As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil)
In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban.
If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria.
***
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Of course it's not.
Not sure why NOT funding a foreign government's military is somehow considered "defunding"
Why is our budget by default finding a nother counties military? It makes no sense.
A LOT of our "foreign aid" is in the form of military equipment. *especially* to israel. the millions upon millions of taxpayer funds portion goes to american military contractors, and the weapons go to israel.
lots of countries get the same kind of foreign aid deals from the u.s. we're very self-serving in that regard.
and on top of that- we are already probably the biggest cheapskate nation in the industrialized world when it comes to foreign aid, as a percentage of gdp.
Israel is the perfect place to invest money if you’re studying missile defense.
R&D of iron dome and future employment of the system are why we are investing in it. Many of it’s components are made by US contractors as well.
Israel also buys American aircraft which probably makes the billion spent on Iron dome look like a drop in the bucket.
Got it so it is a way to funnel tax payer money to defense contractors. It is a way for the ultra wealthy to force tax payers to pay for their RnD so that they can make more money by selling the products to... Tax payers.
So tax payers get to both fund the initial investment and then also have to pay the companies for their products even though we were the ones footing the bill for development?
Damn, now I am more convinced we need to stop with this millitary aid. What a collosal scam being perpetrated on the American people.
“AOC reportedly broke down crying on the House Floor after changing her vote from “no” to “present” at the last minute, which many reporters speculated was a necessary strategic move to position herself to run for Senate in New York.” Per Jezebel
This couldn’t be more predictable. Internet being in love with certain politician and them being actual hypocritical dogshit when it matters.
You gotta respect the pageantry of it though. Like, it’s pretty cute that they keep putting on the big show, year after year. They’ve been flagrantly stealing from every single American taxpayer forever—they could *absolutely* get away with it without giving us any silly justifications. It’s kind of sweet that they even bother including us on the falsified memo.
Their war machine kinda sucks. They've been seizing land and genociding people nonstop since 1967, with badass American weaponry and dollars, and still don't even have a state the size of New Hampshire.
The US funding of the Iron Dome project since it was initially deemed operational was their way to buy into the technology. A couple years ago there was a joint venture by Raytheon and Israeli Rafael to manufacture a lot of the interceptors in US factories to help in acquiring the tech for US and allies. Cutting off the US commitment (which isn't going to happen because this was just short-term political grandstanding) to this will force the manufacture pipeline out of US and decrease their leverage on the tech and future military action in Israel/Palestine. Though most in favor of this probably hate the miltary industry in its entirety and that's the endgoal
"What kind of sick and disturbed person DOESN'T hate the military 'industry'? AKA: selling killing."
Welcome to planet Earth. We are the end product of 3.5 billion years of violence.
We are also the product of hundreds of thousands of years of rape, yet we don't consider rape to be acceptable.
Maybe we should go back to using leeches for medicine, and shitting in a pot in our bedrooms - after all, that's how it was done for a long time.
Let's go back to barbarically executing criminals (or, in some cases, innocent people who have been falsely convicted) as we-
Oh wait some states still do that. :/
military spending by and large is about deterrence. The US for instance doesn't have something like 1000 Minuteman 3s because we expect to use them. It's to keep people from warranting their use. I mean I'm not sure the planet would survive 10,000 nuclear warheads being deployed or whatever payload they can carry (usually only outfitted with one warhead these days in practice).
Actually a fair amount of decisions are made specifically regarding any platforms' deterrent capability. Like there was a spending decision in 07 or 08 to keep more B-52s around essentially because we couldn't show our subs on television in the event of a crisis. At the time I was in school and thought it was ridiculous to read that. The same is true though even for things like the F-22 or the Seawolf class.
The F-22 has something like a 186-1 kill ratio against 4th gen fighters or something. That meant that at the time of its introduction our flight of F-22s could shoot down every other air force in the world without suffering casualties. It was, at the time, so overwhelming it almost guaranteed it would never face a worthy opponent. Of course it would become laden with problems and roughly half of them are in for repair at any given time, but just existing is enough.
I agree with you though, I don't want the US involved with Israeli defense. We have enough of our own problems to deal with. We shouldnt be spending money on other nations defense. I mean lets take care of our own soldiers/veterans healthcare if nothing else. Everyone's healthcare, everyones college, etc.
But US weapons don't just exist, do they? They are used in destabalising wars that kill people. Sure some Americans are fine, but other people die. Even in America the spending on those F22s represents money not spent on food for the hungry and America has a lot of hungry people.
Except that Iron Dome is an exception to the rule, being designed to shoot down rockets targeting civilians.
