Aid to Israel

In his February 28 column in the NYT, Tom Friedman wrote about Israel:

''The economy is blooming, growing in the last quarter of 2006 by almost 8%,'' said Sever Plocker of the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, who is one of Israel's top economics writers. ''Foreign direct investment is flowing in at unprecedented rate -- $13.4 billion in 2006. The high-tech sector exports are approaching $18 billion, and the stock exchange is at an all-time high. The shekel is stronger than ever, the inflation nonexistent. Interest rates are lower than in U.S. or Britain, the budget deficit less than 1% of G.D.P., and the balance of payments is positive, which means Israel achieved its economic independence and is actually a net creditor to the rest of the world.

''In short, we never had it so good in the economy.''

Yossi Vardi, one of the founding fathers of Israel's high-tech industry, told me that in the last month alone, four start-ups that he was an investor in were sold: one to Cisco, one Microsoft, and two to Israeli companies. ''In the last nine months I've probably invested in at least nine new companies,'' added Mr. Vardi, all started by ''kids 25 to 35 years old.''

Meanwhile, the US continues to send billions in "foreign assistance" to Israel, which according to Tom Friedman has one of the most vibrant economies in the world. The following is from a Congressional Research Service report on Israel (page 18):

Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid since 1976. In 1998, Israeli, congressional, and Administration officials agreed to reduce U.S. $1.2 billion in Economic Support Funds (ESF) to zero over ten years, while increasing Foreign Military Financing (FMF) from $1.8 billion to $2.4 billion. The process began in FY1999, with P.L. 105-277, October 21, 1998. Separately from the scheduled ESF cuts, Israeli has received an extra $1.2 billion to fund implementation of the Wye agreement (part of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process) in FY2000, $200 million in anti-terror assistance in FY2002, and $1 billion in FMF in the supplemental appropriations bill for FY2003. P.L. 109-102, November 14, 2005, the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, 2006, provided $240 million in ESF, $2.28 billion in FMF, and $40 million for the settlement of migrants to Israel. H.R. 5522, the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill, FY2007, passed in the House on June 9, 2006, appropriates $120 million in ESF, $40 million for migration and refugee assistance, and $2.34 billion in FMF (of which $610 million may be spent for defense acquisitions in Israel), for Israel. The Senate has not yet passed a bill....

Congress has legislated other special provisions regarding aid to Israel. Since the 1980s, ESF and FMF have been provided as all grant cash transfers, not designated for particular projects, and have been transferred as a lump sum in the first month of the fiscal year, instead of in periodic increments. Israel is allowed to spend about one-quarter of the military aid for the procurement in Israel of defense articles and services, including research and development, rather than in the United States. Finally, to help Israel out of its economic slump, P.L. 108-11, April 16, 2003, provided $9 billion in loan guarantees over three years, use of which has since been extended to 2008 and may be extended further. As of September 2006, $4.5 billion of the guarantees remain unexpended.

According to State Department budget documents, for 2008 the budget requested $2.4 billion in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) for Israel out of a total budget of $4.536 billion, or about 53% of all of this assistance for the entire world. On the other hand, the budget includes no funds for Israel from the Economic Support Fund, which also totals over $4 billion worldwide.

Names from the Past

Larry Pezzullo, the subject of this book by his son Ralph, worked in the same suite of offices I worked in when I was working on the Brazil desk early in my State Department career. I think he was preparing to go to Uruguay as ambassador.

Chas Freeman, who was DCM (#2) at the embassy in Bangkok when I was assigned there, and went on to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia among other things, has written several articles;
--A talk to new members of Congress entitled, "National Security in the Age of Terrorism," and
--A series of articles on "Diplomacy and Empire."

Terri Jones and her husband David have written an article on global warming, "The Zen of Global Warming." I worked with Terri in the State Department's OES (Oceans, Environment and Science) bureau in the early 1990's.

No Jewish Stereotype

On the same day, the New York Times ran a story about how a Jewish family running a junk business in Michigan is educating and broadening the vision of the Protestants managing the business for them, and this IPS article appeared on the internet about how Elliot Abrams is controlling US foreign policy according to Israel's dictates.

The people who actually started the Iraq war were all Anglo Protestants, as far as I know: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Franks, Powell. But behind them, pushing hard were many Jews: Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Perle, Adelman, Kristol, Abrams, and others.

The problem is that the Jews appear to reap benefits for Israel, which calls into question their loyalty to the US. Did they want this war because it was good for America or for Israel? Do they believe that America's best interests are always the same as Israel's? Bush's motives, of course, are questionable: Did he take Baghdad and capture Hussein to show up his father? If so, it was his own hangup; he wasn't doing another country's bidding.

Jews can be a power for good when they have a broader vision of the world, but many of those in power in America seem to have a vision that puts Israel first. Sadly the state of Israel has distorted the role of Jews in America. The fact that Israel seems to be more and more corrupt and unjust, both internally and in its foreign affairs, makes this Israel-first policy more harmful to America's image abroad. Israeli officials are on trial for rape and various types of corruption. It's not a state that I would want to be associated with, but Bush, perhaps under Jewish pressure, has remade the US more and more in the image of Israel, instituting torture, violation of human rights, privacy, etc. On the other hand, other Jews -- Senator Feingold for example -- are in the forefront of the movement to protect citizens from these affronts.

I object that Jews do not appear to be pulling their weight in the war in Iraq, unlike World War II, where they did. But in general the war in Iraq is being fought by poor people from small, rural towns, where there aren't many Jews. Wealthy, big city dwellers aren't fighting the war, whether they are Jewish or Christian.

