Debate over US aid to Israel

[Resistance]

AlJazeera.Net

US money will help Israel buy up 102 F16i fighters in January

A combination of grants and loans, since 1949, makes Israel the largest recipient of US economic assistance since World War II.

But despite a recent decision by the Bush administration to reduce a $9 billion loan guarantee package by $290 million, few foreign policy experts in Washington foresee a diminution in support anytime soon.

Yet, both the US House of Representatives and the Senate approved $2.16 billion in military aid for Israel next year.

A major reason for this, Rosenberg said, is that the United States wants to ensure that Israel will continue to be the most effective military power in the Middle East for years to come.

[DuctapeFatwa]

1. Dean has pledged to give sharon more than bush does

I do not support any of the candidates, nor am I in favor of utilizing Israel as a pitbull-cum-arms depot, but the policy is extremely popular with both the population reduction industry and Christian Rapturists, so it was actually pretty clever of Dean to take this tack. He has raised a lot of money!
---------
"...the former Vermont governor declared that, while the United States should become more engaged, he did not have any fundamental objections with President George W. Bush’s policies...

When asked by the Jewish newspaper Forward late last year as to whether he supported APN’s perspective, Governor Dean replied "No, my view is closer to AIPAC's view."..

He also rejects calls by APN and other liberal Zionist groups that Israel’s requested $12 billion loan guarantee be linked to an Israeli freeze on constructing additional illegal settlements on confiscated Palestinian land, arguing that such aid should instead be unconditional...

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0226-04.htm

[bemildred]

2. I don't know what Mr. Dean thinks about this, but

if I were he in his present situation I would lie all day
long as often as necessary to avoid having anything to do
with the I/P situation. There is no way it can do him any
good and many ways it can do him harm. By far the safest
course is to be a complete nebbish on it. I realize that
this is a morally vacuous approach, but moralists rarely get
elected as President, and when they do they mostly are bad
at it. Mr. Bush is a perfect example.

If he should become President, and then follows in the realpolitik
footprints of his predecessors on this issue I will join you in
calling him names, but not until then.

[DuctapeFatwa]

4. Since he went to Israel to personally assure sharon of his support

it is reasonable to assume that this is an issue that he feels very strongly about, and since his fundraising has enjoyed such remarkable success since his trip, and his popularity has skyrocketed, it would appear that most voters agree that bush has fallen short in his support of sharon's policies.

[bemildred]

5. I think we must disagree here.

Giving Sharon the warm puppy feeling was important to defuse
the bullshit-storm after he used the dreaded code words "even-
handed". His fund raising has always been excellent. I doubt
that his skyrocketing popularity has anything to do with this
issue. I doubt that the voters agree about much of anything at
this point except perhaps that they would like to hear a bit
more about the Michael Jackson case.

[DuctapeFatwa]

6. LOL Maybe Dean should issue a statement condemning

the unconscienceable amount of news coverage being accorded to stories that have nothing to do with Michael Jackson ;)

[Gimel]

3. With few exceptions

Foreign policy is non-partisan. Since Congress deterimines the level of foreign aid, this seems to be largely out of the President's hands, anyway.

[Gimel]

7. Guess most

Americans really do support Israel after all.

[bluesoul]

8. Luckily that is not the case

elsewhere with the unconditional support...

[DuctapeFatwa]

10. Most politicians and the affluent voting class support using it

as a weapons depot and convenient haven for corporate warlords and population reduction industry gangsters, and exploiting it for the purposes of seizing natural resources in the region.

The notion of an independent, peaceful, law-abiding and respectable place for ordinary Israelis to live in is supported by very few Americans with money.

[Gimel]

11. "Voting Class"?

What is the "voting class" and do you have any links that are reliable as to that distinction?

[DuctapeFatwa]

12. I am sure you are aware that

Roughly half of those technically eligible vote, and roughly half of those registered vote. Those who vote are generally in the top 25% income tier.

Polls are open for 12 hours on one working day. Low-paying jobs are seldom located near low-income neighborhoods. Voting is a practical option for those with private transportation and/or schedule flexibility/short commute.

The "2 hours off to vote," even when granted to low wage earners, is of limited utility to those whose commute from home to work exceeds 2 or 3 hours one way.

Those with information skills and resources necessary can obtain absentee ballots. The next time you are speaking with a single mom who makes $6 cleaning hotel rooms, be sure to ask her if she has arranged for her absentee ballot.

If the bottom 75% ever did vote, what you would have would be essentially a revolution, and would not be in the interests of politicians of either party, nor the corporate interests that make their campaigns and careers possible.

[Gimel]

13. Interesting theory

But I don't buy it. What about the unemployed or stay-at-home Mom's? They don't have time to vote either? Most workers work 8-9 hours a day, tops. Where do you get the 12 hour figure for working class?