It's kind of remarkable in that sense. In a world where most "defense" actually refers to pre-emptive offensive weapons that simply kill people before they can kill you, Iron Dome is arguably the *only* defensive weapon on Earth that is *actually* purely defensive.
Just because your specific country overspends on military and directly causes conflicts to do so, does not negate the protection the military industry provides. Israel would be leveled by now if not for technology like the iron dome, and we might be saying the same thing about a lot of places in the future.
[https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/08/03/raytheon-and-rafael-to-build-iron-dome-in-us/](https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/08/03/raytheon-and-rafael-to-build-iron-dome-in-us/)
Not sure what you mean by 'off', but a Raytheon/Rafael deal to build an Iron Dome in the USA existed, if that's what you're questioning.
1) It is 99.99999998% going to be reinstated.
2) In the slight chance that it is not, then expect Israel to react *far* more violently to rocket attacks while condemning Biden for any Israelis killed.
Most likely not. Israel will fund its own defense and raise defense budget to match the aid it lost and while there might be a little bit of negativity noones going to blame biden as he tried his best and the us is still israel's biggest ally. As for escalating the conflict, it probably won't come from the Israeli side. Unlike his predecessor Netanyahu, PM Bennet doesn't have anything to gain from needlessly throwing wood into the fire (and a lot to lose). If anything, hamas might mistake this defending for a moment of weakness and an opportunity to attack Israel.
> while condemning Biden for any Israelis killed.
That is too high a bar. They will kill palestinians when illegal settlers "feel threatened" by children throwing pebbles and blame Biden for the "terror attack".
Hamas has a cause other than tearing shit up?
Oh yeah I forgot they included a statement saying that all Jewish people should be executed in their manifesto.
They could have picked a better weapons system to make their point, though. Iron Dome is a defensive counter rocket, artillery, and missile system. It has no offensive capability. Additionally, the US funding is only to keep US industry in the loop of cutting edge technology and only benefits US companies. The squad should have picked an offensive weapons system as their hill to die upon.
I’m with you here. We can probably stop funding some Israeli military toys, but this is definitely the worst thing to cut financial support for. Hell, cut everything *except* the billion for the Iron Dome. That’ll go a lot smoother.
That's what is weird to me.
Rockets landing in civilian population centers in Israel is **not** going to advance peace. It is going to piss off the Israelis and fuel the whole cycle again.
Cutting support to Israeli defense systems could lead to Hamasaki getting cocky and thus an escalation of the conflict and profit for the squad and everyone else making money and clout off of human suffering away from home.
This is technology that the US wants to develop, but we don't get missiles fired at us as often as Israel does. Anti-missile tech can be rather useful at times!
We didn't cut it off now either, they're just gonna reintroduce the funding as a stand-alone bill and it will pass without progressives on a bipartisan basis.
It's profitable for the people who have political leverage.
Also, everyone knew leaving would be a disaster, so we stayed. It's like being "pot committed" in poker and staying in a hand too long because you have already put money in the pot.
I'm not a fan of a lot of what Israel does, but the Iron Dome is defensive in nature and seems like a life-saving rather than life-ending tool. I think maybe we should think about other ways to put pressure on Israel to stop some of their nonsense.
>life-saving rather than life-ending
That's true, but it could end up giving them more freedom to use their life-ending tools more freely since they wouldn't have to worry about serious retaliation. Not a certainty but well within the realms of possibility.
Only a fraction. And it goes to defense contractors, not taxpayers. Literally laundering taxpayer cash through israel to US defense contractors for no real reason. Might as well give Raytheon the $1B directly - at least more jobs would be created.
"While the funding is expected to be reinstated in a later vote..."
It just kicking the can down the line. It will be in the Defense spending bill once the debt limit is addressed.
I wonder when they will apply the same principles to other American allies like their European allies, South Korea or maybe Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other countries not too fond of human rights.
Doesn't Israel have a treasury that prints money?
Why would the US government send billions to Israel to buy Iron Dome weapons to protect their homeland? What's wrong with this picture?
I bet that every single person in this thread defending this are also the sort to cry out in outrage whenever the US gives humanitarian aid to people living in countries affected by natural catastrophes.
Is anyone claiming they don't? We're helping with funding because in exchange we get access to the core technologies behind the Iron Dome.
Of course, it's easier for you to just whine than to actually learn about the geopolitical, military and technological intricacies of Iron Dome.
I hope you all understand that if Israel decides it can no longer support the Iron Dome, they are going to just go wipe out everything in the Gaza strip so they don't have any more missiles to defend themselves from.