Religion of Veterans

This information about the religion of military service members in 2001 comes from the Population Bulletin for December 2004, page 25. It states that "Jews, Buddhists, and Muslims are underrepresented in the military relative to their share of the civilian population."

Religion

When sociologist Morris Janowitz
reported on the social origins of soldiers
in 1960, he was able to identify
general patterns and trends in their
religious affiliation, albeit from fairly
poor data. He found an overwhelmingly
Protestant majority, disproportionately
Episcopalian, but with an
increasing representation of Catholics
and a small percentage of Jews. Soldiers
were less likely to be Catholic
than the general public, but the military
reflected the general range of
religious diversity in America.33
While Janowitz was writing about
the conscription-era military and his
data on religion were weak relative to
other variables, his findings provide a
baseline for studying the religious
affiliation of today’s volunteer military.
There are few comprehensive
statistics on religious affiliation in the
civilian population, in part because
the principle of separation of church
and state precludes federal statistical
programs, such as the decennial census
and current population surveys,
from collecting data on religion. We
do know the civilian American population
has been moving away from
the traditional Christian religions and
toward other religious groups or
eschewing any religious affiliation.34
This latter trend is particularly pronounced
among young adults, exactly
the age groups most likely to enter
the military. In general, the armed
forces show lower religious affiliation
than the civilian population, even
among civilians ages 20 to 39 (see
Table 5). A larger share of military
than civilians reported they are Christians
but are not Roman Catholic/
Eastern Orthodox or Protestant, or
do not specify a denomination. This
category includes such Christian
groups as Mormons, Seventh Day
Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses,
as well as the Christian and Missionary
Alliance, Church of God, Seventh
Day Adventist, and Assemblies of
God. Smaller Protestant groups have
been increasing since the 1960s,
while the older, larger Protestant
denominations such as Presbyterians,
Episcopalians, Lutherans, and
Methodists have declined. But religious
affiliation data are often inconsistent
because of the different ways
the data were collected and analyzed:
Religious affiliation for military personnel
is recorded regularly by the
Department of Defense, while religious
data for civilians is obtained
from surveys such as the results from
the 2002 General Social Survey (GSS)
conducted by the National Opinion
Research Center reported in Table 5.
About one-quarter of the American
population considers itself to be
Roman Catholic, according to the
GSS survey. Catholics are slightly
underrepresented in the armed
forces, as are almost all other traditional
religions.
There have been indications of
increasing religious diversity in the
armed forces, including growing
numbers of Muslims.35 However,
Jews, Buddhists, and Muslims are
underrepresented in the military relative
to their share of the civilian
population. The number of American
military personnel who claimed to be
atheists or to have no religion was
slightly higher than the GSS estimate
for civilians ages 20 to 39, the age
range for about 80 percent of military
personnel. About 11 percent of military
personnel did not provide religious
affiliation data or claimed affiliation
with other religions, almost
four times as high as the GSS data for
the 20-to-39-year-olds. Other recent
surveys also have reported greater
identification with no religion or
other nontraditional religions than
the GSS, but results vary greatly
depending on how data are collected.
Recent data suggest that military personnel
generally have a lower affiliation
with mainstream religious
groups than the general population."

Jews Served in Greater Numbers in World War II

Although the above article indicates that Jews currently serve in the military in numbers smaller than their general share of the American population, they appear to have served in greater numbers in World War II.

A Jewish publication, JewishJournal.com, states that Jews served in World War II in greater numbers than their portion of the general population. The article says:

"Approximately 550,000 Jewish Americans served in the armed forces during World War II, about 4.23 percent of the total number of troops. Both Roosevelt and General Douglas MacArthur praised their bravery specifically. During the war, 52,000 Jewish soldiers received an award or decoration of some kind and 11,000 were killed."

Another article says:

"When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the United States declared war on Japan and Germany, American Jewish men and women responded to their country's call for the armed forces. More than 550,000 served in the Armed Forces of the United States during World War II. About 11,000 were killed and more than 40,000 were wounded. There were three recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, 157 received the Distinguished Service Medal and Crosses, which included Navy Crosses, and 1,600 were awarded the Silver Star. About 50,242 other decorations. citations and awards were given to Jewish heroes for a total of 52,000 decorations.

"Jews were 3.3 percent of the total American population but they were 4.23 percent of the Armed Forces. About 60 percent of all Jewish physicians in the United States under 45 years of age were in service uniforms."

From a JTA article about Jewish veterans buried in Arlington Cemetery:

"Poch, a conference planner who has made it his hobby -- and mission -- to chronicle the cemetery's Jews, has cataloged the location and history of the 2,500 Jewish dead buried at Arlington.
"Poch, who twice crisscrossed the cemetery's 250,000 graves looking for Jewish veterans, frequently returns to the cemetery with interested Jewish tourists.
"For Poch, who performed two years of non-active, stateside duty during the 1960s, this has become an imperative.
"'There's a myth that Jews don't fight and don't serve,' he said during a recent visit to the cemetery.
"'I want to know who these people were,' he said, pointing to one of many graves he has catalogued."

It's not scientific,but 2,500 Jewish graves of 250,000 total Arlington graves is only 1%, half of the 2% of the population that is Jewish.

However, a page on the Arlington Cemetery web site says there are 1996 Jewish veterans buried there; the other 500 or so are apparently family members of veterans. More than 300,000 people are buried at Arlington, according to the web site. Again, it looks like less than the 2% of the general population.

Another Jewish web site lists 1,633 Jewish veterans of World War II buried in American cemeteries overseas run by the American Battle Monuments Commission, and 519 veterans of World War I. The Commission says its cemeteries hold about 125,000 total war dead. This would be almost the 2% general Jewish population (about 1.7% of graves versus about 2.2% of population).