I thought what Walter Block wrote on the topic a few years ago was brilliant. That said, I don’t understand why the people of Israel don’t realize the alliance the State of the Israel has with the U.S. Government isn’t in their national interests.
Does Benyamin Netanyahu not realize that it hurts the state of Israel, or is it possible that Block is wrong and that U.S. government aid actually helps the state of Israel?
There is no “Israel” , just a few propel making decisions which affect mostly other people. Foreign aid makes perfect sense in the short run for the Israeli elite.
The argument against foreign aid is complicated and very tough to prove by experience, as the adverse effects of aid materialize in time, not right away.
Even if Israel was ruled by an enlightened, long-term thinking and ingenious elite, it would just be impossible to cut aid form the Israeli side. Money would just keep coming in.
The Israeli economy relies fully on US aid and would go though severe pains (not unlike what Greece is heading towards now) if that aid was ended.
Finally, and not to be underestimated, the military structure is dependent on US aid, for a nation of Israel’s size could never hope to maintain that establishment out of its own funds. Thus, even if everyone agreed that aid was bad, cutting military expenditure would just be off the table if a civilian government is what one values.
The time to make tough decision about foreign aid was 1948, not now. The effects of past misjudgments are just too great now for Israel to go back to the drawing board.
Well we all know that aid of this form isn’t going to go on until the end of time, it’ll all end one day, I’m sure definitely within our lifetimes.
A good question could also be, why the hell does a country like Pakistan accept US aid? I don’t see it to be in their national interests to let the United States use the aid as a bribe to use the country as a base to attack their neighbors, kill pakistani citizens, foment a civil war, and have CIA running all over the place including the slums- and becoming more likely in getting a chance to take control of their nuclear arsenal.
Quite simply I think its because people in charge of states are run by gangsters who’re in it for themselves and get most of the benefit from foreign aid. Nothing to do with national interest, just milk the chance to make them $$$.
The answer to this question is very simple:
Israeli governments are always coalition governments of several parties to get majority, and all but one party in Israel are openly socialist.
U.S. government aid does help Israel, in opinion of socialists. Ultimately, more aid leaves more money for financing social programs, even if enemy countries also get aid, and even more of it, and then use that aid to attack Israel, because aidgivers want to be “fair.”
These socialist parties have bankrupted Israeli economy many times before due to pointless spending and regulation, and foreign aid, mostly, goes to finance programs that really cannot finance themselves.
Thus, even though Arab countries hostile to Israel get more foreign aid than Israel altogether, which they use to buy weapons, and even if Israel would be better off to refuse foreign aid so that there was no excuse to give foreign aid to those hostile countires, no leadership in Israel can ever push for this resolution, because part of this leadership would rather have stupid government spending instead of limiting their actions to “mere” defense, which you would think they should worry most about.
Even Menachem Begin’s government was mixed of capitalists and socialists.
Words of Lichtenberg, “No words exist to convey wisdom to the stupid.” Walter Block is correct, but tragedy is that this argument will never convince socialists to choose between social spending and security, even if it convinces other half of leadership which is not socialist.
No one has ever convinced socialists to abandon their own agenda by writing, no matter how dangerous side effects of their agenda are. No one, in Israel, however, has also entered government without coalition with socialists.
This paradox is not new; it has always been discussed by native Israelis and Jewish Russians when discussing Inter-Israel politics.