Washington, August 3 (RHC)-- The U.S. House of Representatives has passed an aid package valued at hundreds of millions of dollars and designated for assistance to the Israeli regime to develop its surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems.
The House made the decision and the funding will mostly be allocated for Iron Dome, David's Sling as well as Arrow 3 missile systems, Israeli English-language newspaper The Jerusalem Post reported.
The appropriations bill specified that “$500,000,000 shall be for the Israeli Cooperative Programs...for the procurement of the Iron Dome … system to counter short-range rocket threats...for the Short Range Ballistic Missile Defense (SRBMD) program... for co-production activities of Arrow 3 Upper Tier systems in the United States and in Israel.”
The report asserted that the spending package is in accordance with the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the United States and the Israeli regime worth $38 billion over a decade.
U.S. military aid to Israel has skyrocketed over the past several years, even as Israeli forces are engaged in blatant human rights violations against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip and across the occupied West Bank.
Back in April, The Jerusalem Post reported that the Pentagon had supplied 1 million surgical masks to the Israeli regime in order to be distributed among soldiers, despite the fact that it had earlier introduced a measure requiring personnel to make their own masks to combat the spread of the new coronavirus.
The report revealed that the masks were procured from China, and a plane carrying the medical stuff intended for Israeli soldiers landed in Ben Gurion Airport on April 7.
The Jerusalem Post had initially published the article headlined “US Department of Defense gives 1 million masks to IDF for coronavirus use.” The newspaper, however, changed the headline shortly afterwards to read, “Israel brings 1 million masks from China for IDF soldiers,” in a possible attempt at downplaying the role of Washington in spite of shortages in protective equipment, including face masks, in the United States.
Former U.S. Senate candidate, Mark Dankof, told Press TV that Washington’s diplomatic, financial and military support for Israel had been detrimental to the US economy and its international reputation, calling on US authorities to immediately discontinue all forms of assistance to the regime.
“The United States is going to have a $40 trillion debt by the end of the decade,” partly due to US economic aid to Israel. “But this is just the tip of the iceberg on this thing,” Dankof commented.
“The United States ought to pull the plug on Israel right now, pull every cent and foreign aid, pull our diplomatic support and military support for Israel and move in a direction that enables us to regain our standing in the world, a more solid economy and the good-will of many, many people in the Middle East that we have totally alienated by supporting a criminal regime,” he pointed out.
