January 1994, Page 16

Congress

Israel Gets Full Foreign Aid Package For 1994 Fiscal Year

By Nathan Jones

Although five-term former Florida Democratic Rep. Larry Smith began serving a three-month sentence in federal prison Nov. 1 for income tax evasion and using campaign funds to pay gambling and other personal debts, the spirit of the former dean of pro-Israel gadflies is alive and well in the House of Representatives. His heavy-handed tactics of wringing every possible concession for Israel from U.S. taxpayers and the U.S. government are being pursued with vigor by New York Democratic representatives Charles Schumer and Nita Lowey.

Foreign Aid Bill's Plums for Israel

"Israel has rescued almost half a million refugees. With the current upheavals in Russia and the other republics, Israel will continue to be a haven for Jews facing persecution. "

—Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), September 1993

On Sept. 30 President Bill Clinton signed the Fiscal Year 1994 Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill containing Israel's annual basic package of $3 billion in direct economic and military aid. The bill was passed in the House of Representatives by 321 to 108 votes on Sept. 29, and in the Senate by 87 to 11 votes the following day, after a Sept. 27 House/Senate conference committee meeting in which additional plums for Israel were attached to the bill.

Among them were an additional $80 million for Israel to absorb refugees from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union, which was vigorously defended by Representative Lowey, although this was supposed to have been the purpose of the annual $2 billion in loan guarantees which Israel started receiving in FY 1993. The bill also calls for Israel to receive its aid no later than Oct. 31, instead of in quarterly installments as is the practice with other foreign aid recipients. This in effect increases Israel's aid package by $50 million, because the Israelis are able to invest their U.S. aid in interest-bearing accounts until it is needed.

Another provision inserted in the foreign aid bill is a statement that the U.S. will consider a country's participation in the Arab boycott against Israel as a factor in deciding whether or not to sell that country U.S. arms. Still another provision is a requirement that the U.S. government urge Syria to allow its Jewish community to emigrate freely. (Syria maintains that its Jewish residents are free to emigrate to any country but Israel.)

The foreign aid bill also provides funding for the joint U.S.-Israeli Arrow antiballistic missile, the joint U.S.-Israeli developed Short Range Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), the Israeli-developed Night Targeting System for Cobra helicopters, and the Israeli-produced Have Nap missile and Have Lite research and development.

Kentucky Senator Hustling for Israel

"We have to have our national priority. And a successful result in Russia and the Middle East is our priority. "

—Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), October 1993

Proving that you don't have to be Jewish to please Israel's lobby in Washington, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was as active on Israel's behalf in the Senate as was Lowey in the House. McConnell helped to turn back an initiative by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Appropriations Committee on Foreign Operations, to eliminate the earmarks that immunize Israel from cuts as the world-wide foreign aid budget shrinks.

As a result, 90 percent of the $2.3 billion Economic Support Fund contained in the 1994 foreign aid bill will go to the Middle East. Major recipients are Israel, $1.2 billion; Egypt, $815 million; the Israeli occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, $25 million; and Cyprus, $15 million. Combined aid to all Latin American and Caribbean countries was reduced from $332 million last year to $265 million in FY 1994.

Two other senators, Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Daniel Inouye (D-HI), were cited in Near East Report, AIPAC's weekly newsletter, as "instrumental in including other important pro-Israel provisions." The $3 billion in direct economic ($1.2 billion) and military ($1.8) grants to Israel, combined with $2 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, plus other goodies such as the aid for refugee resettlement, will bring total U.S. aid to Israel for FY 1994 close to or beyond the total of $6.3 billion in U.S. grants and credits to Israel in FY 1993.

Campaign Against the Arab Boycott of Israel

"When it comes to the PLO, Rep. Chuck Schumer is your basic no-compromise kind of guy. Despite pressure from a long list of pro-lsrael groups and Israeli leaders, the Brooklyn-Queens Democrat refused to drop his effort to link a key piece of legislation rolling back some anti-PLO regulations to Yasser Arafat's willingness to press for an end to the Arab boycott against Israel.''

