In her Nov. 9 letter to the editor, Jean Patton first attempts to exploit the tragic shooting of Americans to attack facts she dislikes. Next she uses fallacious figures to dispute thoroughly documented statistics. Finally, she defames me personally with despicable falsehoods.
It is unfortunate that Ms. Patton tries to exploit the horrific shooting of Americans in a synagogue to advocate for Americans to continue giving massive amounts of our tax money to Israel. The fact is that the killing of 11 Americans in a synagogue, the previous killing of 26 Americans in a church, and the recent killing of 12 Americans in a bar are all tragedies. None has any relationship to a foreign country, and none should be used to advocate for one.
Next, Ms. Patton works to mislead readers by comparing watermelons and oranges. She compares the cost of U.S. military bases (without admitting that’s the statistic she’s citing) to U.S. aid to a foreign country. Using this irrelevant figure, she then makes the ludicrous claim that Japan gets more money from American taxpayers than Israel receives.
The fact is that from 2001 through 2016, Japan received an average of $6.46 million in foreign aid per year. That is less U.S. tax money than Israel gets per day.
Israel receives over $10 million per day from the United States, and that figure is about to go even higher. A current bill before Congress (S.2497) will give Israel a minimum of $38 billion over the next 10 years – the equivalent of $23,000 per every Jewish Israeli family of four, and the largest such aid package in U.S. history.
Ms. Patton next claims that “Israel must use 100 percent of the aid package on American weapons, equipment and services” and then tries to claim: “No other county has such restrictions.”
Sadly, whoever gave Ms. Patton this information greatly misinformed her. The fact is that 100 percent of U.S. military aid to all other nations is indeed required to be spent on American equipment. Israel is the only exception.
Forty percent of U.S. military aid to Israel has gone to Israeli companies. On top of this, Israel often requires that American companies use Israeli components in the equipment they supply Israel – meaning that even more of this aid goes to Israeli companies. As an Israeli newspaper reported in 2016: “The U.S. has subsidized Israel’s military industry by hundreds of millions of dollars yearly for nearly three decades.”
Ms. Patton’s argument, even if it were accurate, makes little sense. If Americans wish our money to go to U.S. defense companies, we could give it to them directly – there is no need to give it to them via Israel. Israel has a lower poverty rate and a better balance of payments than we do; let Israelis buy their own weapons.
Also unlike any other recipient of U.S. aid, Israel gets its money in a lump sum at the beginning of the fiscal year. This means that since the U.S. is operating at a deficit, the government borrows this money, gives it to Israel, and then pays interest on it long after it’s gone. Israel, on the other hand, places it in an interest-bearing account in the New York Federal Reserve Bank, squeezing even more money out of the U.S. economy.
While for decades Israel has claimed it’s under “existential” threat, this has never been the case. What is true, however, is that Israel was created through a war of ethnic cleansing, continues to confiscate both Christian and Muslim land for illegal Jewish-only settlements, possesses at least 100 nuclear weapons, and has a long, thoroughly documented record of violating human rights, international law, and even U.S. laws.
On my trips throughout Gaza and the West Bank I’ve seen some of the many Palestinian children shot by Israeli forces.
Since the year 2000, Israeli forces have killed over 2,000 Palestinian children; in response, Palestinian resistance fighters have killed about 130 Israeli children. The ratio in previous decades was even more disproportionate. All of these deaths are tragedies; Americans only hear about some of them.
Finally, Ms. Patton falls back on the typical tactic of those whose facts are weak: mud-slinging. She tries to claim I am “anti-Semitic,” despite the fact that I have a life history of opposing all bigotry and that my very first essay on this topic was entitled, “Choosing to Act: Anti-Semitism Is Wrong.”
After my best-selling book on the history of the Israel lobby in the U.S. was published, the leaders of a few groups did indeed attack my organization (though none, unlike Ms. Patton’s false assertion, called us “anti-Semitic”); and some others, misled by the former, repeated their false claims. However, many more people, including many members of these groups and some of the most courageous and respected individuals working for peace and justice in the Middle East, signed open letters condemning these attacks and supporting us.
I don’t have the time or stomach to refute the many other falsehoods put forward by Ms. Patton, some of them quite nasty. I suggest people go to our website, IfAmericansKnew.org, to see for themselves the facts on Israel-Palestine, on the U.S. connection to this deeply important issue, and on me, personally.
Alison Weir
Executive Director, If Americans Knew
Author, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel
