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American Aid to Israel: Is It Good For The Jews?
The Texas Mercury ^

Posted on 02/25/2002 2:14:43 PM PST by RCW2001

American Aid to Israel:

Is It Good for the Jews?

 

by Derek Copold

Some years ago a Jewish friend of mine met a man who worked for AIPAC, a political action committee that lobbies on behalf of the State of Israel. Judging by my friend’s reaction to him, I gathered that he was quite the salesman. The AIPAC worker had talked my friend into contributing, and that same friend, knowing my father was Jewish, thought I too might be interested. I wasn’t.

My friend was a bit put out when I declined the oppoturnity, and I felt bad at the time, having brought him down a bit. But the fact of the matter was that I didn’t, and still don’t, care for the idea of Americans lobbying our government for the purpose of sending tax money to a foreign power, even an ostensibly friendly one like Israel.

This is not to imply that my friend bore within him the seeds of disloyalty. Quite the opposite. A Vietnam veteran, he proudly served 12 years in the armed forces. Even if I disagree with his political choice, it doesn’t change the fact that he loves his country through and through.

His evident discomfort, though, raised a question. Are AIPAC and other Israel-boosting organizations in the United States doing any good when they help procure billions and billions of dollars of free aid for the Jewish State? And I ask this, not so much in relation to the United States, but rather to Israel itself, and to Jews in general.

Before answering this question, allow me to also note a twist in this situation. Most of Israel’s supporters in America hail from the political Right. Ironically, many of the people who denounce government money as a corrupting influence will, in almost the same breath, demand that Israel continue to receive her cut. So which is it? Are government subsidies bad, as is claimed for welfare recipients, charities and corporations, or are they good, as is argued for Israel?

The evidence suggests the former. Before the late 1960s, Israel was for the most part a self-sufficient country. Despite being surrounded by hostile forces, she was able to take care of herself without relying on any other power for direct aid. This status changed once she began to accept American aid. As a result of this ‘free’ money’, the Jewish State has become an American dependency. The once proud Zionist nation has been reduced to relying on the charity of Washington.

The number of visits Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has made to Washington in the last year alone attests to Israel’s servile status. Many of Israel’s boosters proudly point to Ariel Sharon’s four White House visits as a sign of favor, an accomplishment. But how can any supposedly independent country take heart in the fact that their leader has been forced to show up at another nation’s doorstep, hat in hand, humbly asking permission to do what it believes it must do to survive?  Far from securing Israel's independence, America's aid has effectively destroyed it.

So much for helping Israel. But what about the Jews in general and American Jews in particular? Is America’s aid to Israel good for the Jews?

Again, the answer is not encouraging. American aid to Israel has been cited as a factor that led to the 9/11 massacre. For the moment, set aside the question of whether this allegation is true or not; simply note that it is there. Note also, that most Jews, understandably, take severe umbrage with it, and have gone to extraordinary lengths to rebut it. Now whether or not they are correct, their efforts, including the often inaccurate cries of anti-Semitism, have raised questions (most of which remain unspoken) amongst their non-Jewish compatriots about whose interests the Jews are really serving.

To be sure, these Jews believe completely and sincerely that the United States’ interests coincide with Israel’s, and though I question their logic, I don’t doubt their loyalty. 

Yet the question is out there, and having that question of ‘dual loyalty’, which is inseparably tied to Israel's American aid, remain out there is deleterious to the Jews. If Israel had never accepted American largesse and remained self-sufficient, no one could have raised this question. Either there would be no terrorism directed against America, as Israel’s critics believe would happen, or if it did, there would be no aid for those critics to blame.

So if this aid is as harmful as I claim it to be, why do Israel and her friends insist on continuing it? For the same reason a heroine addict keeps looking for smack, even after he realizes that it’s killing him. Like that addict, Israel will do everything and anything to maintain a steady supply, and just like any junkie, she will never truly control her own destiny as long as she allows herself to be injected with billions of dollars of American aid.

Unfortunately, her American friends, particularly those on the Right, have suspended their better judgment, and they refuse to address this problem in any kind of an honest manner, preferring instead to revel in alternating emotions of triumphalism and self-pity. Meanwhile, the object of their affections becomes more and more enervated by their 'help.'


TOPICS: Editorial; Extended News; Foreign Affairs
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To: BenF
Nope. I guess I just can't learn from you.

Only in your brighter moments, at any rate, but I already warned you of that. Ah, well; such is life.

Best,
OP

61 posted on 02/27/2002 12:37:27 PM PST by OrthodoxPresbyterian
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To: OrthodoxPresbyterian
Well well, aren't you the preachy one.

I have an idea. You figure out what's good for the Presbyterians, something you might actually know something about, and we'll figure out what's good for the Jews, something we have better handle on. Deal?

