Category Archives: Politics And Government

U.S. Military Aid To Israel: Debating An Increase

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This article was posted on the pages of YAHOO.

By DAVID MAKOVSKYon March 16, 2016 at 10:00 AM

When Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu cancelled his planned visit to Washington recently, many speculated that he was protesting the continued lack of agreement on the amount of U.S. military aid to be embodied in a new ten-year memorandum of understanding (MOU). Vice President Joe Biden, who enjoys a close friendship with Netanyahu, visited Israel last week and urged the prime minister to finalize a deal at the level favored by the Obama administration. Although Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon will meet with Defense Secretary Ash Carter at the Pentagon this week, the MOU talks have been spearheaded by the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office, so the Carter-Yaalon talks are unlikely to be a game-changer.

U.S. aid rose dramatically in the wake of Israel’s 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, yet the first MOU on military aid was not signed until two decades later in 1998, for $21.3 billion over ten years. The second MOU was signed in August 2007, for $30 billion over ten years. The mutual advantage of signing such MOUs is that they inject predictability into the process so that aid levels do not have to be negotiated each year.

Did you read that? Netanyahu is protesting the amount of Aid Israel is receiving. It’s like you see a beggar on the street, you give him $5.00. Instead of saying thank you, he says, what is this cheap skate?? you should give me at least $50.00, and you say, please accept this $5.00 and I promise to give you what you ask for next time. That’s exactly what Joe Biden was doing when visited Israel.

It seems like the US and the Israeli governments don’t think that the amount of arms that Israel is currently receiving from the United States is not killing enough innocent Palestinians so the increased it by 33%. Trigger happy Israel put those arms to a bad use, killing more and more Palestinians and destroying more and more of their properties. I bet George Bush and Dick Chaney are sleeping soundly and dreaming about all the blood of innocent people spilled on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank. Truth to tell, I, as an American, am ashamed to say that these two thugs used to run my country.

WHY WE SHOUD NOT SUPPORT ISRAEL!!

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By: Hank Hardy

It’s the human nature to support the underdog, and we, the American People, love to stand behind and support the poor, the under privileged, the sick, and people who are just down on their luck. We have proved over the years that we are soft hearted, sympathetic, and ready to help such people. When a natural disaster strikes a country, we are the first to jump to their aid with food, medicine, blankets and basically everything the stricken country needs to survive.  We are also gullible to a fault and tend to believe what we see, hear and read on TV, radio, newspapers and the internet.

For many years, the Israelis took advantage of our good nature and soft hearts and led us to believe that supporting Israel is not just common sense but it’s our duty to do so. I am here to dispel all the myths and lies they planted in our hearts and minds. So, why should we NOT help and support Israel. Here are a few reasons:

  • THE UNDERDOG MYTH: For many years, the Israelis and their supporters in the US successfully convinced a large numbers of us that they are just trying to survive, and they are surrounded by the evil Arabs who vowed to throw them in the sea. The truth is that the Israelis are the ones who go around killing innocent Palestinians, demolishing their homes and stealing their land and resources.

This is the Israeli bravery. 6 heavily armed Israeli soldiers gather to beat up a Palestinian boy.

  • THE ISRAELI STRANGLE HOLD ON OUR COUNTRY: There has never been in the history of the world that a very small country like Israel controls a very big and powerful country like the United States. The Israelis and their supporters in the US control our news media, banking, economy and most importantly, our government. It’s frightening to know that our president and both houses of the congress can do nothing that contradicts the best interest of Israel, even if it’s the right thing.
  • THE ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS: What are the settlements? The Israeli government wants to out-number the Palestinians, so they took the Palestinians’ land and built housing for the Israelis on it. This land was never purchased; it was taken from its rightful owners. Every so often they take another piece of land and build housing for the Israelis. The government supplies those settlements with water and electricity that they steal from the Palestinians villages nearby, and builds the best roads for the settlers to travel on. The Palestinians are not allowed to drive or even walk on these roads. If they do, they risk being arrested or even shot and killed. Those settlements are not built to house the homeless Israelis; they stay empty until the government finds some people to fill them. Those people are often brought to Israel from other countries by the plane full. The government promises them jobs and the good life in Israel but when they realize that they’ve been lied to, they attempt to leave but the Israeli government stops them. Some of the settlers often consist of the murderers, the thieves and the hoodlums who just love to kill Palestinians for no reason, just like the ones who burned a Palestinian baby along with both his parents. I saw a story once on TV about an Israeli family who was given a house to live in on a local farmer’s land in Hebron. The house was very close to the farmer’s house where he and his family live. The two families were constantly arguing and fighting. To solve this problem, the Israeli government built a high chain-link fence around the farmer’s house claiming it’s for their protection. They were prisoners in their own home while the Israeli family was allowed to come and go as they please with no restrictions. Whose money do you think was used to build those settlements? Our money of course!! I remember when George H. Bush, the father, was a president, told the prime minister of Israel, Manahan Begin, at the time; not to use the $3 Billion in economic aid that the US is sending to Israel for building settlements. Begin replied by saying, we will use this money anyway we want. You can’t dictate to us what to do with it. Bush was offended and said: you will not get the money if you are going to use it to build settlements, to which Begin said: I will go to the congress and force you to give us the money. At that time Bush said: I will veto the bill and you will never get the money. Begin backed down after that and promised not to build settlements with the money. Of course he lied like all Israelis do. When our president objects to the settlements, the Israeli government tells him to mind his own business.
  • THE FRIENDSHIP MYTH: Some ignorant people think that we should support Israel because it’s “our only friend and ally in the Middle East”. It’s true that the United States, has no friends in the Middle East. We have followers like Jordan and Egypt and countries with whom we have treaties like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but no real friends. Why? Because that’s what Israel wants. I remember when George W. Bush, the son, sent his top assistant, Karen Hughes to the Middle East shortly after the invasion of Iraq. Her mission was to find out why the Arabic countries don’t like us. How stupid can that man be?? After all that he’s done to the Arabic countries, he still does not know why they hate us? Jon Stewart of the Daily Show answered that question. He said: maybe because we keep bombing them!!
  • THE REPEATED BACK STABBING: After all the money, weapons, technology and countless other ways in which we help Israel, the Israeli government seizes every opportunity to stab us in the back, and every time that happens, we, the American government, instead of getting angry at the Israelis, we just “turn the other cheek”. Remember the Liberty? Our ship that went to help the Israelis in the 6-day war was deliberately and viciously attacked by the Israeli torpedoes and fighter jets that we gave them. The torpedoes tried to sink it but it won’t go down, however, 34 of our sailors lost their lives.

Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy stole and sold valuable secret and highly classified information to the Israeli government. Some radicals like Alan Dershowitz tried to justify this treason by saying: at least he was spying for a friendly country not the enemy. Dershowitz does not realize that it hurts much more to be stabbed in the back by a friend than by an enemy. Pollard is one of many spies the Israeli government employs to steal our military secrets. Some were caught and some are still operating inside our different governmental departments.

  • HELPING OTHERS: As much as we, the American people, love to help other people who are in desperate need for help, we are not allowed to help the Palestinians who lost their homes to the Israeli bulldozers, their land to the Israeli government, their resources to the Israeli authorities. The Israeli army would stop anyone from any country who tries to help the Palestinians. Not only that but we keep sending them very expensive war planes, missiles, tanks and every other kind of weapons to kill more innocent Palestinians. In addition to all the atrocities they commit in Gaza and the West Bank, we are forced to defend them in the United Nations and in the news all the time. The Israeli army has been surrounding the Gaza strips for years in an effort to strangle them economically, and when the people of Gaza build tunnels underground to bring food and medicine to their people, the Israeli army tries to destroy them, and every few years they declare an all out massacre on the people of Gaza killing hundreds and thousands of them in the process and destroying their building and burning their food supplies.

The Israelis have no intention to establish peace in the Middle East. Every American president in recent history claims to be the one that will finally get the Palestinians and the Israelis to agree to a peace treaty and everyone of them falls flat on his face when he opens his mouth. The Israelis simply tell him to sit on the side line and shut his mouth, and we, the American people are either brainwashed or afraid to speak up. The Israelis are robbing us blind and we just keep giving them more. It’s time to stop this madness and stand up for what’s right. It’s time to tell the Israelis, enough is enough. It’s time for our president to have a back bone and stand up to those Israeli bullies.

Israel is acting as if it is free of moral responsibilities.

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Palestinian relatives mourn over Hamas’ green flag-draped bodies of eleven members of the Al Astal immediate and extended family, killed by an Israeli strike. (Hatem Ali/AP)

By Eugene Robinson Opinion writer July 24, 2014

The civilian death toll in Gaza from Israel’s latest incursion is appalling. The right to self-defense is inalienable, but it is not free from moral constraints.

As of this writing, nearly 750 Palestinians, including dozens of children, have been killed since the Israeli assault began. On Thursday, a compound housing a United Nations school — crowded with Gaza residents who had fled their homes to seek shelter — was shelled in an incident still under investigation by the Israeli Defense Forces. Palestinian officials said 15 people were killed and scores injured.

Eugene Robinson writes a twice-a-week column on politics and culture, contributes to the PostPartisan blog, and hosts a weekly online chat with readers. In a three-decade career at The Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper’s Style section. View Archive

I support Israel. I abhor Hamas. But unleashing such devastating firepower on a tiny, densely crowded enclave in which civilians are trapped — and thus destined to become casualties — is wrong by any reasonable moral standard.

The Israeli government’s motivations in Gaza deserve to be taken seriously. But they do not justify the onslaught that is now in its third week. For Israeli military action to be justifiable, it must be proportionate. What we’re witnessing is not.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Hamas is “targeting civilians and hiding behind civilians,” which he called a “double war crime.” He was referring to the fact that Hamas targets Israeli civilians with its rocket attacks and positions its military installations in residential neighborhoods or near schools and hospitals.

Netanyahu is right that these practices are reprehensible and that Israel has every right to respond. But none of this absolves Israel from its own moral responsibility. A civilized nation does not repay every heinous act in kind.

Israel says it is taking great pains to avoid civilian deaths. Indeed, Israel has been warning people to leave — with leaflets, text messages and nonlethal “roof-knocking” bombs — before smashing into residential neighborhoods. It is also true that in many instances Hamas, even knowing that an attack was coming, has instructed Gazans to stay put.

I have seen no confirmed reports, however, of Hamas using force to keep people in targeted areas so they can serve as human shields — and perhaps sway world opinion by boosting the body count. When people decide they must leave their homes, they can do so. But where are these evacuees supposed to go? To the nearest school or hospital? Not if these, too, are considered legitimate targets by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Gazans cannot flee across the closed border with Egypt. They obviously do not have the option of escaping into Israel or sailing away across the Mediterranean Sea. Gaza’s 1.8 million people are packed into an enclave measuring 139 square miles — an area and population roughly the size of Philadelphia.

Israeli officials say they would never consider attacking such targets as a school, a hospital or an apartment building unless Hamas were using these places — which should be off-limits in war — as military command posts, launch sites for rocket attacks and entry points for tunnels through which assassins and suicide bombers could enter Israel.

Again, however, there is the issue of proportionality. The military and political leadership of Hamas has much better intelligence about what the Israeli armed forces are doing and more options for refuge and shelter than the average Gazan. Indeed, we have not heard of any major Hamas figure being killed. So if you’re an Israeli commander and you know that there’s a Hamas military facility next to a medical clinic, but you’re not completely sure the militants are still there, while the clinic is likely packed with injured civilians, do you still pull the trigger?

