Doubt satanic control?--Dems and Reps agree: cuts for poor, increased aid for kike scum in Israel

Apollonian

Guest Columnist
Republicans and Democrats Agree: Cut Aid to the Poor, Not Israel

by MEDEA BENJAMIN And CHARLES DAVIS

Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/03/03/cut-aid-to-the-poor-not-israel/

With the U.S. economy in the tank and governments at all levels facing massive budget shortfalls, politicians left and right are seeking ways to curb spending. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker wants to eliminate collective bargaining rights and the decent pay that goes with them. President Barack Obama’s budget includes halving the home-heating oil subsidy poor households depend on.

As Republicans and Democrats propose cuts in programs that actually benefit their increasingly impoverished constituents, though, they agree there’s one area of the budget that’s not to be touched: the annual $3 billion subsidy U.S. taxpayers provide to the Israeli military.

One of the biggest defenders of the handout is House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. "There will be no cuts to security assistance to the Jewish State of Israel," her chief of staff declared in a recent letter to House Republicans. The rest of the U.S. foreign aid budget, including assistance for Iraqi refugees and food aid to the world’s poorest people, is fair game. But the Florida congresswoman insists we must help Israel maintain its "Qualitative Military Edge."

And congressional Democrats have her back.

Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, for instance – a leading member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus – has drafted a letter, cosigned by California Democrat Anna Eshoo, warning that the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia "have the potential to add to the very real security challenges faced by Israel." Reducing or "otherwise endangering aid to our ally" would be "unproductive," she adds, encouraging her colleagues to tell Obama they "strongly support … providing $3.075 billion in assistance to Israel." (For those shivering at home, that’s more assistance than Obama is proposing to offer Americans trying to keep their houses warm.)

This liberal appeal for Israeli military aid, meanwhile, is being sent out under the auspices of J Street, a group that positions itself as a left-leaning answer to AIPAC. But J Street staff we spoke with at their recent conference were hard-pressed to explain why U.S. taxpayers should fund a right-wing Israeli government that continues to build settlements and maintains an inhumane siege of Gaza.

So it’s left to folks like libertarian Congressman Ron Paul and his son, Kentucky Senator and Tea Party favorite Rand Paul, to call for ending aid to Israel. In a February 4 interview with ABC News, Rand Paul said of Israel, "I think that their per capita income is greater than probably three-fourths of the rest of the world. Should we be giving free money or welfare to a wealthy nation? I don’t think so."

Indeed, Israel has the 24th largest economy in the world, and ranks 15th among 169 nations on the UN Human Development Index, which makes it a "very highly developed" nation.

Yet what thanks did Senator Paul get for his call to save the U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars? A torrent of criticism, even from J Street, which called on Republicans – and their donors – "to repudiate his comments and ensure American leadership around the world is not threatened by this irresponsible proposal."

Paul’s fellowTea Partiers aren’t any better. Of the 87 freshmen House Republicans elected on platforms of cut-baby-cut, at least three-fourths have now signed a letter declaring that, "As Israel faces threats from escalating instability in Egypt" – where have we heard that line of argument before? – "security assistance to Israel … has never been more important." Subsidies are for militaries, you see, not poor people.

But even without U.S. funding, Israel would still spend $11 billion-plus on its military, more than all but 20 other nations in the world spend on their armed forced – and hundreds of millions of dollars more than the Islamic Republic of Iran, despite having just 1/10th the population. Throw in a couple – as in, couple hundred – little things called nuclear weapons, and, for better or worse, the Jewish state’s "Qualitative Military Advantage" isn’t going anywhere.

But you wouldn’t know that listening to the folks at J Street or to liberals like Jan Schakowsky, who hysterically cite the specter of Arab democracy to advocate billions in subsidies for a government that openly flouts international law. So much for their concern about human rights. And so much for being progressive. Indeed, with liberals like these, the Netanyahu government and its allies at AIPAC are likely asking themselves: who needs the Tea Party?

