A $38 billion military aid package for Israel is moving to the Senate after being approved in the chamber’s Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday.
The bill (S.B. 3176) provides Israel, which currently receives more American aid than any other nation, an additional $3.8 billion a year over the next decade. It includes financing to upgrade most of Israel’s fighter aircraft, improve its ground forces’ mobility and strengthen its missile defense systems.
The measure also expands a stockpile of weapons that the United States keeps in Israel, which Israeli forces may access in wartime.
Largest Ever Military Assistance Deal
“I was proud to reintroduce this bipartisan bill that strengthens our nation’s strategic security alliance with Israel, a vibrant democracy that faces growing and unprecedented threats to its security and stability,” said Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the bill’s co-sponsor. “I hope my colleagues will quickly move to pass it in both chambers and send it to the President for signing.”
If passed by Congress, the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act (S. 3176) would be the largest military assistance deal of its kind ever. A similar version of the bill (H.R. 1837) passed the House last year.
G. Willikers
May 29, 2020 at 9:07 am
Geez Louise,
How about sending some financial support to the Americans that are falling into poverty right now???
Israel faces growing and unprecedented threats to its security and stability because of Israel’s aggressive actions, not the actions of Americans.
Mark
June 2, 2020 at 10:18 pm
Agree. Insanity. But of course we can’t talk about this…
Greg
July 25, 2020 at 10:26 am
Very naive and outright incorrect and ignorant comments. Israel faces these threats because for the past 73 years Arabs have suppressed their citizens and used Israel as the scapegoat. They threatened Israel’s existence since 1948 and attacked Israel on multiple occasions with the goal of sweeping them into the Mediterranean. They killed Israeli athletes at the Olympics. They blew up many Israeli buses, killed scores of civilians in malls, night clubs and restaurants. Israel has been measured in its responses much more proportionate than the Americans, British, French ever were. Israel never used chemical weapons in Palestinians complete crap complete fake news. Ill informed people like the ones on this thread are so easily manipulated. The Jews get a sliver of land in the ME after the world watched the Nazis murder 6 million over 5 years. A land with little water, no oil and few natural resources. Israelis work their ass off and turn their land into fertile farmland, build world class hospitals, develop medicines used world wide and share critical technology with the free world. Compare the freedoms of all Arabs in Israel v Jews in the rest of the ME. How hypocritical to call Israel an apartheid state but to ignore the Arabs intolerance for those who practice non Muslim religions, those who are homosexual, those who are women. Arabs vote in Israel. Jews and homosexuals cannot survive in the Arab world. Women are treated like servants. Please stop with your sanctimonious ignorant rants. You are ill informed. Every dime of this aid goes to the Israeli purchase of US weapons. Israel is the only reliable friend of the USA in the region. The Arabs, remember they were the allies to Hitler are anything but reliable. The Syrians are Russian puppets Much of the region is under Iranian influence. The 4 billion to Israel each year to buy American made weapons is the best military investment we make. Try and inform yourself. Try and discuss the merits of this aid with people outside of your anti Israel and anti-Semitic circles. Try not to repeat fake news and try to appreciate a people who have been persecuted throughout history and overcome so much.
Fulani Child
July 27, 2020 at 11:48 pm
You put your country in the middle of someone else’s country and they’re not supposed to react?? The British had as much right to give you Israel as the French have a right to give me Portugal. And for those who still believe that Palestine did not exist until Israel moved in, there’s this:
The first known written reference to Palestinians as a people (Peleset) was c.1150 BCE at the temple of Medinet Habut. They were among those who fought with Egypt during Ramesses III’s reign.
The region between the Jordan River and the Med. Sea was first referred to as “Palestine” by the Greek historian Herodotus (“the father of history”) during the 5th century BCE.
100 years later, in the mid-4th Century BCE, Aristotle referred to “Palestine” while discussing the Dead Sea in his Meteorology. “Again if, as is fabled, there is a lake in Palestine….”
Jewish historian Josephus’s (c.37-100 CE) The Jewish War, Antiquities of the Jews contains many references to both “Palestine” and “Palestinians.”
Contemporaries of Jesus also routinely referred to Palestine as “Palestine.” In the first decade of the 1st Century, the Roman poet Ovid mentioned Palestine in both his famed mythological poem Metamorphoses and his erotic elegy The Art of Love. He also wrote of “the waters of Palestine” in his calendrical poem Fasti. Around the same time, another Latin poet, Tibullus wrote of “the crowded cities of Palestine” in the section “Messalla’s Triumph” in his poem Delia.
BTW, the claim that the Roman emperor Hadrian officially changed the name of the region to “Syria Palaestina” or simply “Palestine,” in 135 CE is contradicted by the fact that by then, the term “Palestine” had already been in use for over 600 years.
