by Matt Bowles

About the author: Matt Bowles heads the Washington, D.C., chapter of SUSTAIN (Stop U.S. Tax-Funded Aid to Israel Now), a nonprofit organization opposed to U.S. aid to Israel.

Israel has maintained an illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Palestinian territories) for 35 years, entrenching an apartheid regime that looks remarkably like the former South African regime—hemming the Palestinians into small, noncontiguous bantustans, imposing ‘closures’ and ‘curfews’ to control where they go and when, while maintaining control over the natural resources, exploiting Palestinian labor, and prohibiting indigenous economic development.

The Israeli military (IDF)—the third or fourth most powerful military in the world—routinely uses tanks, Apache helicopter gunships, and F-16 fighter jets (all subsidized...