Well… It has those things for the settler population
This is both true, and not entirely accurate.
Israel spends something like $24 on their defense. The $3B that the the US gives them (and it’s $3B, not $4B, based on what I can find) is largely in the form of military materials: ammunition, bombs, air defense systems, etc. So what we give them is about 20% of their total defense spend, and yeah, that’s a lot.
But the flip side of that is that American workers in American factories are the ones building the bombs, missiles defense systems, making the bullets, etc.; the money that the gov’t gives Israel ends up creating a benefit for workers in the form of work that wouldn’t otherwise exist. I’d have to see a real economic analysis, but this might be a case of each dollar that the gov’t spends creating more than a dollar of effect. (And yeah, I know that a lot of that effect is going to e.g. Raytheon shareholders rather than line workers. But still.)
BUT
The fact that we see an economic benefit in terms of jobs and growth by giving Israel aid doesn’t mean we should. Because we’re directly funding the genocide of the Palestinians.
Israel spends something like $24 on their defense.
I assume there’s supposed to be a B on the end of that figure. But it’s funny picturing them spending just twenty-four bucks.
Yes, $24B, sorry.
If they spent $24.00 on their own defense, and the US gave them $3B, then, uh, they’d be 100% dependent on the US.
Imagine spending that 3 billions on American health care workers… rather than Raytheon
It wouldn’t even be noticeable. We spend a total of about $4.5 trillion [EDIT: on healthcare]; $3B is 0.07% of that total.
And, BTW, we have terrible outcomes for how much we spend.
Is that 4.5 trillion including cost to the individual? Or just production.
Because I imagine the cost to the individual is a lot higher than it normally would be because of the profit incentive.
I imagine the number would be somewhat lower if it was near cost because it’s govt funded. Curious how significant that difference would be
Gov’t funded doesn’t drop the cost that much. Countries in the west that are single-payer and/or have national/socialized healthcare systems pay between 1/5 and 2/3 of what we do per capita, on average. It might be better in countries where the entire supply chain is subject to price controls (e…g., China), but I don’t know. But, regardless, if our system cost 20% of what it does now, or $900B, $3B would still be only .3% of the entire expenditure. Part of the problem is that, as far as western countries go, the US is just big. The population of Israel is estimated to be about 9.5M, compared to 340M or so for the US.
Again, to be clear: I’m not suggesting that we should be giving–or selling–Israel anything at this point.
for all its citizens
[s] What are you talking about? Israel is probably one of the countries that gives it’s citizens the most. The results really are admirable. Everyone should really look into how they did it (After miming looking at my phone for a single second) Oh… Oh no… Fuck. [/s].
Seriously though, the word “citizens” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Whatever happened to the right wing talking point of “Take care of our country first”?
Remember when the right thought The Jewish bankers controlled the world. They made whole documentaries on it and everything. Crazy how fast the beliefs of all groups shift from year to year.
They still do.
This is what’s crazy about it all.
What’s really funny is we know they do, but nobody ever really presses these contrary beliefs of theirs publicly. But we all know they have them. I don’t understand why it doesn’t happen more often.
They still believe it, but at the same time they respect those Arab killing strong men.
The right always prefer strong men above everything else. Even their own countries.
The right wing part focuses on the eschaton with Israel in their death cult.
I love learning new words, what’s this one mean!?
Oh…oh dear.
You also have eschatology as a study.
Oh for fucks sake, the heat death of the whole universe isn’t enough they have to speed it up? Religion is a hell of a drug.
We are starting to see more and more of split on the right on this issue actually. You have critiques by tucker carlson and Candace owens for example.
It was always a lie
How is this a right wing talking point? It’s blatant corruption, there is no ideology in prioritizing you’re own citizens. Wtf?
Right now they’re all loving supporting destroying Gaza and occupying it. They also screamed about how being involved in Ukraine was bad. Right-wingers are just awful, broken people with no consistency beyond always doing exactly what their local conservative party tells them.
You mean decent, hardworking capitalist Americans are subsidising a socialist hellscape??? 😯
Its more fascist America funds national socialist Israel.
Pffft, details shmetails. If it’s got socialism in the name it’s the devil. I don’t wanna risk any of my tax dollars going to help me or - heaven forbid, my neighbor - when it could be used to push a hard working billionaire’s pile that much closer to trickling down! I can almost feel that golden shower already!
😆so well written!
51st state with plausible deniability
This claim about the t-shirts seems so outrageous that I had to look into it to see if there was more there. Looking into it further I found the article you screen shot from CBS news March 23, 2009, as well as an identical copy on NBC news for the same day. Neither article had a credited author, but the CBS article referenced a Haaretz Daily link (seen in your screen shot) and the NBC article referenced the Associate Press, neither website still hosts such an article.
