The House Foreign Affairs Committee has approved a bill that would boost U.S. foreign aid to Israel above the $3 billion it has received annually since the mid-1980s.
The foreign aid authorization bill, which the panel approved Tuesday and is expected to come before the full House later this month, would increase annual U.S. military aid to Israel from the current $1.8 million to $2 billion in the 1993 fiscal year.
Economic assistance would remain at $1.2 billion, for a total aid package of $3.2 billion.
The increase is intended to partially offset the erosion of the foreign aid package’s buying power due to inflation since 1986, when the $3 billion level was first attained.
Pro-Israel activists offered scant explanation of how the $200 million increase was arrived at.
But Morris Amitay, former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said pro-Israel lobbyists are “always in the position where they can’t appear to be overly piggy,” especially since Israel is already by far the largest U.S. foreign aid recipient.
Lobbyists decided to push for an increase in military aid rather than economic aid, because, as one put it, “American officials are more acutely aware of the pressure” on Israel’s foreign military sales account, which the Jewish state uses to purchase defense equipment from U.S. contractors.
“Israel simply does not have enough in its account for some of the purchases that (the Pentagon) considers necessary for Israel’s security,” the lobbyist said. Israel is required to spend all but $475 million of the military aid in this country.
By contrast, there are fewer supporters in the administration for increasing direct economic aid, the lobbyist said.
$600 MILLION FOR REFUGEES
But economic aid to Israel will likely grow over the next five years because Israel is planning to seek $10 billion in U.S.-guaranteed securities to finance the resettlement of Soviet Jewish immigrants in Israel.
Israel received $400 million in such loan guarantees earlier this year and agreed at the time not to make any new requests until mid-September.
The aid would be in $2 billion annual chunks over five years that Israel would borrow from U.S. banks or investors at an interest rate based on the U.S. credit rating.
In addition to providing military and economic aid to Israel, the bill passed by the House panel on Tuesday authorizes more than $600 million to bring 121,000 refugees to the United States in each of the next two fiscal years, 40,000 of whom would be Soviet Jews.
Jewish lobbyists have been reluctant to seek an increase in the admission of Soviet refugees, for fear that, at a time of tight fiscal constraints, it would alienate other ethnic groups seeking to bring refugees to this country. Jewish groups also do not want to further sap Israel’s pool of potential immigrants.
But a new tactic introduced in this year’s bill is to transfer from one fiscal year to the next any unused funding earmarked for Soviet refugees.
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society estimates that some 15,000 of the 40,000 “refugee slots” set aside for Soviet Jews this fiscal year will not be used, because of Soviet delays in processing people seeking to emigrate.
The bill also earmarks $75 million for the resettlement of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews in Israel, money which will be channeled through the United Israel Appeal. The sum is $35 million more than the Bush administration requested.
RESTRICTS CONTACTS WITH PLO
The bill in its current form also contains a number of foreign policy restrictions, which President Bush opposes in principle as an encroachment on his constitutional authority to conduct foreign policy.
Last year, language restricting U.S. contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization was stricken at the last minute to avert a veto by Bush. But Rep. Mel Levine (D-Calif.) has included similar language this year.
Other restrictive language, sponsored by Rep. Peter Kostmayer (D-Pa.), bars U.S. aid to any country that provides weaponry to Syria or other nations deemed by the State Department to support terrorism.
Less forceful language calls for the United States to seek the repeal of the 1975 U.N. General Assembly resolution denigrating Zionism as a form of racism. Since this is a stated policy goal of the administration, there is unlikely to be any opposition.
The bill also would bar Syria from receiving U.S. aid unless it is willing to enter negotiations with Israel, ease emigration restrictions for Jews and extradite accused Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner to Germany.
But because direct aid to Syria is not being contemplated anytime soon, this language is also largely symbolic.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
