Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
It is a pernicious lie, to make people think that aid that could have gone to COVID instead is being directed to Israel. In fact, it was a separate 6000 page budget bill, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, that included the money for Israel.
The antisemitism that followed the tweet - written by a journalist, no less, who defended it while admitting it was incorrect - was predictable.
And this is textbook antisemitism, where Israel is singled out as somehow uniquely stealing US tax dollars.
The bill also gives money to Arab and Muslim countries. A lot of it.
SEC. 9026. Of the amounts appropriated in this title under the heading ‘‘Operation and Maintenance, Defense Wide’’, for the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, $250,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2022, shall be available to reimburse Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman under section 1226 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 (22 U.S.C. 2151 note), for enhanced border security, of which not less than $150,000,000 shall be for Jordan.
Page 1436:
Of the funds appropriated by this Act under the heading ‘‘Economic Support Fund’’, not less than $125,000,000 shall be made available for assistance for Egypt, of which $40,000,000 should be made available for higher education programs, including not less than $15,000,000 for scholarships for Egyptian students with high financial need to attend not-for-profit institutions of higher education in Egypt...
And apparently a separate item on page 1437:
Of the funds appropriated by this Act under the heading ‘‘Foreign Military Financing Program’’, $1,300,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2022, should be made available for assistance for Egypt.
Back to Jordan, page 1442.
JORDAN.—Of the funds appropriated by this Act under titles III and IV, not less than $1,650,000,000 shall be made available for assistance for Jordan, of which: not less than $845,100,000 shall be made available for budget support for the Government of Jordan; not less than $10,000,000 shall be made available for programs and activities for which policy justifications and decisions shall be the responsibility of the United States Chief of Mission in Jordan; and not less than $425,000,000 shall be made available under the heading ‘‘Foreign Military Financing Program’’.
While there are various strings attached to many of these programs, not a word is in the budget about conditioning aid to Jordan on its extraditing terrorist Ahlam Tamimi to the US.
Where's the outrage over that? (UPDATE: There actually is such a condition - one that was ignored in 2020, which is a different kind of outrageous. See here.)
The ‘‘Afghanistan Security Forces Fund’’ is allocated $3,047,612,000. The ‘‘Counter-Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Train and Equip Fund’’ gets $710,000,000.
If you care about how the US government is allocating money to foreign countries during a time of domestic COVID economic woes, then why not mention the far higher amounts earmarked to other countries besides Israel?
You know the reason. Because these people are so immoral they will even use the pandemic to push their anti-Israel agenda.
