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Don’t forget about the security threats and intelligence throughout the Middle East that Israel provides to the US. Their positioning in the Middle East makes them extremely valuable.
You are correct about the $3.8b sent annually in military and economic aid to Israel, a figure established by a 2016 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and running until 2028. In full disclosure since October 2023 Israel has received an additional $17b in military aid which is not included in the chart below nor the total US output of aid for 2023. But we need to put these numbers in perspective to make an objective opinion if the aid is too much or average.
usafacts.org
Notably, Ukraine is in the midst of an active conflict with a numerically superior invading force. Ukraine has hundreds of thousands of soldiers engaged in a drawn-out war with a peer-quality force that is actively invading their country and trying to take their territory. They sustain hundreds of military casualties every day, and several thousand civilian casualties every month. Meanwhile, Israel completely outclasses Hamas, Iran, and all of its other regional enemies combined as a fighting force, and they received more aid than Ukraine did in response to a single (large and horrific though it was) terrorist attack. I say that not to minimize the October 7th attack, but to point out the differences in scale. Objectively, Ukraine's situation is far worse than that of Israel in the sense that Ukraine faces an actual existential threat. Even though Hamas desires to wipe Israel off the planet, they utterly lack the capability to actually do so. The number of Ukrainian civilians killed by Russia since 2022 has far outstripped the number of Israelis killed by Hamas, even if we go back decades. So yeah, unless you think that US aid to Ukraine is way too low, there's no real way to justify how much Israel gets.
We get most of the same military benefits from Jordan - better in some respects, as we're able to actually base troops there (iirc, the only US "bases" in Israel are a radar station and equipment storage depots). Guess how much aid they get from us? And guess what their GDP is relative to Israel's?
I agree with some of your analysts except that Israel also faces an existential threat. First, until Iran and other financiers of Hamas were removed from the equation Hamas along with Hezbollah and other terrorist groups held considerable soldiers and armament to wage a war against Israel given their threats of total annihilation of Israel. Israel had to take them seriously.
You can’t be serious. Although Jordan has been somewhat friendly to the US the civil war they have been in jeopardized the relationship. For example during the parliamentary elections in 2024 the majority seats of any other party went to the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. They, of course, hate both the US and Israel do I’m not sure how good of a partner they will remains.
I disagree. The development of weapons in Israel that benefit both countries with sales to other countries are part our part of the cost of development. I think read that it runs around $500 million annually.
I never said they didn't. But taking threats seriously does not mean that those threats are existential.
None of those represents an existential threat. And the distinction is that Israel remains in an active war because it chooses to continue attacking Gaza. At this point, they are the aggressor.
I'm not sure what "civil war" you're referring to - the Jordanian Civil War occurred in 1970. As for the success of the IAF in the 2024 elections, that was almost wholly on the back of the government's refusal to criticize Israel over its attacks on Gaza. A position that was almost certainly dictated to them by the US government.
Right - less than half the aid we provide for Israel. And Jordan's economy is about one tenth the size of Israel's (meaning that they have more need of support).
The point is that business partnerships arise naturally if someone has good ideas or a strong industry in a particular sector. If we're the ones spending money to build those industries in Israel though, then you have to ask why we're not doing so here in the US.
