• Between the years 1949 and 2010, the United States granted $61.3 billion in military aid to Israel.
• A whopping $30 billion in U.S. military aid has been promised to Israel for the years 2009 to 2018.
• Approximately 500,000 Israeli settlers live within the occupied Palestinian territory in violation of international law.
• There are approximately four million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.
• Between September 29, 2000 and August 31, 2010, 1,084 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, while 6,408 Palestinians were killed by Israelis.
• Weapons purchased by Israel using U.S. military aid are used against civilians in violation of U.S. laws.

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Fast fact #1: Between the years 1949 and 2010, the United States granted $61.3 billion in military aid to Israel. [1]

• Israel has received more military aid than all other recipients of foreign military financing (FMF) combined. [2]
• U.S. taxpayers foot the bill for this enormous, ongoing funding stream. The current level of military aid to Israel is $2,775,000 per year [3] which translates into $7.6 million per day. Yes, that’s seven million, six-hundred thousand dollars per day flowing to Israel from the United States Treasury. In this time of economic crisis and financial uncertainty for millions of Americans it is scandalous that American taxpayer dollars are being diverted from critical domestic priorities.
• According to Josh Ruebner, the National Advocacy Director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, “this same $3 billion earmark for Israel could be used instead to provide more than 364,000 low-income households with affordable housing vouchers, or to retrain 498,000 workers for green jobs, or to provide early reading programs to 887,000 at-risk students, or to provide access to primary health care services for more than 24 million uninsured Americans.” [4]

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[1] Sharp, Jeremy. U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel. CRS Report RL33222, September 16, 2010, p. 24
[2] Department of State, Military Financing Account Summary, accessed 3/22/2010
[3] Department of State, Military Financing Account Summary, accessed 3/22/2010
[4] Ruebner, Josh. “U.S. can’t afford military aid to Israel,” Huffington Post, October 3, 2010

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Fast fact #2: A whopping $30 billion in U.S. military aid has been promised to Israel for the years 2009 to 2018, under the terms of an agreement signed by Israel and the United States on August 16, 2007. [5]

• This $30 billion of military aid represents a more than 25% increase over pre-existing military financing to Israel. [6]
• And that’s not all. For fiscal year 2010, the U.S. has already made additional appropriations of $205 million for Israel’s Iron Dome project and $202 million for other projects. [7] Former Ambassador Charles Freeman explains: “Thanks to congressional earmarks, we also often pay half the costs of special Israeli research and development projects, even when—as in the case of defense against very short-range unguided missiles—the technology being developed is essentially irrelevant to our own military requirements.” [8]

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[5] Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Signing of Memorandum of Understanding between Israel and the United States. August 16, 2007
[6] Ruebner, Josh. Mock Congressional Hearing Report, 2010, p.19
[7] Ruebner, Josh. Mock Congressional Hearing Report, 2010
[8] Freeman, Charles. “Israel; asset or liability?” Prepared remarks delivered at the Nixon Center, July 20, 2010
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Fast Fact #3: Approximately 500,000 Israeli settlers live within the occupied Palestinian territory in violation of international law.

• Demographic statistics compiled by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics peg the population of Israeli Jewish settlers in the West Bank at 301,200 as of the end of September 2009. [10] B’Tselem Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories cites the Jewish settler population of occupied East Jerusalem at 184,707 as of 2007 [11] (the population is estimated to have increased in the years since 2007 at an annual rate of 3 to 3.5%).
• Israel defines Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as citizens and residents of Israel, in defiance of the legal status of the land on which they reside. Official Israeli census records make no distinction between Jewish residents of West Jerusalem and occupied East Jerusalem, but merge the two populations into a single statistical group. [12] Likewise, the territory known generally as the occupied West Bank is defined within Israeli census records as a “district” of Israel called “Judea and Samaria.” [13]
• The Fourth Geneva Convention and the 1907 Hague Regulations define the legal status of settlers living in occupied territory [13]. These documents also enumerate the duties of the occupying power toward the subject population and explicitly forbid many of Israel’s activities in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza—including settlement building and land expropriation.
• The Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 49, states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” [14]
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Articles 13 and 17) [15] enshrines rights that are seriously infringed by Israel’s actions toward the Palestinian population living under occupation. Not only do the settlements violate international humanitarian law, B’Tselem explains, but, additionally, “lead to the infringement of international human rights law” in their impact on the Palestinian population. [16]

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[10] Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, West Bank data, as cited in Lazaroff, Tovah. “Settler population rose 4.9% in 2009,” Jerusalem Post, March 10, 2010
[11] B’Tselem, statistics on settlements
[12] Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics: Population of Localities
[13] Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics
[13] International Committee of the Red Cross: “Occupation and international humanitarian law: questions and answers”
[14] Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 49, reproduced on the website of the International Committee of the Red Cross
[15] The United Nations: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
[16] B’Tselem, “Land expropriation & settlements: international law”

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Fast fact #4: There are approximately four million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, according to 2007 census figures compiled by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and reported in Ha’aretz. [17]

