Weekly Update 3 Shvat, 5768 (Jan. 10) Issue: 6815

From Moshe Feiglin's new book, "The War of Dreams." Click here to order.

3 Sivan, 5761
May 25, 2001

But what will you do about American pressure? What will you do when they stop allocating funds to Israel? What will you do when they send NATO bombers like they did in Bosnia? What will you do about the whole world? What will you do?

Every time that an attempt is made to establish an alternative to the conditioned Israeli thought pattern, every time that somebody suggests an approach that veers from the accepted leftist track, the decisive ammunition is pulled out of the arsenal of claims: "The Americans won't let us."

After that claim, it is no longer possible to debate. The underlying assumption is that we are small and completely dependant on the American superpower and cannot implement any policies not approved by our patrons.

That is the way it seems. There is no comparison between the military and economic strength of the rings of enemies that surround Israel -- supported by the U.S. -- and our own capabilities.

Let us analyze the economic and military aspects of this theory.

The basic claim is that without American aid, Israel will not be able to exist. But if we check the numbers and history of American aid, we receive a completely different picture.

American aid, in its various forms, currently amounts to about 3.5 percent (yes, only 3.5 percent!) of Israel's annual budget. About half of that aid is military. Parallel to the military aid to Israel, the U.S. is supplying modern weapons to Israel's largest and most threatening potential enemy -- the Egyptian army. The Egyptian army has no enemies on its borders -- except for Israel. Sudan and Libya do not endanger Egypt in any way, and it is clear that the powerful army that Egypt is building is directed only against Israel.

There is no doubt that it would be worth Israel's while to forgo U.S. military "aid" if the United States would simultaneously halt its arms shipments to the Egyptians. Everybody would gain, except for the American weapons industry. The U.S. would save billions of dollars that it is currently pouring into both sides and war between Israel and Egypt would be postponed.

There is a famous saying that the gun that appears in the first act, will shoot in the third act. In a cynical move to benefit its armaments industry and to create a situation in which both sides are dependant on American weapons, the U.S. has introduced millions of sophisticated guns in the first act. It is reasonable to assume that these guns will shoot as early as the second act. In this way, America promotes the next military conflict between Egypt and Israel, in the guise of military aid. ***Since this article was written over six years ago, Egypt has found a more efficient way to fight Israel. It simply sends vast amounts of missiles and explosives to the Hamas in Gaza. Syria supplies the Hizbollah with missiles on our northern border, Egypt supplies the Hamas with missiles on our southern border, and Israel's government supplies its citizens with a pamphlet with instructions on how to respond to an all-out missile attack.***

That being the case, it is clear that the entire entity called "American aid" can be reduced to that part designated as civilian aid. The framework of this article does not allow us to prove that even the civilian aid is nothing but fiction. But clearly, the State of Israel, with the GNP of a modern country, can easily do without aid that amounts to just one and one half percent of its budget -- aid for which Israel essentially surrenders its independence.

It is no less interesting to check the history of American aid to Israel:

Israel was not always an economic and military superpower in the Middle East. From the time that the State was established until the Six Day War, Israel's economy was in a precarious state. Israel's military situation was no better. The IDF was spread thin over impossible borders. America had declared an embargo on weapons shipments to the Middle East. All the Arab armies in that era were supplied exclusively with Soviet arms, so that the American embargo was actually a U.S. death sentence for Israel. It seemed that Israel's days were numbered. The sad joke in that era was that the last Israeli to leave the country should please turn off the lights. In those difficult days Israel did not get even one bullet or one cent in aid from the Americans.

When did the American "aid" begin to pour into Israel? After Israel's "aggression" in 1967, when it conquered the Sinai, Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights and after its post-war economy began to boom. Then, when it was clear that Israel was stronger than its neighbors, the American "aid" began to flow.

It's strange, isn't it? America always pressures Israel to surrender its settlements to the enemy and to abandon the parts of the Land of Israel that it conquered. Why did it begin to send us "aid" when Israel took action completely opposed to U.S. policy?

The question becomes even keener when we continue to examine the graph of American aid over Israel's history. It turn out that the aid -- that was initiated, as stated above, after the Six Day War -- steadily increased until it peaked in the eighties. Then, at a very specific point in time, the level of aid began to decline until the point that we have reached today -- half the aid that Israel received when the allocations peaked. And what is that specific point in time? The Camp David Accords, when Israel destroyed its settlements in the Sinai and surrendered the entire peninsula to Egypt.

The question rises again, this time from the opposite angle: When Menachem Begin caved in and gave Jimmy Carter all that he demanded, Israel should have become America's favorite son. It could certainly have expected the aid that it had received up till then to continue at the same level. But once again, reality worked in just the opposite direction.

Clearly, then, American aid is not aid at all. It is a cynical strategic investment in a patently American interest. America had no economic or strategic interest in investing in a weak, pre-Six Day War Israel -- just as it had no economic or strategic interest in investing even one American bomb on the railroads that carried the Jews to Auschwitz.

In contrast, as soon as Israel became a regional power, it was in America's interest to invest in it. In the third stage, when Israel began to divest itself of its Six Day War achievements and to retreat to the pre-1967 border with Egypt, America transferred its economic and military support to the Arabs.

Why are these simple, history-proven facts ignored by the Israelis? I have often debated the subject of American aid with Israeli academicians, among them economic experts. The facts stated in this article are completely unknown to them. Why do Israelis insist on developing a sense of imaginary dependence on the U.S. and Europe, specifically at the point that Israel is both economically and militarily vigorous?

The answer to that question is not at all connected to Israel's military or economic capabilities. It is on a totally different plane.

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