US aid to Egypt is not for Egypt but Israel, JJ Goldberg explains

US aid to Egypt is not for Egypt but Israel, JJ Goldberg explains

Philip Weiss

At the Forward, JJ Goldberg gets to the bottom of US policy: he says US aid to Egypt cannot be withheld because it's "bad for the Jews."

 

the course of action that seems self-evidently proper to right-minded Americans — punishing the Egyptian military, ending military cooperation, suspending aid — will almost certainly have a catastrophic impact on Israel’s peace with Egypt....
America’s billion-dollar-plus annual aid package to Egypt does not exist for Egypt’s benefit, but for Israel’s. It’s the carrot, or bribe, that keeps Egypt faithful to its peace treaty with Israel, despite its enormous unpopularity on the Egyptian street. That treaty is critical to Israel.

I think Goldberg is right; and this is the reason that the US will not suspend aid. I have often stated here that the US supported a dictatorship in Egypt for decades because of US support for Israel-- that the self-determination of 80 million Arabs counted for nothing when it came to the US determination to maintain a Jewish garrison state that was established by war and preserved by force.

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