Josh Ruebner, the National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, lays out his argument for why the United States can no longer afford to provide billions in aid to Israel. US President Barack Obama recently secured $3 billion in military aid alone to Israel for the fiscal year 2011.

If US weapons were going to Israel for a good purpose, then perhaps a coherent guns versus butter debate would be appropriate. However, Israel repeatedly misuses US weapons to commit grave human rights abuses against Palestinians who are forced to live under its illegal 42-year military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip...

It was exactly to prevent this kind of misuse of US weapons that Congress passed the Arms Export Control Act, which strictly limits foreign countries from employing US weapons for any purpose other than internal security or legitimate self-defense. Building apartheid walls and colonies to maintain a foreign military occupation, enforcing a medieval blockade, and killing and injuring innocent civilians by the thousands certainly cannot be considered legitimate and is self-evidently not for domestic security...

Read the full blog at The Huffington Post.com