Hamas’s rockets are much less of a threat than in the past because of Israel’sIron Dome missile-defense system, which has an impressive record. The tunnels are more worrisome because of their potential for use in future terrorism. Assume for the sake of argument that Israel had no choice but to act. What, then, would be a morally acceptable number of Palestinian civilian casualties?

Let me frame the question in practical terms: How many civilian casualties are needed to guarantee another generation of hatred and war?

The scale of death and destruction appears to be aimed not just at lessening the actual threat from Hamas but also at punishing Gazans for elevating Hamas to power in the first place. Netanyahu seems determined to teach them a lesson.

From all reports, however, the people of Gaza were already weary of Hamas. Netanyahu could have offered them an alternative future of free movement, economic development and peace. Instead, he gives them no choice.

Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter orsubscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.

Israel wrecked my home. Now it wants my land.

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Nureddin Amro at his East Jerusalem home, which was partially demolished this spring. (Quique Kierszenbaum/For The Washington Post)

By Nureddin Amro July 31

Nureddin Amro is the founder and principal of Siraj al-Quds School for Integrated Education, a Jerusalem school for visually impaired, poor, orphaned and emotionally troubled children. Orly Halpern contributed reporting and fact-checking for The Washington Post.

EAST JERUSALEM — The world is watching Susiya to see if Israel will demolish the community of 340 Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills. The Supreme Court here has refused to delay the forced removal of structures where 55 families have lived since they were displaced by state-sponsored archaeological digs that helped expand a nearby settlement. Living under the threat of demolition is a horrible experience. The Palestinians of Susiya probably feel disoriented, unstable and scared that their way of life could be dismantled at any minute. I know, because I’m in a similar situation. In my neighborhood, the destruction has already started.

Just before dawn on March 31, dozens of Israeli soldiers and police officers blocked off the streets and surrounded the one-story house where my older brother Sharif, his family of six, our 79-year-old mother, my wife, my three children and I live. We had gone to bed looking forward to a picnic the next morning, but we were awoken by the frightening sounds of jeeps and heavy machinery. Israeli security forces banged on the doors, shouting in Hebrew that we had to get out at once. They had come to demolish our home.

I was born in Jerusalem. My parents were born in Jerusalem. Their parents were born in Jerusalem. Their parents were born in Jerusalem. Our modest house is approximately 70 years old — older than the state of Israel. I have lived here in al-Sawana, a neighborhood between the Old City and the Mount of Olives, not far from the Gethsemane Valley (where the Romans caught Jesus), for more than 40 years. It is near a commercial area, hospitals, Muslim and Jewish cemeteries and precious religious sites for the three big monotheistic faiths. In other words, I live on strategic land.

In December, city planners, civil engineers and workers from Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority began walking up and down the neighborhood. They ordered people on my block to clean up things like broken furniture and wood outside our houses (we complied), measured the area with surveying tools and spray-painted footpath markings for hikers. Eventually they told us that we lived on “public land” inside something called the Jerusalem Walls National Park (established in 1974), where they warned us they have plans for further work. Government documents suggest that they will connect the Tzurim Valley National Park and the Beit Orot settlement, below the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Mount Scopus, where I studied, to the City of David archaeological site and Jewish settlement in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan — ultimately putting a Jewish belt around the eastern, Muslim side of the Old City. The parks authority has already boastedof beautifying this area, through which many Jewish pilgrims and hikers cross on Jewish holidays.

Israel employs numerous policies to push Palestinians out of East Jerusalem, including house demolitions, often ostensibly because homeowners lack the proper building permits. Human rights organizations argue that these “administrative demolitions” are illegitimate because Israel usually refuses to issue home-construction permits to Palestinians and because the permit regime is one-way, driving Palestinians out of areas Israel wants to control. (Tear-downs can also be collective punishments for violent acts carried out by individual Palestinian family members.)

All this helps explain what happened early that March morning. At first, the officials who showed up said they had come just to raze the eastern wall near the street, although they did not have a demolition order. I went through the house to my brother Sharif’s side to tell him, but when I got there, the officials said we were standing in a room they planned to demolish. They roughly pulled us outside, injuring Sharif’s leg. Meanwhile, they began tearing down the two outer rooms on my side of the house without my knowledge. My wife shouted, “They’ve already begun demolishing our house!”

Police and soldiers — many of whom were masked — pushed us back inside and kept us there so they could work unimpeded, and when I went outside again, they were knocking over a big tree. When it fell, it collapsed part of the garden wall, a piece of which injured the leg of my 12-year-old son, Mohammed. My family documented the damage with our camera phones, even as they cut our electricity and destroyed the sewage pipes.

By the time the soldiers left, less than four hours later, they had destroyed the kitchen and three other rooms, the wall that separates the house from the street, the chicken coop and the garden that we loved. Trees felled by the bulldozer were pushed to the side of the property. The place where my children — the others are 9 and 5 — used to play under the shade of those old trees was now covered by piles of rubble.

It wasn’t easy living in a house surrounded by rubble, especially since my brother and I are both blind. Still, I found myself unable to throw away the crushed concrete, which was mixed with fragments of my entire life. Each uprooted plant and broken piece of furniture was a part of our story. While it was hard to walk over and around the rubble as we tried to live, it was just as hard to imagine tossing it into a dumpster.

For weeks, the detritus was a source of confusion. Some Palestinians in our situation are told to remove it or face high fines. Others who clean it immediately fear that they have erased the ugly testimony to Israel’s act. I didn’t want to take any action that would undermine my legal position, and I didn’t want to do anything to invite further demolitions. At the same time, I wanted to restore some amount of normalcy to our daily lives and provide a safe play space for my kids by putting up a fence between us and the road that passes by our home.

Life for Palestinians in Jerusalem is complicated. Laws favor the Israeli authorities and Jewish citizens, especially settlers, and are interpretedunevenly and unpredictably. As the principal of a school for visually impaired and sighted children, I have supported hundreds of families as they have tried to stay on their ancestral land. Now my family is among them. We live in daily fear that the soldiers will come back and that nobody will protect us.