Also, for the record, when the Muslim Arabs arrived in Palestine in the 7th century CE (and liberated its Jewish population from Byzantine oppression), they retained the administrative organization of the territory of Palestine as it had been under the Romans and later, the Byzantines. They referred to the territory as Filastin (no “P” in Arabic.)
To quote the opening sentence of the section entitled “Filastin” that appears in the book “Dictionary of the Lands,” written by geographer Yaqut ibn Abdullah al-Hamawi in 1225: “Filastin: It is the last one of the regions of Syria in the direction of Egypt. Its most famous cities are Ashkelon, Ramle, Gaza, Arsuf, Caesaria, Nablus, Jericho, Jaffa and Beit Guvrin.”
In 1603, Shakespeare wrote in his play Othello: “Emilia: I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to Palestine for a touch of his nether lip.” (Act IV, Scene iii.)
In 1863, The Religious Tract Society of London published its “Pictorial Journey Through the Holy Land; or Scenes of Palestine.” In this work Beersheba is described as the southern limit of Palestine. Beersheba lies south-east of Gaza on the northern edge of the Negev desert. Palestine is described as “south of Lebanon.”
European tourist books of the nineteenth century refer to “Palestine,” as did Theodor Herzl in his correspondence and the 1917 Balfour Declaration as well as the 1922 Class A League of Nations British Mandate.
xochi
July 30, 2020 at 3:00 pm
ok israel bot
Jose
August 1, 2020 at 9:14 pm
The parasitic corrupt US congress need to be voted out of office for groveling at the feet of the apartheid state of Israel. Charlatan politicians like Marco Rubio, Democrat Ted Deutch, of Florida and Republican Ed Royce of California are but a few of the unscrupulous scoundrels that funnel tax paying dollars to the Israeli state that kills Palestinians with impunity. What is even more infuriating is that its being done during the height of a pandemic with unemployment soaring to levels of the Great Depression of the 1930’s. This sad state of affaires just points to how deep the rot of corruption has seeped into the US government and corporate media institutions.
Jose
August 1, 2020 at 9:25 pm
Marco Rubio’s sponsorship of the S.3176 – United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2020. It’s just incomprehensible that one would even consider engineering a bill that would hand over 38 billion dollars to the state of Israel with 40 million US workers unemployed and in the midst of a worsening pandemic.
Rocky
August 7, 2020 at 11:17 pm
And let me guess you are sitting at a computer in Israel to brainwash people into thinking that Israel is a saint. Israel did use white phosphorus on the Palestinians. There’s photos everywhere. Does Israel let you free college for you to sit there at a computer and try to deceive and gaslight people. People are waking up to the crimes committed by Israel on a daily basis.
Cheryl
August 9, 2020 at 9:29 am
My tax money came from my American sweat and sacrifice…..I didn’t do it to finance some country I’ve never seen or been to.
swaosmeister
June 2, 2020 at 10:05 pm
$3.8bil a year for the next ten years to fund Israel’s defense budget. You know, the defense budget they wouldn’t need if they weren’t bulldozing Palestinian families and refusing to give goyim (non-Jews) citizenship in their “democracy.”
William Stronh
June 3, 2020 at 9:56 pm
Clearly Aprtheid, Jim Crow and Zionism …South Africa….United States, Israel…Diabolical first cousins…Amidst the worst economic depression in history and you give a genocidal criminal state 38 billion dollars??? Clearly Zionist run AmeriKKka..
J. Kaiser
June 5, 2020 at 7:05 am
Well, the last time i checked it wasnt Israel that commited a Genocide…
Ron Mexico
June 14, 2020 at 8:18 pm
Israel used white phosphorus on Palestinians, literally gassing them and not a peep from.the international comity because we all know who the west is beholden to.
Bill McEwen
June 15, 2020 at 7:46 am
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-22310544
Thomas
July 2, 2020 at 6:41 am
If that”s what you think, you need to check again!!!! Displacing the people and ethnic cleansing is genocide. Shooting cHildreth whof pose no threat because they demonstrate against apartheid laws is genocide. What excuse does Israel offer for this????
cjonsson
June 5, 2020 at 10:14 am
Israel is committing genocide now.
John Brown
June 20, 2020 at 7:38 pm
This waste of money has to stop. And such a racist government. How can a country in trillions of dollars in debt afford to give any country anything. Somebody is telling a lie!
Thomas
July 2, 2020 at 6:51 am
It is beyond evil to allow the American taxpayers to be victimized by these wink and nod tactics that allow our money to be used for such evil with no say about their behavior.