Likud MK Feiglin: It’s Immoral For Israel To Take US Aid

[Purveyor]

Israel should not accept US foreign aid because it is immoral and allows Washington to exert political pressure on Jerusalem, a lawmaker from the Knesset’s ruling party said in an interview with an American magazine published Monday.

Deputy Knesset Speaker Moshe Feiglin (Likud) also seemed to suggest that the US was doomed to fall due to its economic woes, but that Israel’s survival was guaranteed because the country “carries moral weight.”

“I’m totally against this [US foreign] aid [to Israel],” Feiglin told The New American, a relatively unknown publication affiliated with far-right American politics. “It cannot be when, first of all, the Americans are standing in line like two or three miles in the snow to get a job. To get any kind of aid from America when, economically, we are in a much, much better position doesn’t look moral to me.”

Furthermore, American aid “is not in our favor, not economically, not militarily, not in any way,” the MK told the magazine’s Alex Newman. (He gave the interview last month in the Knesset, but it only appeared on Monday.) “This aid serves psychological purposes, not anything else. We are talking about 1.5 percent of our income, of what Israel is producing — we can definitely deal without it.”

Since World War II, Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid, having received a total of $118 billion, most of it in the form of military assistance. Currently, Washington supports Israel with about $3 billion per year.

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http://www.timesofisrael.com/likud-mk-feiglin-its-immoral-for-israel-to-take-us-aid/

[DCKit]

1. I like that guy! nt

[Chan790]

2. I'd counter that they're under no obligation to accept it...

but accept it hand-over-fist the Israeli government led by his own party does. A more-moral Deputy Speaker might be working to effect refusal of that aid rather than criticizing it even as he takes no action to terminate it.

Of course we're going to use the provisioning of foreign aid to attempt to influence foreign policy...that's very much the point. It's the same reason Israel enters into economic agreements with non-hostile neighbors and global powers...to effect their interests in the policy of those other nations.

[Bigmack]

3. OK... Deal! nt

[freshwest]

4. Intriguing statistics, only 1.5%? Likud is RW, aren't they?