Cut Israel Off

[lester1/2jr]

Here I go back in to negative karma land!  What can I say.  I'm not an anti semite.  In fact, I think it's preposterous that we tell another country when and how they may defend themselves.  Also preposterous is the fact that millions of Americans are being made a part of a cause they may or may not believe in:  zionism.  Why should muslim or even non zionist jewish americans cough up 3 billion plus a year to a country who already has a 200 billion a year economy?  It's just statecraft and beltway shenanagins that have nothing to do with the constitution or the running of the country.

     So I disagree with the author who implies we should "switch allegiences" to the largely non democratic , very non productive muslim states.  I say we follow brother john lennon: let it be. 

Cut Israel Off

by Charley Reese
It is long past time for American politicians to quit carrying water for the state of Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby. Congress' craven obedience to the lobby is a disgrace.

America's strategic interests in the Middle East lie with the Arab countries. Israel is a strategic and economic liability. The U.S. government's slavish support of Israel brands us as a hypocrite and is responsible for most of the hostility toward the U.S.

Americans have been brainwashed into believing that it's the Arabs, and the Palestinians in particular, who don't want peace. That is a big lie. The Palestinians made an enormous concession when they agreed to settle for a state on 18 percent of Palestine. Saudi Arabia proposed several years ago a peace plan in which all of the Arab countries would recognize Israel in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. The Israelis rejected it out of hand, just as they reject Arab efforts to have the Middle East a nuclear-free zone.

Israel's goal is and always has been to take all of Palestine and to get rid of the Palestinians. The Israelis employed ethnic cleansing in 1948 and again in 1967 to make hundreds of thousands of Palestinians refugees. For 40 years, the Israelis have refused to give back the Palestinian and Syrian lands they seized in war. They have blatantly violated international law by building settlements on occupied land, and by violating the airspace of other sovereign countries.

Palestinians are the victims, not the villains, in this case. The Israelis make their lives miserable in the hope they will give up and leave. At the same time, the Israelis, in cahoots with the American government, maintain a charade of proposed peace talks. They of course never come to fruition. The Israeli government is not about to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state. If they give the Palestinians anything, it will be a patchwork of enclaves completely surrounded and controlled by Israel. Having created 700,000 Palestinian refugees, the Israelis have from the beginning refused to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses, all of which Israel confiscated on the specious grounds that they were "abandoned property."

Without U.S. aid, which now is conservatively estimated to total $108 billion (think of the infrastructure and schools that amount could build in the U.S.), and without the U.S. wielding its veto every time the United Nations tries to act, none of this would be possible.

It is not just the Muslim world that hates our pro-Israel foreign policy, for sound reasons that it is unjust and cruel. Europeans and others around the world are contemptuous of America's slavelike obedience to a small foreign power. It has gotten to the point that to be seen as an ally of the United States is viewed negatively.

The Arab and Muslim people, with the exception of al-Qaeda, don't hate America or Americans. It is the pro-Israel foreign policy and, of course, our invasions of two Muslim countries that they hate. Virtually all of the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda generated in this country has its source in the Israeli lobby and in Israel itself.

Thanks to the unconstitutional largess of the cowardly Congress, Israel is a rich country and one of the world's leading military powers. It doesn't need American aid. It is time to quit dancing to the tune of a lobby with dual loyalties and to pursue America's interests.

Americans are being betrayed by their own politicians, and it's time to treat those scoundrels with the contempt they deserve.

[indianasmith]

Wonder how much the Saudis paid for that editorial?


Sorry, Lester, but it's crap.  Israel is the truest friend that America has in the whole world and the only functioning democracy in the Middle East, and to throw them to the wolves and jump in bed with a bunch of raving Islamist theocrats would be a betrayal of the highest order.  Not only that, this whole thing about a Palestinian state makes me itchy.  There has never been a Palestinian state, and the Palestinians have done NOTHING to show that they deserve one or are capable of governing a state if they got it.

[lester1/2jr]

how is any of this ours to decide?  they live there, we don't.  If Israel doesn't like the nighborhood, WE, a cuontry thousands of miles away, have to change it around spending our own blood and treasure? 

as far as a "true friend" google:  the USS Liberty, Jonathan Pollard, rachael Corrie

[indianasmith]

All nations spy on one another, it has been that way for ages.  And what goes on in the Middle East IS our business, whether we like it or not.
The fundamental question remains, do we throw over our friend - our only true friend in that corner of the world -  so we can do business with a people who hate us and want to destroy our way of life, whose religion is absolutely inconsisten with everything America stands for and believes in?  Or do we stand by those who have stood by us?


  If Israel were to lay down all her arms tomorrow, there would be a second Holocaust within a week, as Syria and Egypt and every screaming jihadist Muslim in the world descended on them.  On the other hand, if  the Arabs would just quit blowing crap up and murdering Jews, we could have peace in the Middle East.  They have siezed on every concession Israel has made and demanded more. Currently they are  lobbing rockets into Israel from territory the Israelis gave them, and they will not give up until Israel no longer exists. 

