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Comment by alexisread | Hacker News Reader

The question here is why is only Israel covered in this act?

Also anti-BDS legislation in finance, regardless of ethical etc. concerns?

The US gives $4bn/year to Israel gratis, and so far $20bn in weapons over the course of this conflict, including advanced weapons like the F35 WITH source code access (which no other F35 partner has) - why?

There have been no investigations of US deaths WRT settler violence, aid workers killed etc. Normally with any US death it's a huge issue.

What does Israel do in return to make it such a favoured country? eg. 20bn in disaster relief aid to Florida would be probably more welcome by US citizens.

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It's not only Israel. It's all of NATO plus "major non-NATO allies" specifically Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand

We give Jordan $1.6B/year, what does it give in return? What about Ethiopia at $2B/yr?

We gave Pakistan and Iran a few billion dollars in military aid a while back. What we got in return was a Bangladesh genocide and an Islamic revolution.

Lesson learned: arms sales can be used to ideologically justify butchering civilians if the government receiving that aid is not held accountable.

You could ask the same questions about that yes, but whataboutism does not answer the questions here.

For Ethiopia it's flagged as humanitarian aid, and likely for Jordan as a result of the neighbouring Syria war.

None of that is arms though, and critically more than the aid, why the legislation?

What justifies making it illegal to stop investing in a country despite it's actions? Surely that's a commercial decision rather than a legislative one?

The biggest condition behind US aid to Jordan and Egypt is them continuing friendly relations with Israel. In 1970s when this aid was started- this condition was made very explicit by USA.

So in other words, these two at least are nothing but indirect aid to Israel.

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