62 posted on 02/27/2002 12:43:06 PM PST by veronica
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To: OrthodoxPresbyterian
Only in your brighter moments, at any rate, but I already warned you of that. Ah, well; such is life.

No, that's not it. But I told you that as well.

Best,

Have a nice day.

63 posted on 02/27/2002 12:43:27 PM PST by BenF
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To: BenF
Your debating maneuvers lack logic.
64 posted on 02/27/2002 12:47:39 PM PST by GROUCHOTWO
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To: BenF
Yeah, and when are they going to stop controlling the banks, media, and using the blood of Christians in their matzos?

Ssshhhh... you weren't supposed to tell them that.
:-)

65 posted on 02/27/2002 12:52:06 PM PST by Lurking Libertarian
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To: RCW2001
You must not read the OT:

"American taxpayers shalt not in any way question the billions that come out of their pockets sent to Israel. If thou doest such, thou art pure evil, and will be cast into hell, and shall be eternally damned."

-h, I f--g-t t-- d--h.

66 posted on 02/27/2002 12:54:32 PM PST by spoosman
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To: GROUCHOTWO
I think Ben is doing just fine.

And he has no need to convince us, (or himself) of his 'superiority'. He is secure, in other words. In addition, he is well-mannered. Brought up right, one might say.

67 posted on 02/27/2002 12:54:49 PM PST by veronica
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To: veronica, Demidog
Well well, aren't you the preachy one. I have an idea. You figure out what's good for the Presbyterians, something you might actually know something about, and we'll figure out what's good for the Jews, something we have better handle on. Deal?

Okay. And as a Presbyterian, I'll claim the right to figure out what is good for the country of my citizenship, that country founded in what was called at the time "The Presbyterian Rebellion" (though today, we refer to it as, "The American Revolution").

Hmm. Okay, I have it figured out: Non-Interventionism abroad, and civil liberties at home, are best for America.

Thanks for asking.

Best,
OP

68 posted on 02/27/2002 12:56:05 PM PST by OrthodoxPresbyterian
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To: OrthodoxPresbyterian
That is your opinion and you are certainly entitled to it. (-:
69 posted on 02/27/2002 12:59:11 PM PST by veronica
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To: GROUCHOTWO
No, Groucho. I see a very good logic.
Read again.
70 posted on 02/27/2002 1:06:14 PM PST by CommiesOut
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To: Phil V.;Catspaw
Catspaw is wrong anyway. You cannot Ping banned freepers. The software tells doesn't allow it.
71 posted on 02/27/2002 1:10:25 PM PST by Demidog
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To: veronica
and we'll figure out what's good for the Jews

What qualifies you for that job?

72 posted on 02/27/2002 1:12:17 PM PST by Demidog
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To: Demidog
Gee, Demi--do you think YOU'RE qualified to decide what's good for the Jews?

If so, it'd be the best laugh I'd had all day.

73 posted on 02/27/2002 1:17:12 PM PST by Catspaw
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To: veronica
I so glad you approve of Bennie's upbringing.
This, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Israeli boosters spend an ungodly amount of money trying to influence US elections.
74 posted on 02/27/2002 1:17:32 PM PST by GROUCHOTWO
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To: Catspaw
Gee, Demi--do you think YOU'RE qualified to decide what's good for the Jews?

Nope. But I can offer what I think is constitutionialy sound and this author is quite right in his assesment that American aid to Israel makes Israel subservient to America. If you enjoy that fact then I understand your incessant name-calling of anyone who states the same sort of opinions.

If you do not enjoy that fact, then I have no idea what in the world you are doing as it makes no logical sense.

75 posted on 02/27/2002 1:24:24 PM PST by Demidog
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To: RCW2001
I make no distiction concerning race, creed, ethnicity, sex, or national origin. If a person earns my respect, I give it to them. God help you, however, if you dare go so far as to question the billions of financial aid to Israel!

My position is if it can be shown to me that it is truly in the best interest for the USA to support an ally in the mid-east, whoever it is, I can swallow the money that comes out of my hide to support that. However, I am having a hard time finding one good reason to keep pumping billions of dollars over to Israel. Based upon my reckoning, Israel was an artificial re-creation of post WWII NWO forces. The entire matter is so messy, so convoluded, and so screwed up, I can't go much further.

If the Jews want to make a stand over there, let them stand on their own legs. If God is with them, they do not need the artificial support of the USA. For people that keep score on who God might be for or against, if we measure that support with the potentially very unreliable measure of who is the biggest, wealthiest, strongest and best, I suppose one could get away with saying that God blessed America.

