Posted on 06/27/2012 10:11:19 AM PDT by forty_years
Just several weeks ago, a conglomerate of anti-Israel activists known as the "Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel" was "thrilled" when 23 Los Angeles area billboards featuring their message of, "Tell Congress: Spend our Money at Home, Not on the Israeli Military," pictured over the image of an American flag were erected. Just one week later, the billboard operator, CBS Outdoor, (a subsidiary of the CBS Corporation) removed the billboards on the grounds that the Stop $30 Billion to Israel organization had used the CBS name without permission in their organizational e-mails and in their petition thanking CBS for putting up the billboards.
[Ed note: Contact CBS Outdoor and applaud their decision to refuse to support virulent, anti-Israel propaganda. Send an email or call 800.926.8834.]
According to their web site's mission statement, the Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel, "advocates an end to the ten year commitment of $30 billion in U.S. taxpayer-funded military aid pledged to Israel in 2007 by the Bush administration. We also oppose Israel's ongoing occupation and control over Palestinian Territories -- East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip."
Among those political offshoots that lend their name and support to the nefarious agenda of the Coalition to Stop $30 Billiion to Israel are: Amnesty International Chapter 101, Albuquerque; Another Jewish Voice - Albuquerque; Another Jewish Voice - Santa Fe (AJVSF); Irish Freedom Committee; Middle East Peace and Justice Alliance; Muslim Women Outreach; The Social Concerns Committee of the Albuquerque Unitarian Universalist Fellowship; the New Mexico People's Weekly Forum; the Pax Christi Saint Bernadette (Albuquerque); Stop The War Machine; the United Nations Association, Albuquerque Chapter; and, Veterans For Peace in Santa Fe and Albuquerque (VFPA).
Having orchestrated billboard campaigns of this nature in several other American cities to spread its vehemently anti-Israel message, the Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel entered the Los Angeles market on June 11th, with billboards scheduled to run for four weeks, and more to follow. Through its literature and fundraising appeals the Coalition overtly implied that CBS Outdoor supported its anti-Israel cause. In their online petition, the Coalition stated, "By contracting with the grassroots, nonprofit Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel, this billboard company is demonstrating its support for the basic American tradition of free speech."
Responding almost immediately, CBS Outdoor, removed the billboards only a week after they were put up, while informing the Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel in a curt note that their money would be refunded, as they had used the CBS Outdoor name without permission. The Coalition asserts that the billboards were dropped because of pressure from pro-Israel groups; not because it crossed red lines by implying that CBS Outdoor supports its cause. They have now embarked on a campaign calling for its supporters to deluge CBS Outdoor with phone calls and e-mails demanding that the billboards go back up.
"These kinds of factual distortions characterize the anti-Israel campaigners", said Roz Rothstein, CEO of Stand With Us, a pro-Israel advocacy organization based in Los Angeles. "They misrepresent facts about Israel and mislead the public about who supports their movement, as they did with CBS Outdoor. Why? Probably because they hope to persuade well-meaning people that their cause is respectable and mainstream, when in fact it is a fringe, extremist movement that seeks to harm the U.S. and one of our most valuable allies, Israel. They can't make that case without distorting the facts," she added.
Countering the anti-Israel billboard campaign over the last several years with use of their own ads, Stand With Us has responded to the inflammatory, anti-Israel canards of the Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel in such cities as Washington, DC, Albuquerque, Houston, Chicago, New York, Seattle and San Francisco.
In the coming months, Stand With Us will be erecting 23 of their own pro-Israel billboards throughout the Los Angeles area.
30 Billion to Israel....money to Egypt, money to Iraq and Afghanistan....it’s only money folks....It is insane that anyone is getting money right now with our problems with the debt....I guess I better go home and write out some checks to other people and not worry about the credit cards this month....Sometimes I wonder how we lasted this long. I would stop EVERY dollar going out of our country until our debt was ZERO....I am sure some of you big government types think that is just awful, but I don’t give a dang what you think.....It is the smart and prudent thing to cut all aid everywhere at this time.
Why would anyone on this forum want to send them an impolite note in this matter?
Ever since Carter the U.S. has given Egypt an average of 2 billion dollars a year.
Cut there first.
I don’t think that note to CBS Outdoor should be too polite.
First of all, they were aware of the content and allowed it anyway. But even more telling was that they *refunded* the money to the organization after giving them a free week of antisemitic propaganda. Which is a backdoor way of giving a contribution to a “cause”. (The ‘loss’ to CBS Outdoor is tax deductible.)
Having suffered no penalty, the organization now has enough money to buy billboards in other cities. The acid test will be to find out if *those* ads are also put on CBS Outdoor billboards. If they are, then this is a total scam and CBS Outdoor was in it from the start.
Arguably, discontinuing some of these programs would cost us much more money in the long run.
The vast majority of our national debt comes from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlements that cost trillions each year - as well as a defense budget that is highly inefficient in its cost allocations.
Who is the "big government type"?
The guy who wants entitlement reform in order to save trillions and thinks it makes sense to buy intelligence on the Middle East from Israel for $3B instead of spending upwards of $10B trying to replicate that capability from scratch using the CIA?
Or the guy complaining about $3B per year to Israel - which is basically a money-saving outsourcing of intelligence-gathering - and saying nothing about $9T per year of entitlement programs which easily contain more than $1T lost sheerly through fraud and mismanagement?
Ever since Carter the U.S. has given Egypt an average of 2 billion dollars a year.
Cut there first.
***
Right now, the military in Egypt is all that is holding the “Muslim Brotherhood” at bay.
Unless, the military does not care, and WANTS them in power.
In which case, yeah, cut them off.
Cutting aid programs, which are a tiny fraction of our national budget, would make no noticeable dent in our national debt.
Exactly, we live in an international economy and society. The time for isolationism is long past. We should me more choosey about giving aid (like to Egypt or the PA), but cutting aid would do more harm than good. Most U.S. tech and med tech giants are invested in Israel.
Wanna cut the budget? Try cutting borrowing on buying votes with short-term jobs. Try cutting corp welfare. Try cutting all the pet bridges-to-nowhere "programs." Put an end to govt support for all the invented, PC "ailments" like Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Promote people forming health insurance co-ops. Stop building $30 million "courthouses," like the one in my adjacent county. Put a stop to illegal immigration. Stop propping up corp crooks like Jamie Diamond... (the list goes on)...
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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But that’s supported piece and demoncracy.
Thanks forty_years.
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