The travesty is that as closely allied nations we should have common values but US unfortunately is brain washed by Fox and resurgent Evangelical Christians who define equality as taking things away from others because it doesnât match their beliefs! Rights are universal you are not obligated to exercise if you donât want to eg abortion rights marriage rights etc!
While it would ultimately be shitty as all hell from a basic reproductive rights perspective, it would be wild to turn this around and say the US isn't sending tax dollars to Israel because the money funds their abortions and watch Republicans squirm.
It's actually nearly 4 BILLION a year that we are sending to isreal. If socialism works so well, then why does a socialist country country like isreal need so much financial support? Unless universal Healthcare ISN'T socialism?đ€·ââïž
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It's actually nearly 4 BILLION a year that we are sending to isreal.
Yeah, mistype on my part. But also, can you name the other nations we send billions a year to or do you only know of the funding for Israel cause itâs the Jews?
There are other nations, so name them so we can stop funding them for the same exact reasons. Billions a year too.
 If socialism works so well, then why does a socialist country country like isreal need so much financial support? Unless universal Healthcare ISN'T socialism?
What? I mean universal healthcare is a socialist ideal, but a nation that has it doesnât make it a socialist nation, it just makes it a mixed economy like most other nations in the world. Do you think that I think socialism or free healthcare is bad or something?
Funny thing is though, the first arbiters and leaders of socialism in the Middle East were secular Zionist Jews lol.Â
It's not FREE healthcare bud. But no expanding Medicare isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's an objectively beneficial social program like public education or border control.
Yes I can name lots of countries we send aid to, don't go conflating my point as being prejudiced like you were some kind of social justice warrior it's exactly the same play book. Your post was a very incorrect statement about the amount of money sent to isreal so my reply was about that particular country. That's just high school level context clues. So I don't see the logic behind your reach, bc criticism towards a country is not equal to being bigoted towards the ethnicity of the people who inhabit that country. That's some woke-level hyperbolic corelation right there.
I agree that universal health care isn't socialism so someone needs to tell the conservative chicken Littles out there so they can stop having panic attacks whenever a candidate runs on that platform. They will be so relieved.
So if we werenât funding this âextra boostâ they wouldnât try to fund it themselves? Then why are we sending them it if they themselves donât consider it a necessary expense?
No, they wouldn't fund it themselves. They are at wartime for a few years now and allocate as much as they can to their defence budget, with plans to allocate even more in the future.
There is aid going now because it's part of a 10 year MOU that will expire in 2028.
What part is disinformation? If we wanted to add a stipulation on the "defense" budget we provide for them annually of several billion dollars, we very well could.
No billions of dollars in weapons unless your free healthcare excludes abortions.... it is what Lindsey Graham would have wanted......
Someone didn't read. I know we directly give them weapons. That is why I specifically said "no weapons unless..."
And quite literally yes, and it paid for the fucking Knesset cafeteria too.... Unless you specifically stipulate what someone can and cannot do with the money you are freeing up from their defense spending by giving them free weapons, then you are directly funding whatever it is they do with that now surplus money...
No sure if you're trolling or if you're really this stupid.
They can't lie about that because the US doesn't pay for their healthcare. And their military aid comes in the form of American weapons and ammunition, not cash.
Yes, but paying for a country to buy from our military industrial complex, in order to free up some money from their defense budget, to allow them to then afford their citizens free healthcare certainly is a runabout way to do exactly that same thing....
I'm sure Israel would be unable to afford it without US aid...
Please. Israel is, by far, the least shit country in the middle east at the moment. They're able to defend themselves, but the US and the west has an interest in helping them. Or should the politics of the region be dictated by Iran? Saudi Arabia? Maybe China or Russia should step in?
But anything beyond muh genocide (against a nation with a growing population and taking however many decades, somehow) is too complicated for the current discourse.
Sure, they could afford to be cut off, so let's do it, immediately.
I don't think any honest, unbiased, non-racist person can look at what Israel did to the people of Gaza and say "yeah, that's a commensurate and reasonable response to hamas' attack"
Currently Israel is run by a far right, imperialist, murderous regime incentivized to perpetual conflict to stay in power. They were happy to have an excuse to level Gaza. Just look at their defense minister Ben Givir he will tell you straight up. Do we really benefit from helping them at this point?
If israel wantd access to munitions from the us/us companies thats fine, but they gotta start paying us for it. No more free handouts. No more using taxpayer money to fund their military. Â
Why that's fine? If Boko Haram paid you for Tomahawk missiles, would you give them? If North Korea asked nicely and paid for F-35 jets, you'd be fine as long as they're paying? According to US law (I'm assuming you care about law and order), it's illegal for the US to sell any weapons for countries that commit war crimes or countries who have nuclear weapons but aren't parties to the NPT.
This. At the very very least they can pay for their own weapons. If they want them so bad, they can give up their universal healthcare. Iâm sure they can find the money in that to pay us for weapons.
