance of stability to Afghanistan.
-Israel: Refuses to honor commitments regarding lifting the blockade, continues to make residents of Gaza suffer from acute insufficiencies of important medical supplies, job opportunities, and other needed resources.
How much death and destruction have we brought to civilian areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan in our efforts to go after al Qaeda and their supporters? Surely if the US is justified in spreading war over two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and causing at least thousands of deaths, many of them innocent civilians, in response to one terror attack against our civilian population, Israel is justified in going after Hamas in response to thousands of terror attacks against its civilian population over a period of years.
When did we place blockades on Afghanistan and Pakistan? A blockade is an act of war.
Since Israel had very few US weapons until after the 1973 war and since all the land Israel now holds was captured before that war, just what land do you think was taken with US weapons?
We're funding a government that funds the theft of Palestinian land via settlements. We're indirectly funding the destruction of Gaza's civilian population as well. Israel should receive absolutely no support from the United States until it treats its population and those under its control justly.
If you can do the arithmetic, you understand there is considerable benefit to the US from the aid to Israel, but since you seem to find the concept so challenging and confusing, let me help you out. Not one penny of this military aid ever leaves the US economy. For each dollar spent on military aid to Israel, if we assume a total local, state and federal tax bill of only 20%, $.20 goes back to federal, state and local governments and $.80 goes to stimulate the local and state economies where the companies are located. Of the $.80 spent, another $.16 goes to taxes and $.64 goes to further stimulate the US economy, that's $.36 in taxes so far. As that $.64 is spent, roughly $.13 more goes to taxes and $.51 spent, all of it here, and as the money further circulates all of it eventually goes to federal, state and local taxes except for what goes into savings.
If we assume each job created by this military aid to Israel pays $50,000, then 50,000 good paying American jobs will have been created by it. So the end result is that some federal money is redistributed to state and local governments and more than 50,000 US jobs are created.
In addition, this aid to Israel allows the US to maintain a larger capacity to manufacture these weapons than we currently need but which we can draw on in an emergency. This means we don't have to stockpile as many weapons against emergencies and that saves us money from our defense budget without giving up any preparedness.
Not only would the US not gain any benefit from not providing this aid to Israel, but it would cost us influence among the Arabs since they seem to universally believe the US has extraordinary influence over Israel by virtue of this aid. Why would any of the Arab states want to talk to us about Israel or the Palestinians if they didn't think we any longer had this influence? They would regard as they now do France: rich but impotent. Moreover, the military aid we give to Israel and Egypt, making each so strong the other would not risk attacking it, has locked Soviet and now Russian influence out of the ME and kept the peace there for thirty years, saving at least tens of thousands of lives, probably most of them Arabs.
Whatever you may believe about the politics of the situation, there is little difference between the actions Israel was forced to take in Gaza and the actions the US has been forced to take in Afghanistan, to a lesser extent in Pakistan and even in Iraq. No other country on Earth but Israel that had the means to do something about it would have allowed over 10% of its population to live under constant terror of rocket and mortar attacks for eight years without taking military action. The operation in Gaza was not only justified, but it was inevitable and long overdue.
Israel suffered relatively few deaths from the thousands of rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza because it erected early warning systems and no one in any of the towns attacked was ever more than a minute from a bomb shelter or other fortified place. While Hamas had been planning for years in anticipation of an Israeli attack by building fortification, barriers to transport, elaborate booby traps, etc. and bunkers and tunnels for their leaders to hide and their fighters to fight from, they never built bomb shelters for the protection of the civilian population and although they knew they would stage their defense from civilian areas, and Israel left a large area open south of Gaza City the population could have been evacuated to, there was apparently no plan in place to evacuate civilians and no effort was made to do so even after the fighting had begun. Had Hamas taken these two simply and obvious steps to protect civilian life, bomb shelters for emergencies and an evacuation plan for the duration, very few civilians would have been killed because they simply wouldn't have been where the fighting was.
It is impossible for an honest person to consider the fact that Hamas made absolutely no effort to protect civilian lives, despite the fact it would have been so simple to do so, and not assign the major share of responsibility for those civilian deaths to Hamas. And it is impossible not to ask: why didn't Hamas attempt to protect civilian life? Were they too stupid to think of bomb shelters and an evacuation plan? Were they simply indifferent to how many civilians were killed? Or did they not evacuate the civilians because they hoped their presence would force the IDF to forgo the use of artillery and air power for fear of civilian casualties, that is, did Hamas plan all along to use civilians as human shields? Or did they want a large number of civilian casualties to use for propaganda?
You choose.
