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That's at least a factor of 10 overestimate.
And that's all aid, not just EU and US! Where are you getting your numbers from?
Israel is hardly a live fire testing ground, not since 1973. It's not like they're fighting high end wars, they're dealing with insurgencies and light infantry. The US clearly hasn't learnt any useful lessons on this front - indeed US support for Israel makes it harder since it creates all these new and exciting enemies. Osama Bin Laden for instance. We don't need to infuriate hundreds of millions of people to 'test' bombs or missile defence systems against sub-Scud tier rockets.
Regardless of the situation with Palestine (which also isn't our problem except in that we help Israel bully them), we should not be assisting a state that creates so many bitter and troublesome enemies for us. If it weren't for direct US aid and geopolitical assistance like the war in Iraq, they probably wouldn't have the borders they have now, they'd likely be pre-1967.
The Arab Oil Embargo, the Iraq War, this mess in the Red Sea, not to mention the USS Liberty - Israel is a massive deadweight that needs to be dropped, the sooner the better.
Do you really not listen to the rhetoric from US politicians?
Pelosi couldn't get the boot out of her mouth if she tried: "I have said to people when they ask me, If this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain would be our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it our aid, our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are."
Pompeo: "There is no more important task of the Secretary of State than standing for Israel and there is no more important ally to the United States than Israel. There is much more work to do."
Im wondering where they got their numbers or if they are trying to pull some statistical tom fuckery as US aid to Gaza in 2020 alone was something like 2.5 billion. Heck we've sent them 0.2 billion in the last month and our contributions tend to run "light" compared to those of the EU, UN, Saudis, and Qatar.
As for the Arabs, their beef with us, IE Anglos/The West, goes way back. Way farther than 1948, The notion that Arab animosity towards us and middle eastern instability is somehow to blame on Israel is mostly "a cope" invented by woke liberal MBA students who've never been outside the country and who couldn't tell a Sunni form a Shia if their life depended on it because a simple narrative of "Joos Bad" is far more palatable to modern liberal tastes than an honest accounting of the history.
Not really, no.
Do you seriously believe that a politician's rhetoric is a reasonable proxy for truth? If so, I have a bridge to sell you.
A man is what he does, not what he says.
From April 2021 to March 2022, the US gave about half a billion dollars to Palestine, according to themselves: https://www.state.gov/u-s-support-for-the-palestinian-people/
Wikipedia says about 600 million per year from the US on average. Again, I ask where are you getting your numbers from?
The West and the Islamic world have been in conflict since the latter showed up. But Israel clearly has serious effects in the here and now. Osama Bin Laden waxed lyrical about how he hated Israel, how the West was ultimately behind the Israelis (which is true), killing Muslims in Lebanon and elsewhere.
If we give billions of dollars in munitions to Israel and Israel kills Muslims with them, this will anger the Islamic world. Simple as. Angering the Islamic world is expensive and dangerous. It's not like the US ever had any colonies in MENA, why else would they hate America so much? .
I see your narrative and I raise you US evangelicals pathetically one-sided simping for Israel and Jews generally. They even go and provide free labour in Israel: https://www.wgbh.org/news/2012-03-11/christians-provide-free-labor-on-jewish-settlements
US politicians profess to love and adore Israel. Lo and behold, they give Israel every kind of assistance regardless of how much damage it does to US interests. Pompeo and others are evangelicals too, they see support for Israel as a holy cause.
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