Of course much of that 'blessing' is not at all heavenly, and I would not dare be sanguine in my opinion about what God might be thinking of either myself, or this country at this stage. However, despite all of the volatility over the last 225 years in the USA, I think it is fair to say that there had to be at least one time when one could argue that God did bless America, and that blessing led to a strong, healthy, wealthy nation. All the credit goes to the Providential supply of great minds back in the early days, as well as the industry, frugality, and morality of the general populace. It is oh so tragic when flipping through the history book, we are confronted with pages filled with sorry tales, beginning with the war of 1860.

It is not possible to wipe those blemishes out, and the longer term consequences, some argue, led to the unravelling of the ealier blessing that, perhaps, if we continue in this vein, God gave to the USA in the first place. That is not to say that even in the early days there was not considerable intrigue, and plenty of warts, but when we stand back, and look at the USA from a greater distance, placed in the context of the sordid European history of aristocratic oppression that preceeded the advent of the USA, one could fairly argue that indeed, if there is a God, which the Jews would certaintly say there is, the set of circumstances that needed to coalesce to produce the USA, considering the unprecedented, historically speaking, opportiunity for prosperity it held for those not rich born, and the innumerable blessings that would flow from that, it seems to me that it did take a Greater Hand to give birth to, procure, and secure the blessing.

If anything, what has been happening, slithering in early, circa 1860 (Lincoln?s war on the Constitution), growing and festering into the late 19th century (socialism/atheism), building in the early 20th (fiat banking monopoly 1913), the advent of the socialist democracy (put in place by FDR in 1932), the ascension of globalist politics that led to WWI, WWII, the creation of the UN, and yes the re-created nation of Israel, the cold war, the rise of iron fisted communism in Russia and China, the raping of our gold, the destruction of the value of our money by fiat, the explosive growth of an aggressive govt, an incestuous, homosexualized, immoral culture of stock speculators, the decimation of the constitution by anti-terrorism laws, and the institutialization of denial, fraud and deception, does not constitute evidence of the blessing in which I speak.

However, it is a testament to the strength of the original blessing that our nation still stands, even after the steady corrosion of the forces just mentioned over the last 140 years or so, forces that have exponentially mushroomed out of control in the last 40 years or so, and acutely in the last 10, forces I will call anti-blessing forces. Nonetheless, despite the anti-blessing forces, if there is a God, and God did bless America (which I believe he did), wow, for the strength of that blessing to withstand 140 years of every conceivable blow to destory it is amazing indeed.

In all this time, America's good, industrious people of all stripes, but primarily Christian, never relied on foriegn aid, with the exception of the money that John Adams borrowed from bankers in Amsterdam, and money Franklin got from France, to help in the Providentially Determined and Great Cause to help separate the USA from England. Those debts have long since been paid off. We got that money in 1780 or so, and the bills were paid by 1810 or so. That was a fixed loan agreement, paid in full over about 30 years. There is more to it than that, but that is the basic story.

So the point is, in this God blessed scenario, we did not receive any foriegn aid except for the war effort at the time of the war effort, and the bills once paid, never came back. From there, in this God blessed scenario, the USA became the most productive nation on earth, fully unencumbered from all the cultural hogwash of every other part of the world. People could live free, be productive, enjoy the fruit of the land, they were self governed vis a vis a fabulous constitution, they had a general respect for the principles of morality, a respect for the law, the desire to be free, healthy, wealthy and happy. That my friend is a great combination for success.

As I indicated, oh the sad tale of the slippery slope, but we got onto that slope starting, at least by my reckoning, in 1860. Still, all this time the USA has received aid from NOBODY!!!! Why? Because the people were GREAT!!! They were INNOVATORS, INVENTORS, PRODUCERS!!!!! Every other continent on the planet has the same soil, same water, same air, same minerals, same sun, stars, and moon above. But America was better because the people THOUGHT differently, and because they THOUGHT differently, they prospered greatly. And lots of these folks with the GREAT IDEAS were CHRISTIANS. They might not have been bible thumpers. They might have been sinning too much. They might have been hypocrites, but they were at the worst case Christian, and many were truly good at being Christian. The greatest industrialist of all time, John D. Rockefeller Sr. was a Christian, and a good one at that (his sons, grandsons, and his brother, etc, were all a bunch of snakes, but that is a different story).

So the point is, America was blessed because people were free to pursue the blessing, and did not have cultural hang ups about prosperity, nor the undue interference of the govt. As I have stated, things have made a disasterous turn for the worse, but amazingly we hang in there, receiving aid from NOBODY!!!!

America GIVES the aid!!! Now, we can debate when aid is good or bad, as I am always negative about aid given for phony trouble causing globalist causes. But the point is, if America, who at one time placed her trust in God, could be so prosperous, and stand on her own two feet all these years, even while getting lashed by the forces of anti-blessing for over the last 140 years, America who at her genesis was advertised to the world as a CHRISTIAN nation, why then should the Jews think that they cannot do the same with Israel?