So next I turned to the Wayback Machine where I was able to find the Haaretz article, but not the Associated Press article.
The Haaretz article amounts to some of the worst journalistic documentation I’ve ever seen. There’s one picture of a shirt which the journalist claims was ordered by a soldier and the identities of everyone involved have been kept anonymous. From a young arab man who supervises the making of the shirts to a Givati soldier, the only source for all of this is Uri Blau who wrote the article.
Alongside this I found an Al Jazeera video where they followed up on the same story where they show a catalogue with the same image used in Uri Blau’s article which claims that the shirts were ordered by soldiers. In the video they say they visited the shop but the owner refused to explain the shirts and were told to leave by police.
April 1, 2009, Uri Blau posted another article referencing himself and stating that the IDF now bans soldiers from wearing such shirts even on private time, but again provides no sources or pictures.
Honestly, this could all be true, but it’s so fucking sloppy that for all we know Uri Blau made up all of this because there is no substantial proof. It’s the journalistic professionalism of a tabloid.
What makes it worse is that because this slop has been out in the public long enough it’s existence is actually referenced as proof. “Oh, there was an article written about this 10 years ago so this definitely happened,” but the original article itself wasn’t proof?
Here is an example on reddit where the OP shared the picture and story a few months ago. When asked for sources they shared a Huffpost and NBC article as separate sources which are both identical and reference the original Haaretz article.
bruh the second article i found on duckduckgo is about the Israeli government punishing the soldiers who did it
troll harder kiddo
“i googled this and found several mainstream sources acknowledging the pretty well regarded accounts by the the fairly well reguarded Haretz but am going to just throw a bunch of vague ad home without linking or quoting the actual article, just impugning it’s validity without any real argument because i’m a lazy 5 day old troll account”
Israeli officials have described as “tasteless” and “tasteless” and inconsistent with army values a popular military pastime of printing violent cartoons on T-shirts.
An investigation in Haaretz daily says the customised shirts are often ordered when troops finish training courses.
One example shows a pregnant Arab women in the cross-hairs of a sniper’s sight with the legend “1 shot 2 kills”.
Another design shows a child being similarly targeted with the slogan “the smaller they are, the harder it is”.
In both images the people being targeted appear to be carrying weapons. A third T-shirt design shows a dead Palestinian baby and the words “Better use Durex” (condoms).
An army statement said the customised clothing was produced outside military auspices, but it pledged to stamp out the use of such imagery by soldiers.
“The examples presented by the Haaretz reporter are not in accordance with IDF values and are simply tasteless,” the military statement said.
“This type of humour is unbecoming and should be condemned.”
But it admitted that until now there were no military guidelines governing “acceptable civilian clothing” made by its soldiers.
[Here’s how wiki characterizes Hareetz, btw (imma put as much effort into the format as you are into your trolling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haaretz:
Haaretz (Hebrew: הָאָרֶץ, lit. ‘The Land [of Israel]’; originally Ḥadshot Haaretz – Hebrew: חַדְשׁוֹת הָאָרֶץ, IPA: [χadˈʃot haˈʔaʁets], lit. ‘News of the Land [of Israel]’) is an Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel. The paper is published in Hebrew and English in the Berliner format, and is also available online. In North America, it is published as a weekly newspaper, combining articles from the Friday edition with a roundup from the rest of the week. Haaretz is Israel’s newspaper of record.[4][5] It is known for its left-wing and liberal stances on domestic and foreign issues.[6]
First off, my account is new because my previous instance is shutting down and I had to make a new one.
Second, this is the same slop. The article you shared is a near exact quote of the NBC, Huffpost, and CBS article. The only thing is adds is that it says,
“The army said it would not tolerate the T-shirts and would take disciplinary action against the soldiers involved, although it was not clear how many wore the shirts or how widely they were distributed.”
This was published March 24, 2009, a day after the original article was published online. After that statement it then refers back to the Haaretz article and then adds quoted commentary from a Hamas spokesperson.
I doubt the IDF could search the homes of every soldier within 24 hours so this comment by the IDF sounds like a reaction to the article, not that anyone was found with the shirts. Like I said before, I researched this and found no substantial evidence, if you have some then please share it.
EDIT: you sharing the same articles referencing and copying each other is like this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI
EDIT 2: The second article, the BBC one is an almost exact rip of the original Haaretz article.
This is a bit better, but it’s still coming from Haaretz and the person they referenced most, Professor Orna Sasson-Levy, is the same person Al Jazeera interviewed in 2009 so it’s still fairly self referential. It’s the same people saying the same thing over and over again.
This article does provide pictures of drawings and a picture of a shirt being worn, but it hardly makes a firm connection to soldiers.
