Feeding Antisemitism with MoCo Taxpayer Dollars to MIDC

You'd think Montgomery County elected officials would take extra care not to enliven antisemitic (Jew-hating) stereotypes, old tropes such as "Jews are greedy" (grabbing public funds for themselves); "manipulative" (controlling governments and the media behind the curtain, like a puppet master), and "violent" (selecting force and intimidation as the basis of human relations).

So what exactly are our county councilors and the executive thinking as they select one nation, Israel, to receive public funds ($45,000 annually) for military industries and indeed, for Israeli state war agencies, while our county's budget for services and infrastructure for its own citizens is facing cutbacks? We're suffering a housing shortage, and 37% of households in our county are experiencing food insecurity. (The highest rate of food insecurity we've ever seen.–Montgomery County Food Council)

Drop the MIDC has produced two short videos (Part 1 and Part 2) about the Maryland/Israel Development Center (MIDC), explaining why our county's (and Maryland state's) tax dollars should NOT be given to this organization and to the Israeli military-industrial complex that it promotes. Here's a video of residents asking our Montgomery County Executive to end the annual grant to MIDC.

If our County Council were to give sole preference and privilege to France or Finland, to Togo or Tunisia with a direct grant, we'd ask what the heck was going on. But because the recipient is Israel, citizens are supposed to be cowed into silence. Who wants to be called an antisemite?

One method to fuel real antisemitism (and hatred of Americans) all over the globe is for the US to give taxpayer dollars to Israel and enable its expanding wars. Watch "Gaza through a MoCo Lens." We are watching Israel and the United States together commit a genocide, the destruction of human life and a whole society on an industrial scale, as Holocaust scholar Raz Segal asserts. As the US enables Israel's war crimes, it does not make the world safer for Israelis, or for Americans, or for anyone. It makes things much, much worse.

Israel's wars are suicidal, as Israeli economist Shir Hever has observed. The relation of U.S. to Israel is similar in many ways to a brother who gives his addicted younger sibling cash to "end the pain," to buy his next fix. In the end, there is no place of permanent ecstasy. Instead, there is overdose and death. And worse, the U.S. is also the drug (weapons) dealer, its war corporations making billions in profit at every turn. We are the enabler and the dealer.

It's time for the American people to heed the call of Jewish Voice for Peace and the Jewish organization If Not Now, and the Christians living today in Palestine, and the Israeli-and-Palestinian organization of bereaved families Standing Together. Faith groups have launched an effort for towns, cities, and counties to become Apartheid-Free Communities. Let's heed the call to halt the flow of US weapons and US tax dollars to apartheid Israel. All politics is local. Let's start here, in Montgomery County, Maryland, by canceling this divisive grant to the Maryland/Israel Development Center.

Steven Sellers Lapham
Gaithersburg, Maryland