Senator calls for reduction of US aid to Israel

US Senator Rand Paul has called for a reduction of American foreign aid, even to allies like the Israeli regime, during his visit to Israel.

In a speech at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies on Monday, the Kentucky Senator, recently selected to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the United States would be a friend of Israel, but “it will be harder and harder to be a friend if we are out of money.”

Paul, who is a long-time opponent of giving foreign aid, said that it was one thing if you were giving foreign assistance out of your savings, but it was something very different if “you are borrowing from one country to give to another. You have to wonder how wide that is, and what the repercussions will be.”

Regarding the US administration’s move in providing the Tel Aviv regime with US arms, the Republican Senator, The son of the retired Texas Representative Ron Paul, said that it should not be “a one-way street, it would be a sale, not a grant.”

Paul, who repeatedly cited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech in 1996 that he planned to wean Tel Aviv off US aid, stressed that cutting aid to Israel would help it retain its own sovereignty and not “come on bended knee” to ask for permission from the US government for every issue.

Israel receives USD3 billion a year from the United States in military aid.

Paul arrived in Israel on Sunday and was expected to meet with Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres on Monday. He will travel to Jordan on Tuesday to meet with King Abdullah and Acting Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas.

Reports say that Paul’s visit to Israel was aimed at heightening the Senator’s international profile and fuelling speculation that he would be a likely 2016 presidential candidate.