The article also says, “As Danny Kaplan of the Gender Studies program at Bar-Ilan University sees it, the regular appearance in recent years of the crude T-shirts has raised doubts about the fitness of the army to rein in the phenomenon.” If this is such a regular occurrence why is it so hard to provide pictures of people wearing them and associating it to the IDF?
To make things even more weird the article says, “The sexist shirts also turn up in unexpected places. “What’s amazing is that you see them on the street on foreign workers and even on Palestinians,” says Ofer Nordheimer Nur of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Tel Aviv University. “You see all kinds of shirts with slogans such as ‘I’m in Golani’ or with semi-amusing slogans, which may have been bought at a second-hand shop or just picked up off the street. Even in Gaza, you can see shirts like these.””
So apparently these shirts are so common place that Palestinians in Gaza are wearing them, but they’re definitely coming from soldiers custom ordering them?
Applying some critical thinking some questions have to be asked. Why is it the same media outlet that is generating this and no one else? Why are the commenters the same people even 8 years later? Why is it that we can get pictures of the drawings but barely any of people wearing the shirts? How is it that the shirts are custom ordered, but also so common that they are everywhere? Why is it that Palestinians in Gaza have them? Does this not raise questions for you?
Never heard “JAQing off” before, that’s good
No, no, no. You can’t refute critical questions to the authenticity of possible propaganda just because it doesn’t fit your narrative. I researched the article, the source, the commenters, the news outlet, and the journalists. I asked that you provide something more substantial than:
-The same news outlet over and over again.
-The same article over and over again.
-The same few pictures over and over again.
-The same commenters over and over again.
None of what you have provided is substantial proof or evidence, it’s just the same thing repeated over and over again. It’s like Peter Navarro saying he learned everything he knows from Ron Vara, his fictional alter ego.
At the end of the day what you are doing is an appeal to authority. You’re saying that this news outlet said it so it must be true without looking at whether they provided substantial evidence in the first place.
EDIT: At the end of the day we have only 2 news articles, 1 news outlet, no named sources (everyone is anonymous including the guy making the shirts), 2 journalists who reference themselves and each other, 2 pictures, and 3 commenters. There is no other original source for this that I have been able to find.
It’s a doubled sided genocide. America send money over to Israel so they can kill they’re own citizen and the US doesn’t have the money to save its citizens lives.
It’d be so much easier if they both stopped trying to kill people
Countries with nukes should never receive any aid for anything, ever.
That should be the price of having nukes.
What’s the logic behind this statement? Is it just that nukes are bad?
The logic is that if you put the world at risk, there should be consequences for that.
If you want the world to come running when you fall on hard times (and this can hardly be considered that, yet aid comes all the same) then you should give up your weapons of mass destruction.
If there’s no consequence for having them, eventually everyone will have them. And then very rapidly nobody will. And that won’t be a good day.
Ok. I kind of get your point. It seems like almost any country can put the world at risk though, with or without nukes. Aid isn’t given on how not-powerful a country is but how beneficial it is to the country supplying the aid. For example the us will prop up dictators it hates if it serves their interests. Topple democracies if it helps their interests. Nukes or no nukes it only makes sense. It would be nice if countries were all trying to make the best world to live in, but we aren’t there yet, and I’m sure you know that.
Israel has yet to admit to having nukes
Yet have them they do.
Why do we care if they admit it or not
why wouldnt any country have them at this point, I feel like its just delusion assuming they dont
Most nations could not afford to safely construct and maintain nukes.
Do the same thing for guns and you’ve got yourself a deal
Democrat/Republican is all a smoke show. They both agree that Israel deserves our money. You’re not allowed to question it. You’re not allowed to boycott them. Even bringing it up is anti-Semitic activity.
If you want to know who the real bosses are, look at who it’s illegal to criticize.
In Texas, it’s literally illegal for governments to buy products or award contracts to anyone who denounces the actions of Israel.
Like: when I was analyzing bids for janitorial services for City Hall, I was legally required to vett the bidders’ stances on Israel.
Well, at least no one would possibly have anything to say about Israel…
That is some free speech right there!
Democrats, republicans, at the end of the day they are all americans.
Yeah right … their own tax base is enough to cover the cost of public services like that …
… but a genocide? … Palestine ain’t gonna genocide itself … that shit costs money
A lot of the money goes towards to illegal colonial settlements. These cost far more in security and infrastructure and the social services there are much more expensive to get more people to go there for “good roads and schools”.
Even before the genocide Israel has been heavily subsidized by the US and other allies.
As UNRWA has been covering much of the humanitarian obligations Israel has as an occupying force over the past half century the global community has been subsidizing Israel with dozens of billions too.
Yeah Iran pays Hamas to do that.
Of the ~90% of buildings destroyed, how many were destroyed by Israeli bombs VS Hamas bombs/rockets.
The answer may shock you!