—Washington correspondent James Besser, The Jewish Week, Queens, NY, Oct. 22-29, 1993

When Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) tried to hurry through a House resolution to rescind earlier anti-PLO legislation and allow the Palestine Liberation Organization to reopen an office in Washington, Representative Schumer sought to attach to it an amendment that would link permission to open a PLO office to a politically impossible requirement that PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat work for the ending of the Arab boycott of Israel.

Despite pleas from Berman, who works closely with Israel's U.S. Lobby, as well as from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Schumer refused to drop his opposition to the legislation, which Israel's U.S. supporters considered a proof of Israel's good intentions after the Sept. 13 handshake between Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

"The Israelis were playing a weird game," a congressional staffer who worked on the bill told James Besser, Washington correspondent for a number of U.S. Jewish weekly newspapers. "Many, of them made it clear that they would not be unhappy to get some boycott language in the bill. But they didn't want too much pressure; they didn't want anything that would actually slow the peace process down. So they were playing a kind of brinkmanship."

With Schumer voting no, a bill finally was passed waiving anti-PLO legislation, but only until January, when Congress is directed to re-examine the matter. Schumer also initiated a letter signed by 93 other members of Congress urging President Bill Clinton to press the Group of Seven industrialized nations to take a strong stand against the Arab boycott.

"Last year alone, U.S. companies reported receiving 9,912 of these illegal boycott-related requests from foreign companies," the letter declared. "This figure represents an increase of more than 3,000 additional requests over fiscal year 1991 and indicates that Arab countries remain as committed as ever to the boycott."

Schumer told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that in recent months two major U.S. companies, General Dynamics and Rubbermaid, had been added to the Arab boycott blacklist.

Schumer was not the only congressman raising the boycott issue. Earlier, Rep. Sam Gejdenson (D-CT) introduced a sense of Congress resolution to penalize Saudi Arabia for observing the Arab League boycott of Israel. His resolution, with 22 cosponsors, states that it is the sense of Congress that the United States should exercise its veto in the GATT working group against any Saudi petition to join GATT until Saudi Arabia abandons its participation in the secondary and tertiary boycott of Israel and "publicly issues the necessary law, rules, and regulations ensuring that companies from the United States and other countries have free and open access to the Saudi Arabian market regardless of their business relationship with Israel."

GAO Criticizes Israeli "Arrow"

Although elected members of Congress scramble to please Israel's well-heeled Washington lobby, congressional committees and ancillary organizations are less single-minded. In an Aug. 23 unclassified report, the General Accounting Office criticized the Israeli "Arrow" anti-ballistic missile program, for which the United States is paying, through direct and indirect charges, 95 percent of the costs.

Although the U.S. to date has paid more than $460 million for the program, the GAO reported, the U.S. Defense Department has no intention of purchasing any of the resulting missiles for its own use. The GAO report expressed concern that the U.S. will be drawn into funding virtually all of the program's costs, which are subject to extensive cost overruns. "Israel's cost estimate for developing and deploying a complete Arrow. . . system was not supported by details and was not reviewed by trained Israeli cost estimators " the GAO report said.

The GAO report also expressed concern that the U.S. is not monitoring Israeli compliance with restrictions on transfer of U.S. military technology and that "no checks were performed to verify the end use . . . of U.S.-provided items and technologies."

Shalikashvili Nixes Haifa Port

In the course of his late September appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee as President Clinton's nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Shalikashvili told senators something some didn't want to hear. Responding to a pre-hearing question by Sen. Sam Nunn (D-GA) about home-porting U.S. Sixth Fleet aircraft carriers at Israel's port of Haifa, Shalikashvili, who is Gen. Colin Powell's successor, responded: "As the Navy [faces] budget limitations. ..it would be inconsistent to develop the necessary overseas infrastructure to support basing a carrier in a foreign port."

Nathan Jones, with roots in Belleville, Ontario, spent many years in the Middle East.