ARTICLES
Volume 38 No. 5 Fall II - 2020
This article originally appeared in the print version of Women Against Military Madness Newsletter Vol 38, No 5, 2020.
by Polly Mann
The U.S. Department of Defense is a misnomer. Actually, it is the Department of War, Death, and Suicide. Hundreds of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are spent by corporations to create and build the most hideous weapons ever known. Investments in these companies, no doubt, bring returns, but at what cost!
And what about this? The United States gives Israel $3.8 billion every year. More of it used to go to economic development, but now the majority of it goes for the Israeli military.
“From 2009 to 2018, the United States will give [now past tense: gave] Israel–the largest recipient of U.S. assistance–$30 billion in military aid. In enforcing its brutal military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, Israel regularly misuses U.S. weapons in violation of U.S. law to kill and injure Palestinian civilians, destroy Palestinian civilian infrastructure, blockade the Gaza Strip, and build illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” says the Palestinian Campaign for Human Rights. If broken down by state, this means, for example: $3.5 billion from the state of California and
$2.5 billion from the state of New York. For the state of Minnesota, it means $886,428,240 for the Israeli military. That was then. This is now: The U.S. continues to provide funding for the Israeli military today.
This is outrageous when, instead of contributing to making Palestinians homeless by grabbing their land and doing terrible things to them, that money could be spent in this country making affordable housing available and feeding food-insecure children. It could provide healthcare, education, and training for green jobs. How about restitution to Palestinians for what has been done to them — recognizing that nothing can ever compensate for the loss of life and land and that this awful funding of Israeli military must stop?
Polly Mann is a co-founder of WAMM and regular contributor to this newsletter.