What about the phone survey presented on a recent thread:

A Boston-based research firm interviewed 1,200 American adults by phone earlier this month for the ADL. The survey's margin of error was 4 percentage points. The poll was presented during a national security conference in Herzliya attended by Israeli leaders and world figures.

The poll showed about 40 percent of Americans sympathize primarily with Israel in the Mideast conflict, compared to just 15 percent that sympathize with Palestinians, numbers Foxman said have remained consistent since 1991.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/12/17/international1721EST0715.DTL&type=printable

Does that just include the "voting class" in your opinion?

[DuctapeFatwa]

14. It is not a theory, it is the way it has been for quite some time

And you will not see any candidate, or incumbent, for that matter, mounting any aggressive campaigns to change it.

In the last few years alone, the gap between rich and poor grew by 71%, according to the regime's own figures.

The average apartment now costs almost 4 times the minimum wage, again, all this stuff is the gov's figures. You can easily find people who work with social service agencies who will show you numbers that indicate the gov is minimizing the case.

I believe that you can safely assume that if the poor did vote in large numbers, spending so many billions on weapons, regardless of whether stored in New Jersey or the Negev, would not enjoy the same popularity with people who are hoping to avoid eviction and buy food as it does with the 401K bunch.

[The Magistrate]

16. That Does Not Seem To Be The Case, Sir

It would be nice if it were.

Reflexive patriotism, and willingness to support military action by the country, are stronger among those with less education, and hence lower income, than amomng the better educated and more prosperous.

There is not much reason to believe that people who habitually do not vote feel much differently about such questions than those who do.

[DuctapeFatwa]

17. I assume you are referring to the Nascar dads who can't

afford health care yet explode with indignation if someone suggests "socialized medicine."

That is indeed a phenomenon, and one that pundits have whiled away more than one afternoon exercising their dusty psych minors in analyzing.

However, the NASCAR dad, although some of his brethren may fall into the bottom 75, is to be found dotting the top 25 more thickly than you might suspect. He does have the discretionary resources for those NASCAR tickets, after all.

The bottom 75 consists mostly of women in situations where the fathers of their children have elected not to participate in the financial aspect of the family.

Many of them may be less well-read than you on events in the Levant for the past 80 years or so, and you may be correct that if the question is presented to them in the customary biblical rapturist terms that they will indeed express themselves as "supporting Israel," however if they did vote in large numbers, any politician who did not pledge - and deliver - a Right to Housing and a Living Wage, AND "socialized medicine," would find himself plopped promptly and unceremoniously into the dungeon of McKinneyland, even more swiftly and surely than a politician would today were he so foolish as to suggest that your tax dollars would be better spent in feeding American children than slaughtering Palestinian ones.

[The Magistrate]

18. The Problem, My Friend, Goes Beyond That Current Pop Demographic

It is true that the phenomenom is not well understood, particularly on the left. There are two reasons for this. First, people on the left are by definition materialists of a sort, and are used to judging things by concepts such as class interest, and its personal reflections. Second, persons on the left also by definition have somewhat weaned themselves from such things as nationalism and patriotism and religiousity, and in general feel themselves to be somewhat outside the nations and cultures they are born into. This makes it somewhat difficult for persons on the left to understand people acting against their immediate material interests in response to the promptings of group identity based on familiar totems.

There are literally millions of people who routinely vote against their own immediate self-interest, in terms of economic or other material concerns, because they feel doing so is the right thing to do, in terms of patriotism or religious conviction. They do not do this because they are duped and unaware they are acting against their own immediate interests; they are aware of it, and get a positive thrill of virtue when they do so, because they feel they are thereby being loyal to something greater than themselves, and that is a thing they value above any mere material gain. They are doing what they feel to be best for the group they identify with, the nation, or the faith, and feel it only right to disregard themselves somewhat in serving that larger interest. It is not a sentiment to be sneered at; such sentiments are the basis of human society, even, perhaps especially, of any collective society.

People like this are the common run in the south and west of our country, where the incomes on average are the lowest, and where the reactionary right enjoys genuine mass support. These people gain a great portion of their own sense of self-worth from identification with the country, which they conceive to be the greatest thing in the world, and contemplation of their unity with it is a leading source of solace against their troubles. They gain this by sacrificing for it, just as anything of worth is obtained. They are particularly resistant to criticism of the country, for they perceive it as criticism of themselves, which is a thing few people take kindly to. It does no good to point out evils and flaws about the land to them; it only convinces them you are not one of them, not part of the country, and dangerous to it, which means dangerous to them. You are not a benefactor but a tempter, and to reject you is one more opportunity offered to cement even further their identification with the country they value so, since in many ways, their lives really are shabby and poor, and require that anodyn to be endured.

[DuctapeFatwa]

20. I think you are still there with the NASCAR dads, and a certain segment

of the rural poor.

The gap has become SO wide that the majority of the affluent not only do not comprehend the reality of the poor - they do not even believe they exist!