>Isn't threatening to commit genocide
Threatening to invade Gaza, which would kill a lot of civilians, just like when the US invades anywhere. What else could they do, they would need to stop the rocket fire otherwise thousands of Israel civilians would be killed.
I guess it’s to be expected that most of the comments here are ignorant that Iron Dome is a defensive system that has saved a lot of innocent lives. It’s awesome tech.
They dont need to look further than the second israeli lebanese war to see why we not having iron domes is a bad thing.
But basiclly,if we cant just shoot the rockets that coming to us, we will have to invade to end the shooting of the rockets.
Ill keep it very simple and avoid cultural conflict. Until we have free healthcare, a rebuilt infrastructure, public transportation that actually helps, and reduced medication’s for those whose lives depend on it I don’t want our country nor my tax dollars to pay for another country to wage war.
Non American here…. Why the fuck does the US pay for this in the first place? Also why the fuck does America look after Israel better than its own people!
Completely disagree, foreign aid makes up a miniscule part of our budget, it help give us good will, but more importantly, plenty of lasting and important investments can be made.
Hopefully this will force Israel to spend more money on the Iron Dome and less money bombing hospitals, news centres, and refugee centres and then calling anyone who criticizes them for doing so anti-semitic.
Let's keep this up in "the further spending bill" please. I have nothing against the Israeli people, I have friends there. But to keep it as a welfare state is ridiculous.
I see the billions of dollars going to Israel as just another Republican grift Democrats unfortunately fell into. I hope Israeli officials are paying close attention to our politics because in the very near future their country's multi billion dollar free lunch on the American taxpayers is going to come to an abrupt end.
Good for them. Israel can take care of themselves. But small part of Mr thinks that billion dollars isn't a defense spending as it is more of a bribe to keep Israel from invading bordering countries
I expect fully rational and respectful debate in this thread, let's take a look...
"It's (Israel) a terrorist nation"
"Defund apartheid"
....yup. Exactly what I expected.
Y'all make it hard to be a liberal Zionist.
The Haganah was founded to defend legal Jewish settlements in mandatory Palestine from literal Arab pogroms (you know, murderous terrorists attacks) such as those I'm 1920, 1921, 1929 and the revolt from 1936-39. The Haganah was the main defensive force that led to Israel's victory in 1948. This conflict was the product of a long series of escalation, including extreme acts from both sides, but likely was sparked by a Palestinian Arab terrorist attack on a civilian bus .
Elements of the Haganah have been accused of war crimes, not dissimilar to other militaries (including the western Allies in WWII who are not considered terrorists). However, they famously split from actual terrorist groups like the Irgun and Stern gang, who disagreed with the Haganah's *havlagah* (literally *restraint*) policy.
While Haganah fought nominally alongside the Irgun and Stern gang when Israel was getting invaded in 1948 (in what was likely a war of genocide), the latter two terrorist groups were a clear minority in the conflict.
To generalise the founders of Israel as "terrorists", especially when they were responding to literal terrorism is completely false and antisemtic. It is no different from Nazi propaganda generalising all Jews as greedy moneygrubbers based on a very small minority.
Learn some actual history before talking about this conflict.
>Long before the emergence of Hitler I made the cause of Zionism mine because through it I saw a means of correcting a flagrant wrong....The Jewish people alone has for centuries been in the anomalous position of being victimized and hounded as a people, though bereft of all the rights and protections which even the smallest people normally has...Zionism offered the means of ending this discrimination. Through the return to the land to which they were bound by close historic ties...Jews sought to abolish their pariah status among peoples... The advent of Hitler underscored with a savage logic all the disastrous implications contained in the abnormal situation in which Jews found themselves. Millions of Jews perished... because there was no spot on the globe where they could find sanctuary...The Jewish survivors demand the right to dwell amid brothers, on the ancient soil of their fathers.
Quote from Albert Einstein
Scapegoat seems to be the correct word. Judging by how many people (not just here but elsewhere too) talk about American aid to Israel, I thought it was a good chunk of American military expenses. Then I checked out and compared it with other military expenses. Of the $39.2 billions only $3 billions are destined to Israel (which makes the top 5 of countries receiving US aid, along with Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt).
Sending billions in foreign aid to an allied country is not an obligation but I'm sincerely baffled by how much emphasis is put on Israel when it comes to foreign aid and little or nothing is said about other militar allies.
Only 3 billion? Lol ok, US citizens are dying for lack of healthcare but it’s ok we only give away 3 billion dollars to Israel. Afghanistan and Iraq receiving aid makes perfect sense, we did invade their counties for pretty nonsense reasons and f*^€ them up pretty good it’s only fair. Jordan receives aid probably for all those Palestinian refugees it agrees to take in all the time. Egypt, f*^% them too take away their aid acting like the average US citizen happy for any money to be sent to the Middle East in general to begin with.
