In the fall of 2016, the Obama administration sealed a major military agreement with Israel that committed the United States to giving the country $38 billion in arms over 10 years.
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At the time, the agreement was uncontroversial. It was a period of relative calm for Israel, and few officials in Washington expressed concern about how the American arms might one day be used.
Now that military aid package, which guarantees Israel $3.3 billion per year to buy weapons, along with another $500 million annually for missile defense, has become a flashpoint for the Biden administration. A vocal minority of lawmakers in Congress backed by liberal activists are demanding that President Biden restrict or even halt arms shipments to Israel because of its military campaign in Gaza.
Israel is and always has been a welfare state. Their entire existence has been funded through foreign remittances or by handouts from the US.
The supply of US weapons only makes sense.
I don’t think that’s accurate. They were founded by Britain as part of WWI. And they’re fairly self-sufficient, even having their own military hardware industry big enough to export.
But they do get an unreasonable amount of US financial and material aid.
For the first few years after their independence, the US was hesitant to support Israel because they considered kibbutzim to be hotbeds of communism.
If only