Several weeks later, after I paid to fix the electricity and the sewage pipes, they did come back. I was at work running the school’s end-of-the-year party. My brother called to tell me that soldiers and municipal officials had showed up at our house and said they wanted to clean up the rubble. We had already been advised by other Palestinians in Jerusalem who had gone through the same experience that if the city hauled the wreckage, it would charge us exorbitant fees for the job and might later claim rights to the land. So I told my brother to prevent them from doing any work. After several hours of arguing, they gave us two hours to remove the mess. We explained that this was clearly impossible, and they agreed to give us two days.

The next day, I found a bulldozer company willing to work on promise of future payment, and we started the job. On May 30, a Saturday morning — the Jewish Sabbath, during which Israeli public offices are closed — officials returned with the police. They threatened to fine or arrest us for cleaning up the rubble without a permit.

We didn’t know if we should laugh or cry. They had themselves demanded that we clean up the debris and had given us a permit the previous day! Then they threatened to fine us if we disposed of the rubble illegally, and they reminded us that the legal disposal sites were closed until Sunday. Workers from the bulldozer company, who were busy cleaning up the rubble, promised to keep it in their trucks until the dump reopened.

Many people know that more than 600 Palestinian villages were depopulatedin the years during and after Israel’s founding and that most of them were demolished. Some people also know that tens of thousands of structures have been torn down by Israel since the 1967 war, some 500 homes in East Jerusalem alone since 2004. Fewer know that there are more than 11,000open demolition orders against Palestinian structures just in Area C of the West Bank. This means that Israel can raze them at any moment, without further warning; Palestinians in those homes live in constant fear.

There are so many demolition orders, in fact, that Israel has sought more efficient ways to get all the work done. So it often recommends that Palestinians knock down their own homes at their own expense, freeing Israel of the hassle and risk. Some do. It seems this isn’t enough for Israel, though, because authorities continue to experiment with new and creative ways of dispossessing Palestinians. My own home seems to have been demolished using a municipal ordinance related to cleanliness of public areas in order to avoid judicial scrutiny, according to a Palestinian legal clinic that is challenging the operation. Indeed, in the three months before the demolition, I received two orders to clear away broken and old objects outside my house; I did as they asked. Demolition is not listed as a punishment for violating these orders, but human rights lawyers told me they have identified other recent cases in which Israeli municipal authorities cited the ordinance as a pretext for flattening homes.

Living under the threat of demolition is nerve-racking, as the residents of Susiya know, and it seems impossible to win against the legal and physical force Israel commands. My family is unsure about what to do next. Still, we do not intend to give up. If they completely demolish our homes, we will rebuild.

outlook@washpost.com

We are lifelong Zionists. Here’s why we’ve chosen to boycott Israel.

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An Israeli soldier detains a Palestinian boy during a protest in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh in August. (Mohamad Torokman/Reuters)
By Steven Levitsky and Glen Weyl October 23

Steven Levitsky is a professor of government at Harvard University. Glen Weyl is an assistant professor of economics and law at the University of Chicago.

We are lifelong Zionists. Like other progressive Jews, our support for Israel has been founded on two convictions: first, that a state was necessary to protect our people from future disaster; and second, that any Jewish state would be democratic, embracing the values of universal human rights that many took as a lesson of the Holocaust. Undemocratic measures undertaken in pursuit of Israel’s survival, such as the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the denial of basic rights to Palestinians living there, were understood to be temporary.

But we must face reality: The occupation has become permanent. Nearly half a century after the Six-Day War, Israel is settling into the apartheid-like regime against which many of its former leaders warned. The settler population in the West Bank has grown 30-fold, from about 12,000 in 1980 to389,000 today. The West Bank is increasingly treated as part of Israel, with the green line demarcating the occupied territories erased from many maps. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin declared recently that control over the West Bank is “not a matter of political debate. It is a basic fact of modern Zionism.”

This “basic fact” poses an ethical dilemma for American Jews: Can we continue to embrace a state that permanently denies basic rights to another people? Yet it also poses a problem from a Zionist perspective: Israel has embarked on a path that threatens its very existence.

As happened in the cases of Rhodesia and South Africa, Israel’s permanent subjugation of Palestinians will inevitably isolate it from Western democracies. Not only is European support for Israel waning, but also U.S. public opinion — once seemingly rock solid — has begun to shift as well, especially among millennials. International pariah status is hardly a recipe for Israel’s survival.

At home, the occupation is exacerbating demographic pressures that threaten to tear Israeli society apart. The growth of the settler and ultra-orthodox populations has stoked Jewish chauvinism and further alienated the growing Arab population. Divided into increasingly irreconcilable communities, Israel risks losing the minimum of mutual tolerance that is necessary for any democratic society. In such a context, violence like the recent wave of attacksin Jerusalem and the West Bank is virtually bound to become normal.

Finally, occupation threatens the security it was meant to ensure. Israel’s security situation has changed dramatically since the 1967 and 1973 wars. Peace with Egypt and Jordan, the weakening of Iraq and Syria, and Israel’s now-overwhelming military superiority — including its (undeclared) nuclear deterrent — have ended any existential threat posed by its Arab neighbors. Even a Hamas-led Palestinian state could not destroy Israel. As six former directors of Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, argued in the 2012 documentary “The Gatekeepers,” it is the occupation itself that truly threatens Israel’s long-term security: Occupation forces Israel into asymmetric warfare that erodes its international standing, limits its ability to forge regional alliances against sectarian extremists and, crucially, remains the principal motive behind Palestinian violence.

In making the occupation permanent, Israel’s leaders are undermining their state’s viability. Unfortunately, domestic movements to avert that fate have withered. Thanks to an economic boom and the temporary security provided by the West Bank barrier and the Iron Dome missile defense system, much of Israel’s secular Zionist majority feels no need to take the difficult steps required for a durable peace, such as evicting their countrymen from West Bank settlements and acknowledging the moral stain of the suffering Israel has caused to so many Palestinians.