Hamas are terrorists.
One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.
Hamas are terrorists though. They would kill all the Jews on the planet if they could. Go check out their charter
- They revised that charter.
- Are you surprised they hate Jews and some might not have a nuanced opinion? There’s a fucking star of David on all the tanks and flags of the people killing their relatives and stealing their land.
Yeah their revisions are noted, hopefully it’s a more pragmatic but it doesn’t change the fact that if they were to seize power they’d establish another Islamist society that is regressive. How come all the other Arab nations aren’t doing anything to help Palestine? The leaders of Hamas were billionaires in qatar that let their people starve. How do you explain that?
Yes, but many IDF members and the nationalistic government of Israel are terrorists as well.
I still believe, (without any proof of course) that the government of Israel would have been able to not let 8th October happen and I believe that they moved the psytrance festival knowing what would happen.
Only to have a reason to Bomb Gaza to the ground…
🙃 but this is just a feeling!
The only response a genocider understands is violence. If you’re not a “terrorist” you’re either a victim or a collaborator.
You’re a parrot, not a person.
Hamas are terrorists tho.? What’s contentious about this? So are Hezbollah and the irgc
You’re a terrorist.
Now I can ignore all your human rights and also kill you with impunity.
Is this a good system? Is this normal? The answer is no.
Terrorist is just a word meant to shut off your thinking and empathy. Don’t fall for it.
Hamas is literally funded by Iran and their charter states they want death to Israel and the USA. They attacked Israel on Oct 7 2023 and created some serious terror that day. It’s not hyperbole this really happened, not sure anyone is trying to fool me.
If Hamas are terrorists, Israel is magnitudes more of terrorists. Ultra terrorists or something.
Lol no Israel is a democratic country with lgbtq rights, not comparable to Hamas.
So why do you have to get gay married in Cyprus instead of Israel?
Your whitewashing hasbara for a genocidal apartheid state is going to work less and less as people see through the bullshit.
Ok fair enough I thought you Israel allowed same sex marriages domestically but it doesn’t. Either way they have a right to exist and defend itself and they’ve done more to battle international terrorism then any other nation has. They took out Hamas and it’s leaders, hezbollah, and the houthis are next. Iran is a genocidal state. Supporting Hamas is a very weird thing for people to do, I don’t get it. I definitely will never support a terrorist state that takes its support from Iran.
The dumbass people in this country didn’t get jealous of the universal health care they paid to institute in Iraq. There’s no hope.
Isn’t that all military equipment?
Which is worse. Like it’s not that the US is subsidizing something good like higher education, but rather bombs and guns for faster genocide?
Money doesn’t have labels on it. If they don’t need to spend their own money on military they can spend it on other things. So you could argue the US is at least indirectly funding these things.
The USA pays Israel for intelligence and intelligence work. There isn’t money just being handed over.
Yeah, and they might spend the US money on exactly that, but that means they can spend their own money on something else, like general welfare, which they apparently do. So they can use US money to kill children in Gaza and spend their own money on healthcare 🤷♂️Actually reread your message and see your point. Sure it’s not free money with no cost of Israel but would Israel be able to defend itself without those funds? It still a matter of money coming in and money being spent on welfare.
The irony is still that Israel, currently occupying Palestine, and in constant military conflict, gets money from the US while still maintaining a functioning welfare system.
I am of the opinion that Israel is in a constant state of conflict precisely because it benefits America’s defense contractors and international banks involved in these contracts. The USA might have actually pushed for peace had they not been so profitable for them if war continues.
Which is worse. Like it’s not that the US is subsidizing something good like higher education, but rather bombs and guns for faster genocide?
Israel is more likely to, if American subsidies were cut, to strip their social benefits than reduce the operations of a core aspect of their state.
Opportunity cost, and all that jazz. Think of it this way - if you were hell-bent on spending 100$ on art supplies per month, and some fellow came up and said “I’ll give you 50$ of art supplies per month”, what that really does is effectively free up 50$ for whatever else you might desire to use it for.
All that money is a subsidy for US defense contractors. This is most of what Eisenhower was warning about before he left office
I wish Trump would chicken out on this.
I was unfamiliar with the national dog of Argentina. I thought it was strange that it looks like a Staffordshire Terrier, so I looked it up and was delighted to learn that it’s called the “Dogo Argentinio.” Perfect fucking name, I love it.
They look better without trimmed ears.
The USA gives Israel billions in exchange for intelligence and for running intel ops for the USA. This is not free money.
The military aid is spent on US defense contracts so it is more a subsidy for arms manufacturers than a gift to Israel.
This is true but its a sad state of affairs when the US would rather spend money bullying other countries to further corporate interests than giving their own citizens access to health care and education.
Unfortunately been that way a looooong time
Agreed