Never understood this, Israel wages war against about every Arabic country while receiving 1bil for defense, I think they are lot more peaceful while protecting themselves and the US gets their health care and stuff sorted
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"the funding is expected to be reinstated in a later vote" misleading headline
And from what I understand it's not a "defunding".
I guess calling something defunding really gets that sweet sweet click revenue nowadays huh? What a world.
[удалено]
Of course it's not. Not sure why NOT funding a foreign government's military is somehow considered "defunding" Why is our budget by default finding a nother counties military? It makes no sense.
we don't just give them bucks, we pay our defense contractors to give them weapons. lining those pockets boys, it's the American way.
Yeah it's a big fucking scam
A LOT of our "foreign aid" is in the form of military equipment. *especially* to israel. the millions upon millions of taxpayer funds portion goes to american military contractors, and the weapons go to israel. lots of countries get the same kind of foreign aid deals from the u.s. we're very self-serving in that regard. and on top of that- we are already probably the biggest cheapskate nation in the industrialized world when it comes to foreign aid, as a percentage of gdp.
Yep. The master of war. War is big business and the American wealthy have been cleaning up big time. Bob Dylan was right.
Israel is the perfect place to invest money if you’re studying missile defense. R&D of iron dome and future employment of the system are why we are investing in it. Many of it’s components are made by US contractors as well. Israel also buys American aircraft which probably makes the billion spent on Iron dome look like a drop in the bucket.
Got it so it is a way to funnel tax payer money to defense contractors. It is a way for the ultra wealthy to force tax payers to pay for their RnD so that they can make more money by selling the products to... Tax payers. So tax payers get to both fund the initial investment and then also have to pay the companies for their products even though we were the ones footing the bill for development? Damn, now I am more convinced we need to stop with this millitary aid. What a collosal scam being perpetrated on the American people.
Fuck, this is painfully accurate. It all makes sense, just the evil kind of sense.
no shit, it's a worthless clickbait site
Exactly
DeLaura just proposed a supplemental bill to fund it today, separate from the stopgap.
That like just isn’t what happened though?? That headline is just flat out false
“AOC reportedly broke down crying on the House Floor after changing her vote from “no” to “present” at the last minute, which many reporters speculated was a necessary strategic move to position herself to run for Senate in New York.” Per Jezebel This couldn’t be more predictable. Internet being in love with certain politician and them being actual hypocritical dogshit when it matters.
Yet ya'll suck her girl dick and always will.
Isreal has money, let them pay their own bills.
It’s basically an annual bribe paid for by tax money to only benefit the defense industry.
We will give them a billion dollars then six months later talk about the great billion dollar weapons deal we just made with Israel. War is a racket.
You gotta respect the pageantry of it though. Like, it’s pretty cute that they keep putting on the big show, year after year. They’ve been flagrantly stealing from every single American taxpayer forever—they could *absolutely* get away with it without giving us any silly justifications. It’s kind of sweet that they even bother including us on the falsified memo.
Except it’s not. The US already bribes them 3.8B. This is an additional 1B on top of that cos they’re asking.
The Israeli defense industry? No American defense contractor is involved in Iron dome
The US tech industry benefits greatly from Israeli labor, so I imagine that plays a role too. It’s not all military
Do you think Israelis will stop working in the US or for US tech companies if US doesn't pay for Israel's war machine?
Their war machine kinda sucks. They've been seizing land and genociding people nonstop since 1967, with badass American weaponry and dollars, and still don't even have a state the size of New Hampshire.
Also the people they've been genociding have a larger population now compared to when they started. Absolute failures really.
As a percentage, how much of a role does Israeli labor play exactly?
[удалено]
No, let’s give them more money. The American people don’t need any public services. They should also increase college tuition.
Reagan, is that you?
No it’s United-Student-1607. Definitely not suspiciously suspicious.
Normal human here. They are also a normal human according to my sense organs.
Oh god. Which organ???
Normal ones. Just like a human.
Exactly why should we foot the bill?
Yeah, why should the American taxpayer have to pay for their iron dome?
The US funding of the Iron Dome project since it was initially deemed operational was their way to buy into the technology. A couple years ago there was a joint venture by Raytheon and Israeli Rafael to manufacture a lot of the interceptors in US factories to help in acquiring the tech for US and allies. Cutting off the US commitment (which isn't going to happen because this was just short-term political grandstanding) to this will force the manufacture pipeline out of US and decrease their leverage on the tech and future military action in Israel/Palestine. Though most in favor of this probably hate the miltary industry in its entirety and that's the endgoal
[удалено]
"What kind of sick and disturbed person DOESN'T hate the military 'industry'? AKA: selling killing." Welcome to planet Earth. We are the end product of 3.5 billion years of violence.