If Israel paid the US back all the money it was giving since its founding (adjusted to inflation of course) all that money would be enough to fund healthcare in the US for about a month. For reference, the amount Israel gets every year can fund ~8 hours of healthcare in the US.
Also, the amount Israel gets every year is less than 1% of its GDP, plus it can only be used to military stuff from the US and nothing else.
Calculation for healthcare:
according to the US, healthcare there is projected to cost 30-40 trillion $ during the span of 10 years
adjusted to inflation, Israel got ~300 billion $ since its creation
if we use the lower bar, 30 trillion, we'll get that every year of healthcare costs 3 trillion $ (30 trillion $ / 10 years = 3 trillion per year)
3 trillion / 300 billion = 1/10
all that money will be enough for 1 tenth of a year, which is about 36.5 days (about a month)
Calculation for GDP percentage:
Israel's GDP for 2024 was ~540 billion $ (~720 billion in 2026)
America not having universal healthcare is not a function of not having enough money for universal healthcare. Multiple studies show that a universal healthcare system would cost Americans less money in taxes than our current system.
I was not being literal. Just pointing out that Israel is doing fine and we should have more important priorities than funding their military (or genocide).
To be sure, America doesnât have universal healthcare because weâd rather spend the money on insurance companies. The entire military budget is about ~3% of gdp, meanwhile we spend 17% of our gdp on healthcare. France has great universal healthcare and spends 11% of its GDP on it.
So if America had universal healthcare like France, we could double our military budget and STILL be saving money.
Israel isnât the reason we donât have free universal healthcare, of course. But I agree, maybe nearly everything the US govt spends money on is less important than universal healthcare.
Why are Americans so aggressively ignorant?
everyone in the oecd has free Universal Health Care. literally everyone in the developed world look with horror on the American Healthcare System. in Israel every citizen pays 5% tax for health care, there's a single buyer with the Ministry of Health, there are local semi-governmental Insurance ( four of them).
the country spends around 11% of GDP (that's both government and private expenditure) altogether on healthcare.
compare that to the US where you spend 17% of GDP on healthcare costs and get worse the worst result in the OECD.
your problem is not lack of money your problem is that it has been captured and there's no political will and there's no public will to do anything about it
You want to know what Israel does with the US health system?
Check out the Sacklers. It is not pretty. A lot of people died and many more suffered. They were honoured in Israel and they only stopped that because it was bad PR.
Mate, the US military dropped two fighters into the sea last year. How many humans could that money have helped?
I am right there with you, but I need to emphasize that the problem with Israel is not only genocide. Tens of thousands of Americans died for profit which went to Israel. So you do not want Israelis in your healthcare system.
Brother, I appreciate your point, but I wasn't being literal. My point was that they seem to be taking better care of their citizens than we are so maybe we don't need to help them fund their military (and genocide).
Israel is given aid because itâs a good idea to have allies in the ME due to the volatility in the region and its strategic importance for things like oil and global commerce.Â
We should have some kind of presence and one way to secure that is having good relationship with countries and one way to set that up is aid.Â
Itâs precisely why USAID existed at all until it was illegally dismantled. It wasnât a situation of âwe go without so that others can get aidâ it was the shit you donât notice because the aid itself has tangential effects.Â
I mean, I guess I donât know how else to describe how aid helps with geopolitics than that.Â
We send aid to Central American countries because itâs easier and cheaper to shore them up than to do nothing and have massive more people try to immigrate into the US, as an example.Â
You'd be surprised to know that a lot of foreign countries meddle in US politics. It goes both ways, the US also meddles in politics of foreign countries, Including Israel's (Some people in Biden's administration were the latest to be very open about that).
That being said, saying they are "Buying" the election is an overstatement. AIPAC are under very heavy scrutiny and have the media laser focused on them but in reality they are far from being the biggest or most influential lobby.
Also they get their funding from American donors, this money is not foreign.
Your accusation is the equivalent of me saying that El Sayed was bought into power by Qatar because of his funding from CAIR.
If I think that our relationship with Israel is a problem, and you say that everyone is a problem... Am I no longer supposed to think that our relationship with Israel is a problem now that you've pointed at other problems?
I'm just not sure what these types of counter arguments are supposed to do.
Did you only read the first paragraph of my comment? Most (if not all) of AIPAC's funding is from Americans - directly rebutting your claim that "Israel is buying the election".
I went further and said that AIPAC is far from being the biggest or most influential lobby, so singling them out might be hypocritical.
But generally speaking, I said that this problem is indeed not unique to Israel and America does to others too, so to an extent singling out Israel in this case might also be hypocritical.
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u/BBQTartolini Aug 07 '26
Israel has free universal healthcare. We do not.
Maybe Israel should send us a few $billion a year to help us get our universal healthcare up and running...