Ran Dagoni / Globes Israel Business News & Jeff Blankfort – 2006-06-04 09:37:02
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/DocView.asp?did=1000096392&fid=1725
US Aid for Israel $2.46 Billion in 2007
Ran Dagoni / Globes Israel Business News
Washington (May 28, 2006) — On Friday, the US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee approved the 2007 house foreign aid bill, which includes $2.46 billion for Israel. $2.34 billion of this amount will be military aid, and $120 million will be civilian aid.
US aid for Israel is calculated according to a formula set in the late 1990s by then-Minister of Finance Yaakov Neeman and then Israel Economic Minister to Washington Ohad Marani to gradually eliminate US civilian aid to Israel, and which was adopted by the US administration.
The feeling in Israel at the time was Congress would not support civilian aid for long to a country with a developed economy like Israel’s. Under the formula, US civilian aid for Israel is cut by $120 million a year, until it’s elimination in the 2009 US fiscal year.
At the same time, US military aid for Israel would increase by $60 million a year to a ceiling of $2.4 billion a year, beginning in 2009.
Israel will receive its last $60 million of US civilian aid in the 2008 US fiscal year. The House appropriations bill must now go to a House plenum vote. The US Senate is now preparing its own appropriations bill. When approved, the two bills will go to a joint appropriations committee, which will reach a compromise between the House and Senate bills.
Under the House bill, US foreign aid will total $23.1 billion in 2007. As in every year, Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid, followed by Egypt ($1.7 billion, including $1.3 billion in military aid).
Efforts by the Egyptian government to strangle emerging signs of democracy in the country have roused the ire of Congress, and caused Congressman David Obey (Dem.-Wisconsin), the ranking Democratic on the House Appropriations Committee, to initiate a proposal to freeze some aid to Egypt until democratic reforms are instituted. However, the Bush administration made it clear that it opposed the initiative.
US government officials and other legislators said Egypt was an important US ally in the war on terrorism. Nevertheless, even supporters of US aid for Egypt expressed concern about its poor human rights record. Members of Congress are most incensed over the Egyptian government’s persecution of opposition activist and MP Iman Noor, sentenced to five years in prison by a Cairo court. Critics claim the charges were bogus.
Congressman Obey’s amendment to the House foreign aid bill failed to pass the committee, but he and Congressman Tom Lantos (Dem.-California) have initiated a second, much tougher, amendment than the one that failed in committee.
The House foreign aid bill includes $3.4 billion to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria; $522 million for stabilization efforts in Iraq; and $962 million for Afghanistan.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news – www.globes.co.il – on May 28, 2006 © Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006
House Votes Israel $2.46 Billion for 2007:
US Newspapers Ignore Story
Jeff Blankfort
(May 28, 2006) — What is noteworthy is that the only US newspapers to report this story, according to a Google search, were the Wall Street Journal and papers in Houston and Columbus, Georgia. An oversight? Hardly. Despite the fact that we are constantly being told how much Americans love Israel, the newspapers of record, the NY Times and the Washington Post, continue to avoid reporting on this issue.
Some years back, there used to be an excellent magazine called Lies of Our Times, edited by Ed Herman. Two things distinguished that magazine from other left journals. The first, was that it was the only magazine that published my articles on aid to Israel and the lobby. The second was that it appears to be the only left magazine that, over the years, has been forced to fold.
A coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not. What I discovered when doing the first article on US aid to Israel was that in the previous eight years there had not been a single story in the NY Times reporting on Israel’s foreign aid appropriation and only one or two articles in other US newspapers.
In other words, editors were censoring this story and apparently still are. Another coincidence or does that imply that the Zionists control the media? Maybe. Maybe not.
Now let’s recall what happened when Nixon’s tapes revealed a conversation he had with Rev. Billy Graham in which Graham told Nixon that when he was in in office he had “to break the Jewish stranglehold on the media.” “Do you really think that? Tricky Dick replied. “Yes,” Graham replied. “So do I,” Nixon replied, but you can’t talk about it.”
Nixon, of course, was dead when the tapes were discovered and couldn’t be exhumed to apologize, but Graham was forced to tearfully do so as had Brando before him for the crime of offending Jewish sensibilities (Brando had correctly accused the Jewish dominated movie industry of creating racist stereotypes).
Did it not occur to anyone that these two powerful people would know, personally, who controlled the media? It did occur to me and so I started keeping a list, merely from names in the Forward and the business section of the NY Times and quit after about 100 names.
It was too obvious that on that occasion, at least, both Graham and Nixon knew what they were talking about. Note: Regarding the story below, what is not mentioned is that since 1988, Israel has received over $25 billion in loan guarantees and low-interest bonds, also guaranteed by the US taxpayers.
This would seem to undercut the notion that Israel’s economic aid has been reduced and is just some more nonsense to delude a willfully deluded American public.
Posted in accordance with Title 17, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