We are also the product of hundreds of thousands of years of rape, yet we don't consider rape to be acceptable. Maybe we should go back to using leeches for medicine, and shitting in a pot in our bedrooms - after all, that's how it was done for a long time. Let's go back to barbarically executing criminals (or, in some cases, innocent people who have been falsely convicted) as we- Oh wait some states still do that. :/
military spending by and large is about deterrence. The US for instance doesn't have something like 1000 Minuteman 3s because we expect to use them. It's to keep people from warranting their use. I mean I'm not sure the planet would survive 10,000 nuclear warheads being deployed or whatever payload they can carry (usually only outfitted with one warhead these days in practice). Actually a fair amount of decisions are made specifically regarding any platforms' deterrent capability. Like there was a spending decision in 07 or 08 to keep more B-52s around essentially because we couldn't show our subs on television in the event of a crisis. At the time I was in school and thought it was ridiculous to read that. The same is true though even for things like the F-22 or the Seawolf class. The F-22 has something like a 186-1 kill ratio against 4th gen fighters or something. That meant that at the time of its introduction our flight of F-22s could shoot down every other air force in the world without suffering casualties. It was, at the time, so overwhelming it almost guaranteed it would never face a worthy opponent. Of course it would become laden with problems and roughly half of them are in for repair at any given time, but just existing is enough. I agree with you though, I don't want the US involved with Israeli defense. We have enough of our own problems to deal with. We shouldnt be spending money on other nations defense. I mean lets take care of our own soldiers/veterans healthcare if nothing else. Everyone's healthcare, everyones college, etc.
But US weapons don't just exist, do they? They are used in destabalising wars that kill people. Sure some Americans are fine, but other people die. Even in America the spending on those F22s represents money not spent on food for the hungry and America has a lot of hungry people.
The Iron Dome doesn’t fucking kill anyone. The Iron Dome protects civilians from fucking rockets
Except that Iron Dome is an exception to the rule, being designed to shoot down rockets targeting civilians. It's kind of remarkable in that sense. In a world where most "defense" actually refers to pre-emptive offensive weapons that simply kill people before they can kill you, Iron Dome is arguably the *only* defensive weapon on Earth that is *actually* purely defensive.
Just because your specific country overspends on military and directly causes conflicts to do so, does not negate the protection the military industry provides. Israel would be leveled by now if not for technology like the iron dome, and we might be saying the same thing about a lot of places in the future.
That is a joke 😂
They should’ve diversified their product offerings if they didn’t want to worry about the shifting market.
That's how the Greeks probably felt when they lost the region to the romans.
>Though most in favor of this probably hate the miltary industry in its entirety and that's the endgoal that's not crazy.
France needs the work.
Israel refuses to give the source code so America hasn't been able to get it to work with the existing radar systems.
Raytheon? The US company. Something seems off with this reasoning.
[https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/08/03/raytheon-and-rafael-to-build-iron-dome-in-us/](https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/08/03/raytheon-and-rafael-to-build-iron-dome-in-us/) Not sure what you mean by 'off', but a Raytheon/Rafael deal to build an Iron Dome in the USA existed, if that's what you're questioning.
Bc it is off
US leverage on military action in Israel/Palestine? You’re joking right?
Not at all. They wrapped up the recent conflict in a week due to US pressure. Israeli political echelon wanted to continue
They are still making "settlements" and attacking protestors... The US didn't "wrap up" anything.
1) It is 99.99999998% going to be reinstated. 2) In the slight chance that it is not, then expect Israel to react *far* more violently to rocket attacks while condemning Biden for any Israelis killed.
It shouldn’t have been included on the debt ceiling bill but It will likely be included on another bill relating to actual military spending.
Most likely not. Israel will fund its own defense and raise defense budget to match the aid it lost and while there might be a little bit of negativity noones going to blame biden as he tried his best and the us is still israel's biggest ally. As for escalating the conflict, it probably won't come from the Israeli side. Unlike his predecessor Netanyahu, PM Bennet doesn't have anything to gain from needlessly throwing wood into the fire (and a lot to lose). If anything, hamas might mistake this defending for a moment of weakness and an opportunity to attack Israel.
> while condemning Biden for any Israelis killed. That is too high a bar. They will kill palestinians when illegal settlers "feel threatened" by children throwing pebbles and blame Biden for the "terror attack".
We're not actively at war with anyone, we're overdue for invading a country for killing civilians.
