Trump Approves Largest-Ever Aid Package to Israel
Trump Approves Largest-Ever Aid Package to Israel
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Latest News Biblical Perspective
By JNS August 14, 2018 , 1:59 pm
Bring the full
tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put
me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of
heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.
Malachi 3:10 (The Israel Bible™)
President Donald Trump in Jerusalem. (Credit: Yonatan
Sindel/Flash90)
U.S. President Donald Trump signed the National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA) on Monday, which includes a $550 million assistance
package to Israel and temporarily halts the sale of F-35 fighter
jets to Turkey. This comes amid tensions between the United States and Ankara,
which is currently holding an American pastor hostage, among other political
moves.
The $717 billion measure includes a bipartisan measure
honoring a decade-long memorandum of understanding between America and Israel,
with the United States giving $3.8 billion annually to the Jewish state.
The NDAA, titled the “John S. McCain National Defense
Authorization Act for 2019,” authorizes funds for research and development
pertaining to weapon-defense systems, including the Iron Dome, David’s Sling,
Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 systems told help Israel defend against missile and rocket
threats. Additionally, the law provides $50 million for joint U.S.-Israeli work
on counter-tunnel technology, which has emerged as a major security threat to
Israel in recent years from the Palestinian terror group Hamas.
The joint U.S.-Israel David Sling’s defense system
test-fires an interceptor missile. (Credit: United States Missile Defense
Agency)
The annual military blueprint also temporarily blocks the
U.S. delivery of the F-35 fighter jets to Turkey in response to the detention
of American pastor Andrew
Brunson, whom the country accuses of participating in the failed
2016 coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Earlier this month, the United States slapped sanctions
on two top Turkish government officials involved in Brunson’s detention. The
White House also placed aluminum and steel tariffs on Turkey, and Trump said
last Friday that he approved a doubling of those tariffs. The tariffs and
sanctions have caused Turkey’s currency, the lira, to crash.
Diliman Abdulkader, director of the Kurdish Project at
the Endowment for Middle East Truth, helped advise lawmakers regarding the
Turkey provision in the NDAA and supports the current U.S. measures against
Turkey.
“The F-35 is a big step in basically telling Turkey
you’re not too big to fail,” Abdulkader told JNS. “Yes, they are a NATO ally,
but the United States is also concerned for its own national security
interests, and based on the rhetoric coming from Erdoğan, he seems to be
threatening not only NATO interests but the United States as well.”
“[The] United States must adapt to the reality that we
are not dealing with the same Turkey as in the past. Turkey under Erdogan is aggressive
and contradicts American interests both in Europe and in the Middle East,” said
Abdulkader. “Therefore, we have to change our foreign policy accordingly that
will further isolate and pressure Turkey. We have to keep in mind all of
Turkey’s internal and external problems are the doing of the Turkish government
themselves not the United States.”
Regarding U.S. sanctions and tariffs against Turkey,
Abdulkader said that this pressure campaign cannot be limited to the country’s
custody of Brunson.
“Erdoğan’s hostage-taking of Americans to gain diplomatic
leverage is one of many violations he has committed,” he said. “There are countless
of human-rights violations by Turkey that must be considered part of the
equation, including Turkish threats against Americans in Syria, the Kurds and,
most recently, an attempt to raid and arrest American officials in Incirlik Air
Base” in the city of Adana, Turkey.
Bill to block access to international financial markets
The F-35 Adir Fighter plane. (Credit: US Department of
Defense)
Aykan Erdemir, who served in the Turkish parliament from
2011 to 2015 and serves as a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies, told JNS that the relationship between America and Turkey goes
beyond the F-35 jets.
The first issue on the U.S.-Turkish relationship is that
as the bilateral crisis between the U.S. and Turkey deepens, the economic
crisis gets worse,” he said.
“In the next few months to come, the more important
question is Turkey’s bailout.”
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a bill last
month that would block Turkish access to international financial resources,
such as the International Monetary Fund.
Transferring the F-35s to Turkey would be “a concern,”
Erdemir said, but it would be “a security matter, and the implications would
not be immediate, whereas with the economic crisis and with access to
international financial institutions, the consequences would be immediate
because we’re talking week, if not, months.”
The NDAA will need an appropriations bill to fund it.
Such a measure already passed the Senate Appropriations
Committee; its chairman, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), has been trying to get
it on the chamber floor for a full vote in order to get it to the president
before the fiscal year deadline at the end of September.
The House of Representatives passed its appropriations
bill last month. Any bill from the upper chamber would need to be reconciled
with the House in conference committee negotiations.
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