We are at a critical juncture. Settlement growth and demographic trends will soon overwhelm Israel’s ability to change course. For years, we have supported Israeli governments — even those we strongly disagreed with — in the belief that a secure Israel would act to defend its own long-term interests. That strategy has failed. Israel’s supporters have, tragically, become its enablers. Today, there is no realistic prospect of Israel making the hard choices necessary to ensure its survival as a democratic state in the absence of outside pressure.

For supporters of Israel like us, all viable forms of pressure are painful. The only tools that could plausibly shape Israeli strategic calculations are a withdrawal of U.S. aid and diplomatic support, and boycotts of and divestitures from the Israeli economy. Boycotting only goods produced in settlements would not have sufficient impact to induce Israelis to rethink the status quo.

It is thus, reluctantly but resolutely, that we are refusing to travel to Israel, boycotting products produced there and calling on our universities to divest and our elected representatives to withdraw aid to Israel. Until Israel seriously engages with a peace process that either establishes a sovereign Palestinian state or grants full democratic citizenship to Palestinians living in a single state, we cannot continue to subsidize governments whose actions threaten Israel’s long-term survival.

Israel, of course, is hardly the world’s worst human rights violator. Doesn’t boycotting Israel but not other rights-violating states constitute a double standard? It does. We love Israel, and we are deeply concerned for its survival. We do not feel equally invested in the fate of other states.

Unlike internationally isolated states such as North Korea and Syria, Israel could be significantly affected by a boycott. The Israeli government could not sustain its foolish course without massive U.S. aid, investment, commerce, and moral and diplomatic support.

We recognize that some boycott advocates are driven by opposition to (and even hatred of) Israel. Our motivation is precisely the opposite: love for Israel and a desire to save it.

Repulsed by the Afrikaners’ ethno-religious fanaticism in South Africa, Zionism founder Theodore Herzl wrote, “We don’t want a Boer state, but a Venice.” American Zionists must act to pressure Israel to preserve Herzl’s vision — and to save itself.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT SEASON IT IS???

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By: Hank Hardy

Everyone is familiar with the four seasons but actually the calendar year is full of seasons. Some are as short as one day like the FORTH Of JULY and THANKSGIVING, and others are longer like the CHRISTMAS SEASON which lasts for a couple of months, but the longest season which comes once every four years is called THE ASS KISSING SEASON, commonly known as the PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION SEASON.

Every candidate in this season, without exception, tries to kiss the ass of the Jews in the US in general and the Israelis’ and their supporters’ in particular. Some candidates receive millions of dollars from rich Jews like Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire owner of the Sands Hotels and Casinos who donated millions of dollars to Newt Gingrich in the previous elections after a huge ass kissing from the latter. Hillary Clinton prefers to kiss the asses of the Jews in New York who helped her get elected to the US senate representing that state. Some candidates go overboard with the ass kissing; for example Mike Huckabee who doesn’t only kiss the Israeli ass but he licks it, fondles it and takes it to bed. He recently went to Israel for a fund raising project to his campaign for the presidency, after which he came back with millions of dollars to spend in the US. During his visit to Israel he made several speeches dissing the Palestinians and calling them “invented people” and saying that he agrees with Israel to not allow Palestinians to return to their homeland. His fellow Republican Ann Coulter said that he sounded like he was running for mayor of Tel-Aviv. This Moran thought that he can revive his campaign and move ahead to the front. Instead, his campaign decided to settle in a comfortable spot, right in the toilet.

More recently, Ben Carson decided to try his ass kissing technique. He made a statement on a talk show saying that he would not support a Muslim for a president. A few days later he realized how stupid and outrageous his statement was, so he retracted it and tried explaining it in a different way saying that he would not support a member of ISIS for president…How clever, he thought that ISIS would send a representative to run for the US President so he can destroy the country from the inside. That’s how genius Carson is.

And now, here comes the grand poopa of geniuses, his name is Donald Trump. He probably thought to himself …oh, I almost forgot to kiss the Jews’ ass. Let me go big time and make a statement to please them and let everyone remember it, so he made the most outrageous statement of all, calling on a ban of Muslims entering the US for any reason, even banning Muslim American citizens who live and/or were born in the US from returning to their homes if they travel abroad. What’s next Mr. Idiot? Are you going to demolish their homes like the Israelis do in Palestine? Or you are going to go around shooting them in the streets like the Israelis do in Palestine? This A.. Hole did not care whom he hurts with a statement like that. He did not think about something called discrimination or the American Value which we all cherish. He only cared about kissing the Israeli ass. Well, Trump boy… you succeeded. He was denounced by everyone, even his fellow Republican candidates; but the sad thing is not for an idiot like Trump to make a stupid statement like this but that a small minority of his supporters who agree with him proving that they are as much of airheads as he is. This group is lead by non other than the queen of Morons, Sarah Palin. In her infinite wisdom she said: if this could save lives, profile away.

A reporter from NBC asked Trump this question: you said you wanted to keep a data base on all Muslims in the US, how is that different from requiring the Jews to register in Nazi Germany? Trump asked the reporter who he’s with; ignoring his question even after the reporter repeated it.

In a huge lie a couple of weeks ago, Trump said that thousands and thousands of Arabs in New Jersey cheered as the Twin Towers were coming down. All networks refuted his claim; even the reporter who was there in person and reported the story said it was a lie. When Trump was asked how does he remember that? He said: I have the best memory in the world, but when he was asked when and where this event took place he said: I don’t remember.

I can’t help but wonder if Mr. Idiot thought about what he was blabbering. Did he think about the backlash from everyone especially the Muslims in this country and around the world? Did he think that the only group of people he would be helping is ISIS? Was he trying to put his campaign to bed or even 6 feet under? Although he is supported by some minority followers, the rest of America is not going to tolerate such bigotry and racism. That’s not what our country stands for. Not Donald Trump or ten Donald Trumps could change that.

