Is U.S. aid to Israel worthwhile?

What does the United States get out of the billions in aid to Israel?

Writing in Bloomberg News, Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.) says:

* About 70 percent of the $3 billion aid must be used by Israel to purchase American military equipment. This provides real support for U.S. high- tech defense jobs.

* The U.S. and Israel are jointly developing state-of-the-art missile defense capabilities in the David’s Sling and Arrow 3 systems. These two technologies build on the already successful Arrow 2, jointly developed by our two countries, which is already providing missile defense security to Israel and U.S. civilians and ground troops throughout the region. The knowledge the U.S. gains from these efforts also has a positive multiplier effect on applications to other U.S. military and non-military uses and U.S. jobs.

* Given Israel’s strategic location on the Mediterranean, with access to the Red Sea and other vital international shipping and military lanes of commerce and traffic, it is critically important to the U.S. that Israel continues to serve as a port of call for our troops, ships, aircraft and intelligence operations.

* America’s special relationship with Israel provides the U.S. with real-time, minute-to-minute access to one of the best intelligence services in the world: Israel’s.

* Imagine the additional terrible cost in U.S. blood, and the hundreds of billions more of American taxpayer dollars, if Saddam Hussein had developed nuclear weapons, or if Syria possessed them. Then remember that it was Israel that destroyed the almost- completed nuclear reactor at Osirak, Iraq, in 1981 and Syria’s nuclear facility under construction at Deir-ez-Zor in 2007.

Bloomberg New columnist Celestine Bohlen argues that ending U.S. aid to Israel is in both country’s best interests:

* Israel could pay less heed to U.S. pressure and do what it thinks it must for its own national security… The U.S. wouldn’t be there to help pay for it

* Housing blocks for Jews in East Jerusalem? Pursuit of terrorists in the Gaza Strip, even in southern Lebanon? A security fence that rings the whole country? If this strategy makes Israel feel more secure, maybe it should just pursue it and not complain about “restraints” imposed by the U.S. Then Israel could start thinking seriously about what its defensible borders should look like, perhaps even question the logic and the cost of tying up its military protecting unsustainable settlements in the West Bank.

* Once freed from its reputation as a stalking horse for the U.S., Israel could explore deeper relations with more moderate Arab states as a counterweight to Iran.

* For the U.S… It would save money at a time when the federal debt is zooming out of sight. The sums aren’t great — a drop compared with the $1.4 trillion budget deficit in fiscal 2009 — but it would take some of the sting out of Israel’s stubborn opposition to U.S. policies.

* Severing the financial links could also correct the perception that the U.S., as Israel’s patron, can’t be an honest broker in the Middle East.