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How Foreign Aid Deals With Israel Essay

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Though these diplomatic travesties are enough to call our diplomatic relationship into question, the United States still continues to give Israel large sums of foreign aid. Glenn Greenwald, the author of four best-selling law and policy books, and co-founder of The Intercept, an online news-outlet he co-founded. In response to President Barack Obama’s announcement to sign a deal that increases the amount of Israel’s funding, he published “As Israel Prospers, Obama Set to Give Billions More in Aid While Netanyahu Demands Even More.” He writes United States gave over $3.1 billion taxpayer dollars to Israel in 2015—nearly half the foreign aid budget—totaling over $38 billion in aid for the next ten years. The article explores how foreign aid deals with Israel surmount aid to any other country, even though Israel no longer has a flourishing economy.
Despite the country’s financial prosperity, Netanyahu continues to ask for more U.S. taxpayer dollars. According to Greenwald, Netanyahu hoped to receive $5 billion USD this year. Netanyahu also openly opposed U.S. initiatives to direct Israel’s aid to American military contractors instead of Israeli ones. Greenwald puts this diplomatic faux pau into simple terms: “usually, when someone hands you billions of dollars in aid, you’re not in much of a position to demand more.” He continues that “the rules for Israel when it comes to U.S. policy, as is so often the case, are simply different.” Other journalists feed the

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