• East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza are administered differently, but all fall within the definition of occupied territory as defined by, among others documents, the 1970 Declaration of Principles of International Law adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, which reads, “No territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal” and “Every State likewise has the duty to refrain from the threat or use of force to violate international lines of demarcation, such as armistice lines, established by or pursuant to an international agreement to which it is a party or which it is otherwise bound to respect.” [18]
• East Jerusalem was unilaterally annexed by Israel immediately after its military victory in the 1967 war—a violation of international law stating the the principle of international law of the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” Legal experts observe that “the international community has not recognized the annexation of east Jerusalem to the State of Israel.”[19] In a 1969 statement to the Security Council to the United Nations. U.S. Ambassador Charles W. Yost affirmed that “east Jerusalem was occupied territory to which the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War applied.” [20]
• The West Bank— called “Judea and Samaria” in Israeli government documents such as census records— has undergone creeping, de facto annexation by Israel through the establishment of settlements built for Israeli Jews with Israeli government permits and funding. Many Israeli government documents including maps, tourist information [21], and demographic statistics [22] make no territorial distinction between Israel and the occupied territories beyond its borders.
• In Gaza, too, Israel is failing to perform its humanitarian obligations toward a people under occupation. Richard A. Falk, Special Raporteur for the Palestinian Territories explains that “[a]lthough Israel has contended that it is no longer an occupying power, due to its [2005] withdrawal of its forces from within Gaza, it is widely agreed by international law experts that the continued Israeli control of borders, air space, and territorial waters is of a character as to retain Israel status legally as occupying power.” [23] Gisha Center for the Legal Protection of Movement agrees that “completion of the disengagement plan has not absolved Israel of its obligations to permit and to facilitate the proper functioning of civilian life in the Gaza Strip. Israel continues to owe legal obligations to residents of Gaza in the significant areas in which their lives are subject to and affected by Israeli control. That responsibility exists under the international law of belligerent occupation, but it is also imposed by international human rights law and Israeli constitutional and administrative law.” [24]

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[17] Hass, Amira. “PA stats bureau: population increased by one-third over last decade,” Ha’aretz, February 2, 2008
[18] United Nations: 1970 Declaration of Principles of International Law
[19] Lapidoth, Ruth. “Jerusalem: The Legal and Political Background,” Justice, Autumn 1994, as reproduced on the website of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
[20] Lapidoth
[21] Associated Press. “Dutch watchdog criticizes Israeli tourism website,” Yedioth Ahronot online, March 10, 2010.
[22] Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics
[23] United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Statement of Special Raporteur for Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967,” January 9, 2009
[24] Gisha Center for the Legal Protection of Movement, “Disengaged occupiers: The legal status of Gaza” (executive summary), January 21, 2007
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Fast fact #5: Between September 29, 2000 and August 31, 2010, 1,084 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, including 124 minors. [25] During the same period, 6,408 Palestinians were killed by Israelis, including 1,315 minors. [26] These statistics, reported by B’Tselem Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, reflect the extreme disparity in the capacity of the two parties to inflict trauma, loss, and death through acts of violence.

• Israel’s military dominance is largely a result of U.S. largesse through military aid, as well as access to sophisticated U.S.-designed military technology. As former Ambassador Charles Freeman explained in a July 20, 2010 address at the Nixon Center, “Israel gets pretty much whatever it wants in terms of our top-of-the-line weapons systems, and we pick up the tab.” [27]
• Media analysts find that while comparative casualty statistics reveal that Palestinians are relatively defenseless in the face of Israeli military dominance, mainstream news organizations do not report the disparity, instead describing it as “a ‘conflict’ between ‘two sides’.” [28] Analyst Patrick O’Connor writes that “Despite the fact that they have vastly inferior weapons, are killed in much greater numbers than Israelis, live under Israeli occupation and are having their land taken from them by Israelis, Palestinians are generally portrayed in the US as the aggressor.”[29]
• The implications of skewed reporting on the conflict range well beyond a misrepresentation of the tragic body-counts. O’Connor warns that “the US corporate media is actively shaping the information reported to the US public to Israel’s advantage, and promoting the view that Hamas and Palestinian terrorism are the sole problem in Israel/Palestine. Without more balanced reporting from establishment media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times, US policy and public opinion on Israel/Palestine are also unlikely to become much more balanced.” [30]

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[25] B’Tselem, Statistics
[26] B’Tselem, Statistics
[27] Freeman, Charles. “Israel; asset or liability?” Prepared remarks delivered at the Nixon Center, July 20, 2010
[28] O’Connor, Patrick. “Israel’s large-scale killing of Palestinians passes unreported,” Electronic Intifada, November 4, 2006
[29] O’Connor
[30] O’Connor, Patrick. “Crisis in US media coverage of Gaza,” Electronic Intifada, July 5, 2006 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4910.shtml
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Fast fact #6: Weapons purchased by Israel using U.S. military aid are used against civilians in violation of U.S. laws.

• Three U.S. laws regulate the use of weaponry acquired by other nations through U.S. foreign military financing. The Arms Control Act of 2010, section 2754 [30] states that “Defense articles and defense services and defense services shall be sold…solely for… internal security [and] legitimate self-defense.” The Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill for fiscal year 1998, section 563 (H.R. 2159, known as the “Leahy Amendment”) [31] states that “none of the funds made available by this Act may be provided to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible evidence that such unit has committed gross violations of human rights…” The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, Section 502B, specifies that “No assistance may be provided under this part to the government of any country which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” [32]
• Human rights reports from numerous monitoring organizations have established that Israel has initiated acts that violate human rights law and established humanitarian protocols. Numerous reports detailing human rights abuses by Israel are listed on this website, including reports generated by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. To date, the U.S. government has failed to apply its own laws barring the transfer of U.S. military hardware to Israel, even as documentation of Israel’s violations accumulate.

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[30] U.S. Department of State, U.S. Arms Control Act
[31] U.S. Government Printing Office, Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill
[32] Federation of American Scientists, United States Arms Transfers Eligibility Criteria, Foreign Assistance Act of 1961