There you have it, the leading Republican candidate for president. What does that tell you about this party in general and Trump in particular??

Terrorists’ Attacks, Who’s Responsible??

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By: Mohamed Abulrahman

There have been numerous attacks in recent months and years on innocent people in different countries. We are not talking about the “deranged individuals” who carry a gun and go to a school, a theater, or any other crowded place and start shooting. We are referring to those organized attacks by organizations identified by our government as “terrorists” such as the recent one in San Bernardino, California that killed 14 people and the attack in Paris, France that killed 129 people, and the attack known as the “Charles Hebdo attack”, also in France that killed 11 people. There was also the attack in Kenya in 2011 that killed 147 people. Many other attacks took place in other countries over the years.

The so called “terrorist organizations” like Al-Qaida, ISIS and many others are not just a menace to the world but they are dangerous and deadly as we saw in California, France and other places. Unfortunately, all of these organizations’ members are Muslims, or so they claim, but what they are doing contradicts everything Islam stands for, which reminds me with an incident I read about on the internet. An ISIS man in Syria stopped a car driven by a Christian man with his wife sitting next to him. The conversation between the two men went as follows:

ISIS man: Are you Muslim?

The driver: Yes we are.

ISIS man: If you are Muslim, recite something from the Quran.

The driver recited something from the bible.

ISIS man: Yes, you are Muslim, go on and enjoy your day.

The driver’s wife asked her husband: Why did you tell him we are Muslims?

The driver: Because if I tell him we are not, he will kill us both.

The wife seemed to be worried. Her husband said: don’t worry, this man does not know anything about Islam or the Quran; if he does, he won’t be going around killing people.

To associate Arabs and/or Muslims with terrorists and terrorism is wrong. In fact, true Muslims are the first to condemn such heinous crimes committed by these thugs. They claim to be Muslims but they know nothing about Islam. If the profit Mohammed is still alive, I have no doubt that he will form an army and wipe those criminals off the face of this earth. The Israelis and their supporters in the United States and around the world want people in every country to believe that all Muslims and all Arabs are terrorists. Actually, you don’t blame them for this evil attempt because every criminal tries to pin the crime on someone else after profusely denying committing it. The crimes that Israel commits in the land of Palestine are numerous to mention and gruesome to talk about.

Believe it or not, the biggest and most dangerous terrorist organization in the world, and by far the overall worst one is called ISRAEL, the country of thugs. Before you let your jaw drop to the floor and say what??? Why Israel??

Well, just think about it. The definition of terrorists is a group of thugs killing innocent people and destroying their properties. No one did that more than Israel. In the name of self defense, they invaded the Gaza Strip and killed thousands of innocent people, and using the planes, tanks, missiles, bombs and other military equipment that our government gave them, they destroyed billions of dollars worth of properties in Gaza and the West Bank. If bombing schools, hospitals and homes is not terrorism I don’t know what is!!

The two biggest single attacks happened in 2001 and 2014. The first was on the Twin Towers in New York that killed 3,000 people, but the biggest and worst attack, outside of a war, happened in 2014 when Israel, for no reason at all, launched not a war but a massacre against the people of Gaza killing 2,200 of them and destroying billions of dollars worth of properties.

Although the number of people died in New York was larger than the number killed in Gaza, the latter was considered much worse due to the property destruction and the deplorable conditions that the area was left in afterword. The people who perished in New York were hailed as heroes, remembered every year in a special ceremony and their families were compensated for their loss. Our country invaded Afghanistan in attempt to revenge the incident, where as the people who died in Gaza were forgotten and the event rarely mentioned in the news. Their families were never compensated and the United Nations’ aid of food, medicine, and other life necessities were blocked by the Israeli army. A book can be written about the atrocities that the Israelis committed in Gaza and the West Bank but this is neither the place nor time for it.

BUT!! The $64 million question is…Who is responsible for the creation of such groups as Al-Qaida and ISIS??

If you say… well, the terrorist groups themselves are responsible for their actions. They committed these crimes on their own and they answer to, and take orders from, no one. Bravo, you are half right. Actually, the first blame should be directed toward the countries and organizations that either created them or caused them to exist. BUT… who are those countries, you ask?

Don’t look too far. We, the United States of America indirectly were the major contributor to the creation and strengthening of these groups.

What??? You ask in shock; how can you say that when we are fighting them and trying to destroy them (except Israel of course).

When Saddam Hussein was the president of Iraq, Al-Qaida had no trace in that country because Hussein did not like them and would not allow them in his country, but when George W. Bush, better known as “the worst president in the country’s history” decided in his infamous wisdom and under pressure from his vice president to invade Iraq to please and protect the Israelis, Al-Qaida had a golden opportunity to enter Iraq and flourish in it, thus allowing them to dig up their heals in the country. Following his orders, or rather Dick Chaney’s orders, our army killed a large number of Iraq’s army and dissolved the remaining fragments of it. Now Iraq has a few untrained soldiers who are under equipped and underfunded. This army is incapable of fighting anyone, which opened the doors to ISIS to attack villages, kill a large number of innocent people and occupy land.

It’s ironic that the two groups that we are forced to call “terrorists” have never attacked or threatened our, or any other, country in the world. The two groups are Hamas and Hizb- Allah. In the Middle East, if you Arabic and you fight for your country, Palestine, you are called terrorist.

Terrorism is a huge problem facing not just our country but the whole world. BUT… what is the solution, you ask??

Not everyone realizes this but most problems have solutions. Some solutions are more effective than others but never the less there is always one. Most people think there is no solution to terrorism or it involves a full scale war which no one wants including the president. Actually, the solution is simple and does not involve war. Here are the steps to the eradication of ISIS once and for all.