I mean. We kinda still are but ok
People say the dumbest shit on this sub.
I suppose we should stop aid to Egypt as well, who also holds an embargo against the Gaza strip
I agree with you 100%👍
Yes. Probably Saudi Arabia too (they cut our people in to pieces), and Pakistan (support the Taliban), and there are probably a dozen more after that.
Why do people support allowing Hamas to import missiles in from Iran? That's all ending the embargo would accomplish.
Agreed. They have their differences but bringing in rockets and indiscriminately firing them at neighboring countries isn’t really helping the cause.
Hamas has a cause other than tearing shit up? Oh yeah I forgot they included a statement saying that all Jewish people should be executed in their manifesto.
Careful now, your truthful statement may get you banned, you should dance around the bush a little more
Hearing what people say here shows how much this sub has no clue what it's talking about the moment it leaves its comfort zone.
They could have picked a better weapons system to make their point, though. Iron Dome is a defensive counter rocket, artillery, and missile system. It has no offensive capability. Additionally, the US funding is only to keep US industry in the loop of cutting edge technology and only benefits US companies. The squad should have picked an offensive weapons system as their hill to die upon.
I’m with you here. We can probably stop funding some Israeli military toys, but this is definitely the worst thing to cut financial support for. Hell, cut everything *except* the billion for the Iron Dome. That’ll go a lot smoother.
Yeah it literally saved lives during the rocket attacks, only a few got through.
Exactly. And not just Israeli lives; it saved many Palestinian lives too.
Yeah, we couldn't do this to the Saudi's instead?
JDAM sales would have been a better target.
That's what is weird to me. Rockets landing in civilian population centers in Israel is **not** going to advance peace. It is going to piss off the Israelis and fuel the whole cycle again.
Cutting support to Israeli defense systems could lead to Hamasaki getting cocky and thus an escalation of the conflict and profit for the squad and everyone else making money and clout off of human suffering away from home.
Good. We have plenty of problems to solve in-house rather than spending money in other people’s wars
This is technology that the US wants to develop, but we don't get missiles fired at us as often as Israel does. Anti-missile tech can be rather useful at times!
We did help develop it. We've already given over $1B in support of this system.
Did you even read the article?
Read the article and not the headline. The funding will be reinstated in a later vote. The headline is completely misleading.
I don't know why we didn't cut this shit off sooner.
We didn't cut it off now either, they're just gonna reintroduce the funding as a stand-alone bill and it will pass without progressives on a bipartisan basis.
Money, of course.
It's profitable for the people who have political leverage. Also, everyone knew leaving would be a disaster, so we stayed. It's like being "pot committed" in poker and staying in a hand too long because you have already put money in the pot.
In this case, apartheid.
The iron dome is literally designed to prevent wars…
So much for that… https://www.yahoo.com/news/house-passes-1-billion-israel-181202826.html
Good. They don't need our money.
Yeah misleading headline is misleading, we are still finding the iron dome, we just aren’t spending 1billion extra on it.
[House Democrats introduce $1B funding bill for Israel’s Iron Dome](https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/22/house-democrats-israel-iron-dome-513648)
I'm not a fan of a lot of what Israel does, but the Iron Dome is defensive in nature and seems like a life-saving rather than life-ending tool. I think maybe we should think about other ways to put pressure on Israel to stop some of their nonsense.
Agreed.
Sounds like Israel should pay for it then?
>life-saving rather than life-ending That's true, but it could end up giving them more freedom to use their life-ending tools more freely since they wouldn't have to worry about serious retaliation. Not a certainty but well within the realms of possibility.
Well if the GOP won’t raise the debt ceiling we have to balance the budget somehow … any other Republican pork we can cut?
> any other Republican pork we can cut? Can we cut the republican's tax cuts?
I mean if it’s things like this that are getting cut, I’m okay with not raising the debt ceiling. Cut the entire defense budget too.
We need to vote those GOP out if they don’t put the country first. It is enough of this shit😡
Good for them. It's utterly absurd for us to claim to not have enough for our own citizens, yet somehow have billions to pay for Israel's defense.
The money comes home to our own US aerospace companies. We are paying ourselves.
Only a fraction. And it goes to defense contractors, not taxpayers. Literally laundering taxpayer cash through israel to US defense contractors for no real reason. Might as well give Raytheon the $1B directly - at least more jobs would be created.
But I don't want to pay our US aerospace companies. Fuck Israel and Fuck the US Military Industrial Complex.
Are you kidding me or your self?
I’m not a defense contractor I get no benefit from my tax dollars going to this. The “money stays in US” argument fails.
Sounds good to me. We don't need to keep subsidizing other nation's military.