There was a good piece in Business Week a while ago, about the phasing out of upward mobility.

Your observations have to do with that segment of the poor who still believe in upward mobility, not with those masses who have never had that illusion, whose ingrained value is not getting ahead, but getting over, because what may be news to Business Week has been common knowledge in their world for generations - getting ahead is, to phrase it as politely as possible - not going to happen.

The closer peoples' definition of "material gain" gets to "surviving until tomorrow," psychological niceties of all kinds, whether the desire to be part of the ruling group, or an ethical aversion to relieving you of your wallet, tend to fade.

As we see in Palestine, once my chances of survival have reached the critical point of being no greater whether I do what you want or not, you no longer have anything with which to negotiate.

In the US, the free market price of a day's labor has now fallen below the free market price of a day's survival.

One could easily argue that "How the poor would vote if they were allowed to" is something of an academic discussion, as the likelihood of a political solution has dwindled from unlikely to slim, and is now holding steady at none.

[The Magistrate]

25. Perhaps So, My Friend

There is certainly something to what you say.

But it is not wise to underestimate the power of illusion in human affairs. It seems questionable to me whether there has ever been, in this country, a great mass of people who do not operate under the illusion of "getting ahead", at least in early portions of their lives. That illusion becomes less realisticly sustainable, of course, as life and defeat goes on, but in many people, this simply operates to tighten the grip of the illusion, rather than to force its discard.

That there is a growing gap between the affluent and the poor is certainly true, and potentially disasterous for the country. Though we would phrase it differently from our differing perspectives, we are probably in rough agreement that the wider this gap, the less sustainable any system conducive to human liberty becomes. The accumulation and concentration of capital wealth has been an engine of much that is good, but any behavior, pushed without restraint to its most extreme operation, will destroy itself, just as the unrestrained multiplication of bacteria in a petri dish will eventually render it a toxic environment in which the organism can no longer thrive.

[Muddleoftheroad]

9. Good news, I agree

"he United States wants to ensure that Israel will continue to be the most effective military power in the Middle East for years to come."

[Resistance]

15. in other words

the U.S. needs an offshore military base in order to maintain its dominance over the oil-rich Middle East

[Gimel]

19. Quite off-topic

This is not a restatement of the point made. Israel is not an arm of the US military, and no US military are based in Israel or off-shore. Why should Israel agree to be the guardian of US oil concerns?

[DuctapeFatwa]

21. LOL That is why Israel was created and why the US gives it money

There is no need to station actual troops there (other than the obligatory CIA "operatives") just stuff it fat with every weapon imaginable, and make sure it understands that the well-being of its citizens is under no circumstances to take precedence over US business interests, which include maintaining a certain level of armed conflict, in order to generate additional revenues for the population reduction industry, the longtime companion and fave bitch of American petrolpimpz.

[Gimel]

22. They have oil

Israel has water. No need to squabble about it, children.

[Muddleoftheroad]

23. That is not why Israel was created

To claim so is to make a very unique interpretation of history that is well documented and shows nothing of the sort.

[Darranar]

24. Here, I think you're right, Muddle...

US involvement in the creation of Israel was based on Cold War interests. Both the US and the Soviet Union voted for the GA resolution, and both quickly recognized Israel. Israeli relations with the Soviet Union were considerable; the Israeli Communist Party was a considerable force then. The US naturally attempted to counter this, hence Truman's quick recognition of Israel and the US vote for Partition.

When Egypt's relations with the Soviets increased, so did Israel's with the Americans. This was the origin of the current relationship between the US and Israel. Israel was, for some of those years, a guardian for US interests in the Middle East, since the militarily powerful Arab nations were for the most part close to the Soviets.

Oil really comes into play in the current situation, not the original creation of the state.

[DuctapeFatwa]

26. I know we disagree on this, and I understand it is is a painful thing

for many people who emigrated to Israel for personal and emotional reasons that had nothing to do with stuffing the pockets of American businessmen.

And please note that I do not say that Israel is the only country used in this way - the entire Middle East is - go read the history of Anglo-American adventurism in the region, all the way back to the merry old days of the Gertrude n' Lawrence show, how the "house of Saud" came into being, and the tragic deterioration of the Hashemites - and yet, at the end of the day, the only thing you are left with is one more sad, sorry chapter of European colonization.

Whether we agree on when it started or not, I am glad that we can agree that the Israeli people deserve better than what they have now. :)

[Resistance]

27. This is the debate:

Should we support an army that murders young peace activists in cold blood?

[meti57b]

28. No, we should not. But then that doesn't enter into this situation because

Israel's army does not murder peace activists.

[Resistance]

29. That is incorrect.

They murdered Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall (with a third attempt on the life of Brian Avery); and all these persons are/were peace activists.

Therefore, we can without doubt conclude that indeed the Israeli army does murder peace activists.