The Palestinians don't deserve anything but contempt from America.
Israel deserves our thanks and friendship.

[Zapranoth]

In my experience, these kinds of threads don't belong in places like this, and don't tend to be productive.

Just a gentle word of caution there.   Can we just keep it to bad movies about Isreal?  Are there any such things?

You know.  "IT CAME FROM ZION."     "WEASELS RIP MY ISRAELI FLESH."   We can all agree on stuff like that.

[lester1/2jr]

The Palestinians don't deserve anything but contempt from America.
Israel deserves our thanks and friendship.

neither of them deserve our tax dollars.


Why are people of the belief that we either subsidize something or ban it?  that we either provide welfare to a country or sanction it?  what would these countries do if there was no united states?  If the israelis exist only because of us then they don't really exist.


Also, we should not be bribing Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt or Jordan.   We aren't the worlds police

Currently they are  lobbing rockets into Israel from territory the Israelis gave them

gave them? they've been there since before recorded history

And what goes on in the Middle East IS our business, whether we like it or not.

the only business we have in the middle east is cheap oil and not having terrorism.  our current policy is producing neither of those results.

and as zapranoth notes, any bad movies that come out of the region are our prime concern way over oil or terrorism

[indianasmith]

"since before recorded history"??????  Where did you get THAT?

Actually, the "Palestinians" are nothing but nomadic Bedouin Arabs who settled in the region AFTER the Muslims took it over in 600 AD.  The Hebrew people have a claim on that land that goes back 4,000 years.  It is the land God gave to Abraham, it is the Promised Land of the Exodus, it is the site of Solomon's Temple, David's tomb, and Isaiah's martyrdom.  It is the ONLY ancestral homeland of the Jewish race and religion in the whole world, and God did NOT promise it to the descendants of Ishmael.


Speaking as a Christian, I will say this.  If America abandons Israel, God will abandon us.  The promise "I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee" is still in effect.


Lester, you and I will never agree on this.  I'm perfectly willing to bat the issue around as long as you are, but I don't know that we're achieving anything here.

[Rev. Powell]

In my experience, these kinds of threads don't belong in places like this, and don't tend to be productive.

Just a gentle word of caution there.   Can we just keep it to bad movies about Isreal?  Are there any such things?

You know.  "IT CAME FROM ZION."     "WEASELS RIP MY ISRAELI FLESH."   We can all agree on stuff like that.

Seconded. What about TEL AVIV STRANGLER and YIDDISH PSYCHO?

[Rev. Powell]

Dang!  How could I have forgotten THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE HEBREWS WHO ATE PORK AND BECAME MIXED-UP GENTILES?

[indianasmith]

Dang!  How could I have forgotten THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE HEBREWS WHO ATE PORK AND BECAME MIXED-UP GENTILES?

karma for that one, Reverend!

[RCMerchant]

Dang!  How could I have forgotten THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE HEBREWS WHO ATE PORK AND BECAME MIXED-UP GENTILES?

karma for that one, Reverend!

   
I'll second that!!!! OY...dem crazy mixed up Gentilles..oy vay...! 

[lester1/2jr]

indiana-  hard to believe two people on the inernet would have different interprettatins of history isn't it?  Palestine was arab for about 18 centuries before israel was created in 48.  google "  Henry Cattan the founding of jerusalem"

and I'd argue we are "abandoning" israel by bribing her not to defend herself the way she sees fit.  if you love someone set them free, isn't that what Sting taught us so many years ago?

   anyway, seperation of church and state renders the religious argument moot.  I don't think God wants us to abandon anyone whether they are jewish muslim or rosacrution if they still have that

[Zapranoth]

That is one of my favorite grammatically incorrect music lyrics of all time.
I was in I think seventh grade, and I sat up, and thought,

"if you love somebody, set HER free."   

By the way, the next person to continue arguing about Israel is going to be the recipient of the dreaded Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique.  That's way worse than negative karma.  On the internet it works differently, though.  You type five more words, and then  your heart explodes, and you fall to the floor, dead.

[frank]

Zapranoth, isn't this a bit...aaaarrrghhh....

[RCMerchant]

That is one of my favorite grammatically incorrect music lyrics of all time.
I was in I think seventh grade, and I sat up, and thought,

"if you love somebody, set HER free."   

By the way, the next person to continue arguing about Israel is going to be the recipient of the dreaded Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique.  That's way worse than negative karma.  On the internet it works differently, though.  You type five more words, and then  your heart explodes, and you fall to the floor, dead.

Zapranoth, isn't this a bit...aaaarrrghhh....

Oh sh!t! You killed Frank! You basterd!