After all, the Jews will be the first to trash talk Jesus and Christianity -- OK, not all, but plenty. Look, their belief is built upon the rejection of Jesus as Messiah. OK, fine. So then, hey, according to the Jews, we Christians are completely out of it. We do not have the right God. We are the ones in darkness, guilty of a great heresy. THEY are the ones who know the true God!!

Fine. If our heresy and false God opened the door to such immense blessing, despite the relentless attacks against the foundation of that blessing, surely then the Jews? God, the, to them, real God, should be able to do as least as much, if not so much more, right?

Then why should Israel keep picking our pockets? $5 billion per year, year in, year out, no questions asked. You know, if the Jews would humble themselves and admit they were wrong about Jesus, I might feel sorry enough for them to help them hold on to the postage stamp lot they call Israel. The Jews in their pride and arrogance trash talk Christianity and Christians. Certain -- some, not all -- of their race use their position through the media, and movies, etc, to debase the Christian culture, their politicians advance anti-Christian causes, such as homosexuality and abortion, and certain of their race are intimately connected with the fiat banking scam which is going to suck the assests of Americans dry someday, and in the meantime makes us slaves to inflation.

Yet, these people have the nerve, after what they do and say, to turn around and ask for $5 billion?

But there is an ocean full of Christians in this modern age who blindly support Israel at any cost for any reason, based on a flimsy read of the bible. Look, I am a Christian, and I read the same verses. I know that Jesus has some sort of special dispensation for certain Jews. That is all fine and good. But it does not say in the bible that includes a NWO rigged re-created state of Israel that we have to pay 5 Bs for each year. And look at the trouble is causes.

If there were going to be fanatic muslims doing bad things in the world, we'd have a more clear cut case if Israel and the Jews were not existing in the middle east. Look, if the Jews want to trust in God as we in America did, and stand on their own, and make their own way, and they succeed in developing a good relationship with their neighbors, great. But this is not at all how it is working out. Instead, American support of israel is just another sorry excuse for radical muslims to attack America, and another way the global aristocrats can keep manipulating everything to keep us out of the loop of whatever it is the heck they are up to.

In the event Israel tried to stand on its own and failed, America is always the land of the free, and I would welcome the Israelis with open arms. Of course, that means (to them) their God let them down, but the Christian God did not. Just because we are talking about Jews we don?t have to make stupid economic and foriegn policy decisions.

76 posted on 02/27/2002 1:45:44 PM PST by spoosman
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To: GROUCHOTWO
As so many point out here, Bush (last time around) did not get that many Jewish votes. Yet he won. So much for the 'power' of the 'Israeli Lobby' (so-called.) There is no group in America that does not advocate for it's cause. From the Catholic League to CAIR to Cuban-Americans, it's what's done. And by the way American Jews are not a monolith. On the Left you have the ADL, which supported Gore, on the Right you have Americans for a Safe Israel, which supported Bush. The Forward is Liberal, The Jewish Press is Conservative.

In addtion, it is absurd to believe American support for Israel is only the result of pressure or lobbying. It has much more to do with shared values, etc.

Americans are aware, more than ever (see the Gallup poll just out yesterday) that many Muslims do not like America, do not like Bush, think Arabs did not perpetrate 9-11 (LOL) but that Israelis love America.

77 posted on 02/27/2002 1:49:12 PM PST by veronica
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To: veronica
You are being entirely too modest about your Israeli Lobby.

There is absolutely no other advocate group in this country that reaps such monetary and political benefits.
As you mentioned, this has been achieved by trying to control both sides of the so-called Left-Right spectrum.

78 posted on 02/27/2002 2:05:06 PM PST by GROUCHOTWO
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To: OrthodoxPresbyterian
Okay, I have it figured out: Non-Interventionism abroad

Unfortunately, because of the continuing proliferation of WMD across the globe, this is probably not a viable solution to insure the safety of this country in the long run. I should also point out that foreign aid has always been part of a policy to stabilize regional conflicts.

In the Arab-Israeli conflict, with the two likely outcomes of Arabs destroying Israel or Israel nuking its neighbors, a little financial aid is a perfectly reasonable solution. Right now we have sufficient power and money to offer to strongly influence the stability of this conflict.

79 posted on 02/27/2002 2:26:20 PM PST by UberVernunft
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To: CommiesOut; BenF
What a poor reader I am.

As I read bennie's stuff, I was totally diverted by his bizarre assertions about Christian blood in matzos(how weird can he get!)and didn't realize how well he validated my claims.

80 posted on 02/27/2002 3:09:03 PM PST by GROUCHOTWO
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