Don’t take that too seriously, because the U.S. made damn sure it never signed any of those morally complicated international treaties, for fear they might come to bite them in the leg. Remember torture? Nah, we don’t do that.
But Trump has taken time out from plans for his aggrandizement of the nation’s capitol to greenlight a $2.8 billion arms sale to Israel. Interestingly, it’s you and I who are going to get the bill for that, regardless of our support or lack thereof for Netanyahu’s genocide.
And, by the way, don’t send me any outraged messages, because there isn’t a single grain of antisemitism in the criticism.
It is not antisemitic to criticize a government for its actions, although it does meet the definition to blame Jews for a genocide. They didn’t do it, their prime minister and military did. Russians aren’t guilty of what’s going on in Ukraine, either. President Putin and his military are. That’s not splitting hairs, that’s putting blame where blame belongs.
But the costs of this morally questionable transaction is yours and mine to pay for, due to an interesting little snippet of foreign policy.
The $2.8 billion is being made available through the U.S. Foreign Military Financing system. The program was established through the 1976 Arms Export Control Act and is overseen by the Office of Security Assistance within the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs of the Department of State.
Funds given directly to the country in question (in this case Israel) are paid directly by them to U.S. defense contractors, supporting the American defense industrial base. They are not loans, they are gifts, and once given, the Foreign Military Financing system is topped back up by tax dollars…your and my tax dollars.
Think on that for a moment.
God knows there’s been a lot of criticism since Eisenhower’s caution pertaining to the military-industrial-congressional complex. These funds (and others like them) are distributed outside that complex, but directly to its base. Those numbers aren’t counted.
And the spending by the Pentagon has, according to its Inspector General, been unable to account for upwards of $35 trillion in what they call ‘accounting adjustments’ in a single year (2019) to force its mismatched books to balance. Since then, its books remain unbalanced.
Getting back to the Israeli case at hand.
“The United States reserves the right to protect its national and international interests. Our commitment to Israel is ironclad,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement. “Israel has the right to defend itself, and the United States supports Israel taking necessary action to defend its country, consistent with international law.“
That statement fails on at least three levels.
No international agreement (to my knowledge) gives the U.S. the ‘right’ to protect its interests,
Our ‘commitment’ to Israel is no more ‘ironclad’ than to any other nation we might admire, and
Our ‘support’ is, according to the State Department, ‘consistent with international law’
As in baseball, three strikes and you’re out. But at least baseball doesn’t require any open-ended financial support, other than a ticket, a hotdog, and a cold beer. Nor does it ask the tax-paying American public for an ‘ironclad commitment.’
The military package contains 20,000 MK-84 and 20,000 BLU-117 bombs as well as tens of thousands of controversial one-ton bombs, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
Just a year and a half ago, in early 2025, Trump lifted Biden’s pause on shipments and sidestepped congressional review by invoking emergency measures to process a sale to Israel that included 35,500 MK 84 and BLU-117 bombs. The sale went through after bypassing congressional review.
Presumably, they used up all that hardware in Palestine and Lebanon.
“Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition,” unless it’s Ukraine.
The State Department does not confirm or comment on pending arms sales before formally notifying Congress.
And the Congress, is once again on an extended vacation (so they don’t have to attend to the public work). God forbid it would let ‘we the people’ in on the fact that the arms deal is our stick of chewing gum to chew.