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The 2008 law merely codifies longstanding US policy. Said policy helped drive Israel's Arab neighbours towards the Soviet Union (who would sell them military equipment).
Your own link says that $330 Billion went to Israel. The budget for 2023 was $6 trillion, so the real answer is 5% of the 2023 budget. $330 billion is a lot of money. More was sent to Egypt, Jordan and so on with the purpose of improving Israel's position. Still more was lost as a result of the Arab Oil Embargo, stemming from Arabs angry with US aid to Israel.
There is no reason to give foreign countries grants to buy equipment. The US could have bought equipment itself, or chose allies who actually fight alongside the US in its wars like Britain or Australia. Israel does not fight alongside the US. They are also known for selling US military technology on to China.
Funnily enough the rivers of gold only opened up when Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel, in 1978. And Jordan has no supply routes worth caring about, only proximity to Israel.
To my knowledge (though I'm not an expert) the first time the U.S. provided military aid to Israel was '73 under Nixon, and Nasser didn't need any push to be pro-Soviet; it fell right in line with his third-world-ist, anti-colonial rhetoric. Even then, we were the ones to step in and save him from the Brits, French, and Israelis. But for the U.S., there's an alternate world where the Suez Canal is still run by the Brits, with Israeli troops and settlements on the eastern side. Surely that's a world where the Jews have a lot more power than the current one - so why did we intervene? Why didn't the Jews win on that one?
Thank you for the correction; I am sloppy with math. I have edited the post to reflect this.
Over 40 years? On the brobdignagian scale the U.S. does military-industrial things with? Maybe it's the last couple administrations, but I have a hard time getting worked up about US overspending on things to make defense contractors (or, more recently, community activists) rich. It's just a cruddy fact of life.
Yeah, that one stung in the 70's, but it's 50 years old. OPEC doesn't have that kind of power any more, not since the shale revolution.
Sure there is; it funnels money to defense contractors, but it also ensures that the equipment is actually used in a conflict so we can get data back on how it performs.
Yes, this is the "carrot" part of "carrot and stick" diplomacy. You reward friends for doing what you want, and punish enemies who do things you don't want.
Sure, because letting that country collapse and become the personal playground of the irredentist Palestinian national movement - a movement which even in the 70's showed a marked proclivity to actions harmful to western interests - wouldn't have any negative consequences for anyone except Israel.
The US was at that time more concerned with its reputation amongst the Arabs, who were numerous and possessed large amounts of oil. That's standard strategic logic, plus there was an element of reflexive anti-European imperialism.
The Israel Lobby and jewish presence in government was not so strongly developed in the 1950s as it would later become. Aid really started flooding in under Kissinger. Even if the man said some anti-semitic things from time to time, he was still Jewish and it is not unreasonable to think that he would be sympathetic to his co-ethnics.
Consider the later agreement where the US would station military equipment in Israel for them to use (ostensibly it's for US forces that might arrive but the Israelis ended up using it in Lebanon), signed by Ariel Sharon and US Secretary of Defence Weinberger with a little assistance from AIPAC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Cooperation_Agreement
From first principles, wouldn't you assume that if the US cabinet and White House was full of names like Chang, Zhang, Yuan and Dongfeng, the US would lean more pro-China than makes strategic sense? Certain items would never make it onto agendas, some policies would be carried out enthusiastically and others would be given up at the first sign of trouble. People could find reasons why military aid to China was a good thing - stabilizing the region, countering Russia, Vietnam and so on. They could find reasons why China causing problems for the US was acceptable, they have certain legitimate interests and mistakes happen. They could create framing where China is a traditional ally of America, we fought together in WW2 against those awful Japanese, it's a vital trading partner, predestined to be a superpower...
Alternately, if the US cabinet was full of Muhammeds and Husseins, I expect Israel would encounter lots of problems. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are amongst the least pro-Israel politicians in America.
People have natural sympathies for those of the same race and creed.
Not necessarily. I could also paint a just-so story that diaspora emigres could be significantly more hawkish towards the governing regime of the land of their birth if it's out of step with their personal values - a cabinet full of Miami Cubans wouldn't be pro-Castro. And indeed, because U.S. Jews are overwhelmingly liberal, secularized, and assimilated, support for Netanyahu's nationalist government was a minority position in the U.S. before and after 10/7.
Yes, but people do this all the time for all sorts of reasons unrelated to ethnicity; allegedly FDR had a soft spot for the Chinese because his family had a longstanding history of involvement in the China trade and with yankee missionary efforts over there. Similarly the british foreign establishment has had a reputation of being fairly arabist without any significant muslim or arab component in british society; they just felt more comfortable with those relationships. Almost nothing works on hard strategic logic.
Sure, but I don't know how to disentangle their ethnic and religious interests from contemporary American leftism, which is quite happily third world-ist and "anti-colonial" without any arab/muslim immigrant help.
White people don't.
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