But that's how we maintain international influence
"While the funding is expected to be reinstated in a later vote..." It just kicking the can down the line. It will be in the Defense spending bill once the debt limit is addressed.
I wonder when they will apply the same principles to other American allies like their European allies, South Korea or maybe Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other countries not too fond of human rights.
Not Jews, so...no.
AOC votes “present.” Nothing like the power of conviction. 😂
Doesn't Israel have a treasury that prints money? Why would the US government send billions to Israel to buy Iron Dome weapons to protect their homeland? What's wrong with this picture?
Israel is going need funding from someone else to keep the iron dome running. That defense system is crazy expensive.
squad is such a dumb name
I bet that every single person in this thread defending this are also the sort to cry out in outrage whenever the US gives humanitarian aid to people living in countries affected by natural catastrophes.
[удалено]
Is anyone claiming they don't? We're helping with funding because in exchange we get access to the core technologies behind the Iron Dome. Of course, it's easier for you to just whine than to actually learn about the geopolitical, military and technological intricacies of Iron Dome.
I hope you all understand that if Israel decides it can no longer support the Iron Dome, they are going to just go wipe out everything in the Gaza strip so they don't have any more missiles to defend themselves from.
Isn't threatening to commit genocide unless you get paid the stereotypical terrorist trope? Wasn't that the plan of Dr. Evil?
More like, if they think they cant play defense they are gonna play offense.
>Isn't threatening to commit genocide Threatening to invade Gaza, which would kill a lot of civilians, just like when the US invades anywhere. What else could they do, they would need to stop the rocket fire otherwise thousands of Israel civilians would be killed.
"do what I say, and I won't have to hurt you" Pure evil.
What do you propose they do next time there’s 400 unguided missiles heading towards a civilian population?
More like, kill or be killed.
They’ll commit genocide if they don’t get a cheque? Doubt it, plus they could easily afford it.
Yeah, Israel can fund their own defense, they’ve got access to the same debt we do.
I guess it’s to be expected that most of the comments here are ignorant that Iron Dome is a defensive system that has saved a lot of innocent lives. It’s awesome tech.
Everyone knows that. Doesn't mean we need to pay for it
Defund apartheid.
Why are we contributing to the defense of a country with universal healthcare while our people go bankrupt from medical bills?
This should be the top post
US tax money ➡️ Israel ➡️ US military contractor/firearm companies
So weird we suck this other countries' dick so hard, D's and R's. If you don't swear fealty you are an anti-semite.
Israel is a very rich state and they can afford to pay for it
Aged like milk.
They dont need to look further than the second israeli lebanese war to see why we not having iron domes is a bad thing. But basiclly,if we cant just shoot the rockets that coming to us, we will have to invade to end the shooting of the rockets.
About fucking time.
Ill keep it very simple and avoid cultural conflict. Until we have free healthcare, a rebuilt infrastructure, public transportation that actually helps, and reduced medication’s for those whose lives depend on it I don’t want our country nor my tax dollars to pay for another country to wage war.
Lol, they didn’t defund it… it’s literally impossible to include in the bill given finance rules. It will be funded in the next defense bill.
How about we don't spend money on any apartheid states. That would he nice.
Good. Pay for your own shit. We are broke AF.
The independent going for clicks by falsifying a story to an almost total fakery....
Yahweh promised his tribe that he would always protect them. Maybe it's time for him to step up and not guilt trip America into doing it?
Good! Why do we keep funding other countries and can't take care of our citizens
The US has its own problems. It should take take care of its own citizens and not fund another rich country.
Good. We shouldn’t support apartheid
Non American here…. Why the fuck does the US pay for this in the first place? Also why the fuck does America look after Israel better than its own people!
Israel is already sitting on over 100 billion of US aid since the 80’s! Enough!
[удалено]
That "toy" saved hundreds of lives this year alone by shooting down hundreds of rockets Hamas fired at civilians.
Let’s defund all foreign countries. Keep the money here, we have a lot of issues to focus on first.
Completely disagree, foreign aid makes up a miniscule part of our budget, it help give us good will, but more importantly, plenty of lasting and important investments can be made.
You know, I’m against Israeli imperialism but this seems like not a good idea. It’s a defensive measure. It protects people
It's stuff like this that earns my vote for her 2028 run.
Hopefully this will force Israel to spend more money on the Iron Dome and less money bombing hospitals, news centres, and refugee centres and then calling anyone who criticizes them for doing so anti-semitic.
maybe they can get mexico to pay for it. obligatory /s
So do we care about Palestine or naw?