  • Pressure Saudi Arabia to cut off their funding. There is no doubt that ISIS needs a huge amount of money to run their evil operation. Saudi Arabia and some countries in the gulf provide them with that.
  • Pressure Israel to stop aiding ISIS. It’s a known fact in the Middle East that Israel and ISIS are fighting on the same side. They are both fighting the Syrian army, and they are both trying to destroy the reputation of Islam. When fighters from ISIS are injured, where do you think they are treated? In Israeli hospitals.
  • Encourage fighter to leave ISIS and financially reward them. Many fighters join the terror group for the money. They are desperate for funds and willing to do what it takes to support their families. ISIS provides the funds for them. That’s what Some of the ISIS defectors on 60 minutes said.
  • Support the individual groups in Iraq and Syria who are fighting ISIS. There are many militia groups in Iraq and Syria who are fighting ISIS with what they have which is not much. In an interview on 60 Minutes with one of the militia leaders, he said: people around here are either our friends and fight with us or our enemies and fight with ISIS. When the reporter said: then the US is your friend right? He replies, not really. The US refused to assist us in our fight against ISIS. He added: we don’t want American soldiers to fight our battles but we would appreciate other types of help like equipment and funding. The reporter then asked the commander of the American forces in Iraq about that. He said that’s true; only 20% of the people who fight ISIS qualify for our criteria to help them.
  • Get congress to authorize bombing and fighting ISIS, and continue the air strikes on ISIS and encourage other countries to join in especially the surrounding ones.

If these steps are followed, ISIS will seize to exist in one or two years without sending our soldiers to fight in Iraq or Syria.

A Message to Israel: Time to Stop Playing the Victim Role

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This article was posted on the YAHOO website.

By: Philip Slater (Former professor and chair, Brandeis Sociology Department)

I can understand that after centuries of persecution it’s satisfying for a Jewish state to be the aggressor for a change, but there’s a codicil that goes with that role. You don’t get to act like a victim any more. “Poor little Israel” just sounds silly when you’re the dominant power in the Middle East. When you’ve invaded several of your neighbors, bombed and defeated them in combat, occupied their land, and taken their homes away from them, it’s time to stop acting oppressed. Yes, Arab states deny your right to exist, threaten to drive you into the sea, and all the rest of their futile, helpless rhetoric. The fact is, you have the upper hand and they don’t. You have sophisticated arms and they don’t. You have nuclear weapons and they don’t. So stop pretending to be pathetic. It doesn’t play well in Peoria.

(Yes, I know, we Americans should talk–always trembling in our boots about terrorists and ‘rogue states’ and ‘evil empires’ when we have enough nukes to blow up entire continents, and spend more on arms in an hour than most of the world’s nations spend in a year. But just because we’re hypocrites and Nervous Nellies doesn’t mean you have to be).

Calling Hamas the ‘aggressor’ is undignified. The Gaza strip is little more than a large Israeli concentration camp, in which Palestinians are attacked at will, starved of food, fuel, energy–even deprived of hospital supplies. They cannot come and go freely, and have to build tunnels to smuggle in the necessities of life. It would be difficult to have any respect for them if they didn’t fire a few rockets back.

The Israel lobby has a hissy fit when anyone points out that Israel has been borrowing liberally from the Nazi playbook, but to punish a whole nation for the attacks of a few–which Israel has been doing consistently in Gaza–is a violation of international law–a law enacted in response to the Nazi practice. And please, spare us the hypocrisy–borrowed, I’m ashamed to admit, from my own government–of saying ‘every effort is made to avoid civilian casualties’. When you drop bombs on a crowded city you’re bombing civilians. Bombs don’t ask for ID cards. Bombs are civilian killers. That’s what they do. They’re designed to break the spirit of a nation by slaughtering families. They were used all through World War II by all sides for that very purpose. And that’s what they’re intended for in Gaza.

And please, Israel, try to restrain yourself from using that ridiculous argument, borrowed again from Bush (how low can you get?), that Hamas leaders “hide among civilians”, by living in their own homes. Apparently, in the thinking of Israelis, they should all run out into an uninhabited area somewhere (try to find one in Gaza), surround themselves with flares and write in the sand with a stick, “Here I am!”

Yesterday you shelled three UN-run schools, killing several dozen children and adults, despite the fact that the UN had given you the precise coordinates of all its schools in Gaza. So much for ‘taking every care to avoid civilian casualties’. You seem to feel you can kill whomever you like, whenever you like, and wherever you like, just because you have a blank check from the United States. Every day this assault goes on you’re demonstrating contempt for the UN, the international community, and human life. Talk about a rogue state.

You might also pay attention to the fact that your outdated policy of macho bullying–the policy you’ve been following for decades–isn’t working! The Palestinians are human. They’re not dogs you can beat into submission. The worse you treat them, the more they’ll fight back. That’s what it means to be human. The more you oppress people, the more people resist. We dropped more bombs on Viet Nam than all the bombs dropped by all nations in World War II. Not to mention napalm, herbicides and all kinds of sophisticated land mines. But did they bow down and kiss the feet of their conquerors? They did not.

You’ll have to kill them all. And when you do, you may finally lose the support even of the United States.

Remember that American support is based entirely on the notion that no politician can win without the Jewish vote. But not all American Jews think Israel is on a divine mission from God. A great many American Jews believe in international law and justice.

I can understand how Israel could resent this lecture coming from an American. After all, isn’t this what we Americans did? Came into someone else’s country, slaughtered 95% of its inhabitants and took over? And didn’t we go all Nervous Nellie whenever they fought back, accusing them of aggression to justify even more genocidal slaughter? And didn’t we get away with it?

Yes, but I’m sorry to tell you, Israel, you came on the scene too late. Genocide just doesn’t fly any more. I know it isn’t fair, you have every right to feel aggrieved about this, but the world’s smaller, cowboys are passé, and bullies aren’t heroes any more.

Israel, A Friend or A Foe!!

