Regardless of how U.S. citizens feel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Americans are effectively supporting Israel through their tax dollars. That has to stop.

The U.S. has given a cumulative total of $130.2 billion in aid to Israel, along with special privileges, since its inception, according to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

With substantial military aid from the U.S. and several atomic bombs, Hamas is no threat to the Israeli government, which could wipe out what is left of Palestine in a split second.

But Israel doesn’t need to use its nuclear weapons, only to broadcast that it can. Not for the aims of peace, but “to contain, destabilize, and roll-back some of its most dangerous threats,” according to 1996 Israeli policy document ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.’

Entire families have already been wiped out. Despite the ceasefire, Israel shelled a school run by United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees where thousands took shelter, killing 10, according to Raji Sourani of the Middle East Children’s Alliance, a Berkeley based non-profit.

What is more disconcerting than Israel’s military might, which is used often without restraint, is the fact that many Israeli citizens think their government is going too far, including well-established news organizations such as Haaretz.

The only plausible defenses to continued aid to Israel are reparations for the Holocaust or to maintain a foothold in the region.

The former is indefensible since that would require giving aid to all the other populations decimated by Nazi Germany, including the Roma, also Holocaust survivors, who are being deported en masse from France to impoverished Romania.

It would make more sense for the British, who initially gave away Palestinian land, or the Germans, who were responsible for the Holocaust, to pay reparations than the U.S.

So the only reason is to maintain the position of the U.S. in the Middle East, but U.S. foreign policy has done more to increase global insecurity and cause events such as 9/11 than spread democracy and freedom.

“The increase in the number of suicide bombings in 2013 stemmed from a lack of stability in Middle East countries, and particularly from the escalation of the civil wars in Iraq and Syria,” according to Israeli research think t    ank Institute for National Security Studies.

Suicide bombing could easily spread to Israel and lead to more extreme military actions against the U.S. if regional instability continues, but that is Israel’s goal, according to A Clean Break.

Supporting Israel may end up threatening U.S. national security in the long run.

If oil is the goal, it would be more sensible to divert funds going to Israel into research for alternative forms of energy, which already has popular support, according to a 2013 Gallup poll.

The U.S. has been meddling in Middle Eastern affairs for decades and there have been no positive gains for American citizens. It would be better to let the countries in the region sort out their own affairs and divert U.S. aid to Israel back to U.S. citizens.