I've matured to the point where I know how to pick my battles. This ain't one of them because it's not worth it.
I no longer debate with ideologues. Point blank.
Posted on 01/11/2002 2:36:51 AM PST by rdb3
Someone (with one hell of a lot more ambition than I ) should do an 'Alamo-girl'-type collection of the relevant threads. Hey, Lent's got nothing better to do with his time!-)
Hahahha. Well, I'm making this a democracy with Roberts Rules of Order and I nominate dennisw for the task. Seconds?
Damn, dennisw, ya had your chance, but Robert's Rules of Order Rules!
Done! Dennisw, we shall expect the project completed by tomorrow night. G_dspeed.
You nailed it.
Fuhgedaboudit. There's our split. A huge, irreconciliable split.
Nuff said.
Nice attempt at an intellectual dodge, but it ain't gonna work.
Fact is, even if you don't care about the fact that foreign aid is the Theft-at-Gunpoint of your fellow-citizens hard-earned wage (as though God ever approves of violations of the Eighth Commandment -- which is blasphemy), let's make this purely a question of Israeli National Sovereignty.
"What is good for the Jews?"
While the socialists of the Israeli Labor Party are always happy to accept a hand-out, the fact remains that "he who pays the piper calls the tune".
As long as you continue to advocate Israeli dependence on US foreign aid monies, you are responsible for making Israeli internal policy the hostage of moral reprobates like Bill Clinton who are perfectly willing to sell Israel down the river for a post-BJ photo op... This is doubly true given the documented pro-Arab, anti-Israel bias of the career flunkies at the US State department regardless of which US Party is in power.
I consider myself a real Zionist. I support an independent Israel, not one whose domestic policies are made the whipping-boy of moral reprobates and Israel-haters by a policy of dependence on foreign cash.
I've matured to the point where I know how to pick my battles. This ain't one of them because it's not worth it.
I no longer debate with ideologues. Point blank.
Zionists should support those policies which favor the Israeli Right.
US Foreign Aid props up the welfare schemes of Israeli Leftist, thus helping to keep these dangerous parties in Power. This is besides the point (which you failed to answer -- no shock) that every time the State Department wants to strong-arm the Israelis into making "concessions" to the terrorist PLO, Israeli dependence on US foreign aid provides a ready crowbar.
Them's the facts.
Mea culpa.
The sum total of US aid to the Arabs is many times that given to Israel and if it were to be reduced the first to complain would be Boeing, Loral, Raytheon and friends.
If memory serves, every major Israeli victory (1948, 1956, 1967, 1970, 1973) was won without substantive US financial aid. Nixon sent some Navy fighter-planes to help out in 1973, but that individual case of military action doesn't justify making Israeli domestic policy a hostage of US foreign aid monies today. US financial aid was only initiated in size in 1979... as an incentive to give up the vast buffer of the Sinai.
Too bad. The Sinai woulda made an okay "Palestinian State". They could've called it "Philistia" or something.
That political support is probably a greater lever than the dollar support.
And in regard to your angst about being taxed - its not for the benefit of Israel but because of the interests of the US itself. The arms race in the Middle East is now being stoked by the US for the sole benefit of the US arms manufacturers - so look at it as subsidy to them to keep the assembly lines moving.
I want the UN out of the US, and the US out of the UN.
That said, I totally support US "political" support of Israel. As I have said above, the Zionists were-and-are Legally in the Right, and the Arab Nationalists were-and-are Legally in the Wrong. And the US should endorse and support those who are in the Right.
Which has little or nothing to do with subsidizing via foreign aid the most dangerous elements of the Israeli political spectrum... the socialist (and nationally-suicidal) Israeli Left.
And in regard to your angst about being taxed - its not for the benefit of Israel but because of the interests of the US itself. The arms race in the Middle East is now being stoked by the US for the sole benefit of the US arms manufacturers - so look at it as subsidy to them to keep the assembly lines moving.
To McDonnell-Douglas, US Air Force money is as green as Israeli money.
Let the US Air Force buy more planes, that's fine by me.
Better-by-far than "stoking an arms race" (thus increasing the number of Guns pointed at Jews, and as you point out thereby increasing Israel's defense burden) for our own "interests".
This misses the entire point of the article. There never, ever was a Palestinian state.
Never.
The PLO is being used here to make Israel weak through land-grabbing. Why should a Palestinian state be made out of Israel's land?
Again, where are the PLO's Muslim brothers and why won't they help them out?
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