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By: Hank Hardy

As we mentioned on the “politics and government” page, we do not shy away from controversial subjects. Questioning Israel’s friendship in either branch of the congress or any government agency is a big taboo, but in this blog we tell it like it is with no fluff or bluff.

If you go to a downtown area of any city or village and ask people you pick in random this question: Is Israel our friend or our enemy? About 75% of the times you’ll hear this:

  • Of course Israel is our friend.
  • Israel is the only friend we have in the Middle East.
  • Israel is our friend and ally. It’s the only democracy in the Middle East.

Notice that I said about 75% of the times. If you asked people the same question 10 years ago the percentage would’ve been around 95%. The drop in support for Israel is due to the American people waking up and realizing the truth regarding our so called friend. 10 years from now the percentage would probably be 30% or even lower.

To say that Israel is our enemy would not be correct. After all we support that country in every possible way, willingly or unwillingly. Without our support Israel would seize to exist. While we have a huge number of people living below the poverty level here in the United States, we pour billions of dollars every year in the Israeli lap. We shower them with every modern weapon known to man to kill innocent people with, and when they are condemned by every country in the United Nations, we VETO the UN Security Council decision so the Israelis can commit more murders and destroy more properties that belong to the Palestinians.

So, we established that Israel is not our enemy, but is it our friend?? Many say yes but others say no. so let’s examine the facts.

Fact: Israel is our best friend and ally as long as they benefit from this friendship. Our relationship with Israel is based on the “give and take” principle. We give and they take. The giving and taking is always in one direction, never the other way.

Fact: Israel invests a huge amount of money in our government. From bribing the Senators and members of the House of Representatives to lobbying vigorously in the congress and White House to suck the life blood out of our country and threatening retaliation against any and all oppositions. The money they are using against us is the same money that we give them every year in the form of financial aid. Our government officials are either too dumb to realize that or somehow justify their actions so they can continue to reap the benefits.

Fact: Israel would attack all US military targets if it can get away with it. During the 6-Day war that Israel initiated against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1967, Israel viciously attacked an American Intelligence Ship called The USS Liberty. For more than 2 hours the Israeli planes, torpedoes boats, rockets and helicopters attacked the ship, killing 34 Americans and wounding 171 others. A book called “Assault on the Liberty” was written by James M. Ennes, Jr. explaining the event in details. The Israelis claim that it was a mistake and apologized for it, but how do they explain an intense 6 hour low level surveillance by Israeli photo reconnaissance aircrafts? They can’t. Click on this link USS Liberty to watch this BBC documentary.

Fact: Israel takes every opportunity to stab us in the back. They spy on our government and steel our secrets by employing their moles in sensitive government positions in order to secretly copy and send to Israel classified information and top, well guarded secrets of government and military. Remember Jonathan Pollard?

He was a spy for, and paid by, the Israeli government. After sending a large amount of secret documents to the Israeli government, he was caught, tried for espionage and sentenced to life in Prison. He was called the worst traitor in the United States history. The Israeli government has been trying for years to get him freed but the American President refused, so far, to cave in to the pressure. Recently, it was announced that he will be released from jail due to his illness and the limited time he has left on this earth. Jonathan, you won’t be missed.

The worst part of this espionage is that a great deal of classified information that Pollard stole and sold to Israel was of little or no use to Israel but of great value to the Soviet Union. Somehow this information found its way to the Russian hands. No one knows for sure how it ended up in the Soviet hands, but among the many speculations on the how, was the selling of these documents to the Soviets by the Israelis for a very high price. Jonathan Pollard was one of many spies for Israel.

Some radicals like Alan Dershowitz justify Pollards treason and unforgivable crime by saying: he spied for a Friendly Country, not an enemy. If the smart lawyer listens to himself he would shoot himself in the mouth for saying the most stupid thing. There is another name for someone who betrays his friends; it’s called a “back stabbing”, which’s much worse and more damaging when it’s done by a “so called” friend than a stab in the front by an enemy. One would expect an attack by an enemy but never by a friend. If a man’s wife runs off with a stranger/ enemy, her husband would be angry and hurt, but if she runs off with his best friend he will be devastated and disappointed beyond belief.

These facts and many others are undisputed. You can google them and learn even more about the details.

Back to the big question: Is Israel our friend?? This is the type of question that can be answered by other questions like:

Would a friend stab his friend in the back?

Would a friend attack his friend deliberately and claim it’s a mistake?

Would a friend keep meddling in his friend affairs and demand favors while giving nothing in return?

Conclusion: ISRAEL IS NOT OUR FRIEND BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION.

Noam Chomsky: Israeli Apartheid ‘Much Worse’ Than South Africa

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Famous American Jewish linguist Noam Chomsky has described the actions of the Israeli occupation in Palestine as “worse than South African apartheid”.

By IMEMC News | August 25, 2015

Noam Chomsky arrives to a conference at the Islamic University in Gaza City, Saturday, Oct. 20 , 2012. Photo: Hatem Moussa/AP

“In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid,” Chomsky says, according to Days of Palestine. “To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by ‘apartheid’ you mean South African-style apartheid.

“What is happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse. There is a crucial difference. The South African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their workforce…

“The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is totally different. They just do not want them. They want them out, or at least in prison.”

He described listening to the American mainstream media, such as CBS, like listening directly to the Israeli propaganda agencies. “It is a shameful moment for US media when it insists on being subservient to the grotesque propaganda agencies of a violent, aggressive state [Israel],” he said.

Chomsky accused the United States of continuing to provide the decisive support for the [Israeli] atrocities against the Palestinians.

“When what is called Israeli jet planes bomb defenseless targets in Gaza, that is US jet planes with Israeli pilots,” he said. “And the same with the high-tech munitions and so on and so forth. So this is, again, sadism masked as compassion. Those are the actions.”

In a long interview with Democracy now, Chomsky insisted that the US is a violent state and is it exporting violence to other countries like the Israeli occupation.