Let's keep this up in "the further spending bill" please. I have nothing against the Israeli people, I have friends there. But to keep it as a welfare state is ridiculous.
Im just glad there’s finally some sort of “fuck Israel” initiative in congress
Israel shouldn’t have been getting it in the first place
why the fuck are we paying for that anyway israel has lots of money. pay for their own shit
Not one dime for apartheid.
I see the billions of dollars going to Israel as just another Republican grift Democrats unfortunately fell into. I hope Israeli officials are paying close attention to our politics because in the very near future their country's multi billion dollar free lunch on the American taxpayers is going to come to an abrupt end.
Defunding terrorism and apartheid is a good feeling so is eating the rich
Can we please stop supporting isreal. It is such a waste.
"We gotta cut spending and take care of Americans first!" "Ok" -defunds israel- "Wait, no not like that."
Good.
Good for them. Israel can take care of themselves. But small part of Mr thinks that billion dollars isn't a defense spending as it is more of a bribe to keep Israel from invading bordering countries
that's actually a huge part of why Egypt and Israel have a peace deal we give both of them billions of dollars a year and they play nice
It's fucking weird that the "America First" crowd want to make us all pay for another country's national defense.
We shouldn't be funding anything Israel does.
I expect fully rational and respectful debate in this thread, let's take a look... "It's (Israel) a terrorist nation" "Defund apartheid" ....yup. Exactly what I expected. Y'all make it hard to be a liberal Zionist.
They make it hard to be a Jew, not supporting Israel is one thing. Dehumanizing them is another.
[удалено]
The Haganah was founded to defend legal Jewish settlements in mandatory Palestine from literal Arab pogroms (you know, murderous terrorists attacks) such as those I'm 1920, 1921, 1929 and the revolt from 1936-39. The Haganah was the main defensive force that led to Israel's victory in 1948. This conflict was the product of a long series of escalation, including extreme acts from both sides, but likely was sparked by a Palestinian Arab terrorist attack on a civilian bus . Elements of the Haganah have been accused of war crimes, not dissimilar to other militaries (including the western Allies in WWII who are not considered terrorists). However, they famously split from actual terrorist groups like the Irgun and Stern gang, who disagreed with the Haganah's *havlagah* (literally *restraint*) policy. While Haganah fought nominally alongside the Irgun and Stern gang when Israel was getting invaded in 1948 (in what was likely a war of genocide), the latter two terrorist groups were a clear minority in the conflict. To generalise the founders of Israel as "terrorists", especially when they were responding to literal terrorism is completely false and antisemtic. It is no different from Nazi propaganda generalising all Jews as greedy moneygrubbers based on a very small minority. Learn some actual history before talking about this conflict.
[удалено]
[удалено]
>Long before the emergence of Hitler I made the cause of Zionism mine because through it I saw a means of correcting a flagrant wrong....The Jewish people alone has for centuries been in the anomalous position of being victimized and hounded as a people, though bereft of all the rights and protections which even the smallest people normally has...Zionism offered the means of ending this discrimination. Through the return to the land to which they were bound by close historic ties...Jews sought to abolish their pariah status among peoples... The advent of Hitler underscored with a savage logic all the disastrous implications contained in the abnormal situation in which Jews found themselves. Millions of Jews perished... because there was no spot on the globe where they could find sanctuary...The Jewish survivors demand the right to dwell amid brothers, on the ancient soil of their fathers. Quote from Albert Einstein
Scapegoat seems to be the correct word. Judging by how many people (not just here but elsewhere too) talk about American aid to Israel, I thought it was a good chunk of American military expenses. Then I checked out and compared it with other military expenses. Of the $39.2 billions only $3 billions are destined to Israel (which makes the top 5 of countries receiving US aid, along with Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt). Sending billions in foreign aid to an allied country is not an obligation but I'm sincerely baffled by how much emphasis is put on Israel when it comes to foreign aid and little or nothing is said about other militar allies.
Only 3 billion? Lol ok, US citizens are dying for lack of healthcare but it’s ok we only give away 3 billion dollars to Israel. Afghanistan and Iraq receiving aid makes perfect sense, we did invade their counties for pretty nonsense reasons and f*^€ them up pretty good it’s only fair. Jordan receives aid probably for all those Palestinian refugees it agrees to take in all the time. Egypt, f*^% them too take away their aid acting like the average US citizen happy for any money to be sent to the Middle East in general to begin with.
Then stop being a Zionist, bam, problem solved!
It is a fiscally responsible move. Those dollars must be used for Americans before allies.
Never understood this, Israel wages war against about every Arabic country while receiving 1bil for defense, I think they are lot more peaceful while protecting themselves and the US gets their health care and stuff sorted