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange.

Charles Davis is a journalist.
 
Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Office Scolded Ashli Babbitt’s Grieving Mother, ‘Your Daughter Should Not Have Stormed the Capitol’

Link: https://postnewsd2.blogspot.com/2021/08/sen-dianne-feinsteins-office-scolded.html

Display at funeral service for Ashli Babbitt, February 21, 2021, photo by Taylor Hansen

The grieving mother of Ashli Babbitt has revealed that an aide to Senator Dianne Feinstein scolded her saying, “your daughter should not have stormed the Capitol,” when she called in an attempt to get more information about her death.

Babbitt’s mother, Micki Witthoeft detailed her awful experience with Feinstein’s office during an interview with Dinesh D’Souza this week.

Witthoeft said that the first time she called the office, the staffer who answered pretended not to know who Babbitt was.

The next time she called, the aide scolded her for her daughter’s actions and snapped, “Dianne Feinstein will never have two minutes for you.”

“Dianne Feinstein’s people were just awful,” Witthoeft said.
 
Seeking to establish 'Greater Israel', US Republicans prohibit creation of Palestinian State

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57095.htm

By MEMO

June 27, 2022: Information Clearing House -- In further signs that support for Israel has morphed into a religious extremist position, Bible-thumping, far-right American voters within the Texas Republican Party have approved a platform that will make it illegal to create a Palestinian State in territories controlled by the apartheid state.

The platform, approved by 5,100 delegates in Houston on Saturday, supports the "prohibition of a Palestinian State within the historical borders of Israel, as it would jeopardise Israel's security and it would force Israel to give up land that God gave to the Jewish people as referenced in Genesis."

Going beyond all previous anti-Palestinian positions ever adopted by an American party, the GOP platform approved the creation of what is often referred to as "Greater Israel," which will see Israel expand ethno-nationalist Jewish domination to every inch of Historic Palestine.

After decades of ethnic cleansing, artificial re-drawing of borders and population control based on who is and is not Jewish, Israel has managed to wrestle total control of the territory from the West of River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. Currently, as many as 12 million people reside in Historic Palestine, but full rights are granted by the occupation state to Jews only.

The remaining six million non-Jews are subjected to various forms of racial discrimination, depending on their place of residence. While non-Jews are denied full equality with Jews wherever they live, the 1.8 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, for example, have more rights than Palestinians in every other zone of Israeli control.

Though they face various forms of racial discrimination, Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem are granted relatively better status than Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, where the native population has been caged into an "open air prison".

Also, a racist policy enshrined in Israeli law denies some six million Palestinian refugees the right to return to the territory from which they were expelled only a few decades ago. The same law, however, permits every Jew across the world to "return" and settle in any part of Palestine, despite not having any direct connection to the land, other than Biblical claims mentioned in the Genesis.

Such practices, including the racial fragmentation of Palestine into zones of control where half the population enjoys full rights of citizenship denied to the non-Jewish half, every major human rights group has labelled Israel an apartheid state.

As of 2019, 138 of the 193 UN member states have recognised the State of Palestine. Moreover, every UN member, including the US and European countries, are ostensibly committed to the creation of a fully sovereign Palestinian State. Nevertheless, every major Israeli party explicitly rejects the international consensus and now have found strong support for their radical position from the Texas Republican party in foreclosing any chance of a Palestinian State from ever being established.

Though party platforms do not necessarily translate into government policy, critics cite the former US President Donald Trump and the support enjoyed by Israel amongst powerful Evangelical Christians as well as fringe elements in US society, to argue that the most extreme and rejectionist views about the apartheid state have become normalised in US politics.

Amongst the other policies adopted by the pro-Israel Texas constituency is a proposal to hold a referendum on seceding from the US; a rejection of Joe Biden's presidency; calls for the repeal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed Black voters representation.
 
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