re: What is your best argument to send U.S. tax payer money to Israel.

This is correct. BUT just like the European governments, our “charity” allows them to increase socialist policies and pay for them because they don’t have to spend as much on defense.
I’m tired of paying for everyone’s defense when we have not our own problems including a massive national debt.

PS. As someone who worked for the DOD & DOS all over the Middle East and Africa I can tell you for a fact that Israel gladly accepts what we give them then reverse engineer it and make it on their own and sell it while still accepting large sums of money to develop things they have.
One small example from ten years ago. We give them multiple FLIR StarIII cameras and moving mapping systems AND money to develop their own. They make their own and then sell them.
So not only are we giving them a camera and mapping system for free, we’re paying them to produce their own and sell it. They make a lot of money doing this.
PSS. Unlike China, Israel usually will make what we give them better than ours once they’ve reengineered it BUT will not share the upgraded engineering with us. Kinda dick

Because AIPAC tells us to?

The answer is really complicated because of how out of whack our budgeting has become.

From a personal standpoint, it’s hard for me to get behind a large sums of money being sent to any foreign government, regardless of use. Domestically, access to those funds are very restrictive and compliance is onerous. This is true even in disaster situations.

For example, Ida caused severe damage to our home and insurance wasn’t playing ball. We applied for help from FEMA, denied and referred to SBA. We are offered a loan from SBA, but the loan amount was a moving target. We are trying to determine if we are going to completely rebuild, which would require both insurance money and a loan, but SBA won’t release loan proceeds and will adjust as insurance proceeds come in. Detailed accounting records are required to be submitted (which are basically impossible to reconcile to insurance estimates), for a loan secured by the actual property that I will need to pay back, that I must agree to before I know how much I am actually going to receive.

The point is the bureaucracy makes it almost impossible to even access the funds, and this is an individual American citizen in a disaster situation, with the stakes being a fully secured loan.

Meanwhile we are sending billions of unbudgeted funds, which equates to several years worth of FEMA budgets, overseas with next to zero accountability.

My whole point is that the decision makers are clueless and do not even have to consider cost/benefits of their districts. We have to get away from picking who is right and who is wrong in foreign wars. We should either get involved, or we shouldn’t.

I’ve been dumbfounded at why they’ve not seen this before now.