The News Behind The News
December 7, 2000
Three Cheers for the Extremists
Globes’ Washington correspondent, Ran Dagoni, reports that Governor Bush’s near certain victory is significantly reducing the chance for quick approval of $450 million in special aid to Israel in the next budget year. There is, Dagoni writes, a hostile atmosphere between Republican and Democratic congressmen due to the presidential election battle between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Now that Bush’s victory seems near certain, “the concern is that a group of extremist Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives will try to ‘settle accounts’ with the Democrats.
Note that Dagoni defines those Republicans questioning special aid of $450 million, above and beyond the nearly $4 billion Israel gets in annual U.S. aid, as “extremists.”
To ice the cake, Dagoni reports that his Israeli sources in Washington say that Congressional opposition is merely partisan conflict between Democrats and Republicans and that “the Republican leadership in both Houses of Congress is aware of the importance of the aid and will support it when it comes up for a vote.” The concern is that the special aid will not be approved for this coming budget year.
Why are critics of aid to Israel labeled “extremists?” Are they members of what Hillary Clinton calls “the vast right-wing conspiracy?”
The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies has written, for more than a decade, that aid and other “free money” are the chief causes of Israel’s social, political, and economic decline. Aid has sapped the morale of the country, propped up money-losing state-owned enterprises, permitted political parties to buy votes, driven Israeli high-tech firms offshore, and sustained socialism. (Click here to read our latest Research Paper in Strategy on the subject.)
We at IASPS can only hope, for the first time, that a band of merry “extremists” will defeat the special aid request. If these extremists will do the right thing and vote no, they will play a major role in helping to restore the prospects for a brighter future in Israel, in which ordinary Israelis can begin to enjoy the same measure of freedom we enjoy in America.
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