President Obama and Israeli prime minister and Likud party leader Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu reached an agreemnt this year to fund the United States military aid to Israel, currently at $3.1 billion a year, up to $3.8 billion a year from 2018 through 2027. There has been some talk of Republicans increasing that amount. Thus Israel will continue to be the first or second leading recipient of United States foreign aid as it has in recent years, first for example in 2008: $2.38 billion; and 2012: $3.075 billion; and second only to Afghanistan in 2013 at $6.289 billion. Even in 2013 the military aid to Israel of almost $3 billion ($2.961 billion) exceeded the military aid to Afghanistan, where we were engaged in war, by over a billion dollars ($1.879). When it comes to foreign aid, Israel is certainly our most favored nation and it is mostly for military aid.
The military budgets per capita in Israel slightly exceeds that of the US: US = $1,859. Israel = $1,882 per rent year. Given the total population of Israel just about 8.4 million, that means the United States is funding about $452.38 person or about 24% of the Israeli arms budget. That would indicate that about one out of four Palestinians and Muslim men, women and children killed or wounded by the Israel IDF had a rocket or bullet made or provided for them by the United States, and one in four homes, farms and businesses bulldozed and Palestinian properties taken, were performed with equipment made or purchased in or removals paid for by the United States in this long going religious war of conquest that makes the old testament Jericho look lik chicken feed. For more on this see the recent OpEd of David William Pear: "Palestine or Genocide?" It is also enviable as how nice it would be to have an Uncle Sugar pay for a quarter of our annual military budget. The U.S. military budget for fiscal year 2017 is $773.5 billion for fiscal year 2017 (October 1, 2016 through September 30, 2017). How nice it would be to have a kind neighbor give us 24% of our defense budget or $185.64 billion.
The United States Coast Guard is charged with protecting 14,506 statute miles of ocean coast line and an additional 4,851 Great Lakes shore line for a total of 19,357 miles of coastal border line. The Israeli Mediterranean coastal plain running from Lebanon to the Gaza strip is 116 miles from north to south. Add the 31-mile length of the Dead Sea on the east and Israel conceivably has 143 miles of cost to protect. Of course, it also blockades approximately another 25 miles of Gaza strip cutting off Palestinian foreign sea trade from there. So legitimately or otherwise, let us say Israel has 168 miles of sea borders to protect. That is less than 1% of the U.S. Coast (.87%). We provide a total Coast Guard budget for 2017 for our coastal defense of $10, 341,548,000. Why should we be giving Israel almost 37% of this amount in 2018 for its defense, unless it is to support its religious wars against the Arab Muslims in Palestine and the Golan Heights (Syria)? Our support is given at a time while Israel is at peace with two of its neighbors, Egypt and Jordan and with its water border a total length of less than 1% of our coast line.
Why do we continue to support these actions so foreign to the stated purposes of our First Amendment Establishment Clause? We shall look into this in part 6.
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