The Cash-Cow Called Israel

Many people go on autopilot when it comes to religion or politics. So here are some empirical facts. Israel is a country that has government-sponsored terrorism, and the US supports it. They are a country with racially segregated settlements on land that is taken by force. Civilian Palestinians are shot and their homes are bulldozed. Israel is expanding its territory in the name of ‘defense’ through “Jew only” settlements, which the US helps to subsidize. Why does the US support this? Because Israel is a cash-cow for the American military industrial-complex which earmarks ‘aid’ to be recycled on the defense industry which US politicians profit from through equity firms such as the Carlyle group for whom former president Bush is a spokesperson.

A third of all US aid goes to Israel more than to any other nation and seven times as much as to the entire continent of Africa! Even when nearly all fifty states, have climbing deficits the federal government sends 10-15 million dollars a day to Israel. With the exception of Presbyterians, who recently divested from Israel 7 billion dollars, other Christian churches are forking over billions to Israel. Whose interest is their priority America’s or Israel’s?

The source of the conflict in Israel is on the surface religious but in reality, it is economic. The Zionists want more land and resources for their ‘chosen people’ the problem is there are people already living there. The third rate citizen Palestinians who are treated like animals have their property and lives taken away by the Israel government. In an unfortunate backlash Palestinians are committing acts of violence against the Israeli military and the settlers much like the American Indians fought the frontier in the equally absurd expansion of Manifest Density into Indian land which was one of history’s greatest holocaust. Tragically, innocent people are also killed by the suicide bombings, but it in no way justifies the systematic ethnic cleansings by the IDF.

The worst victims in this affair are the children of the 989 Jews and 3,354 Palestinians killed, 114 Jewish and 649 Palestinian were children. In just the last weeks raid in the Gaza strip 37 Palestinian civilians were killed and 23 were children. How would you behave if your child was shot to make room for other people to occupy your territory? The idea of a Jewish state is as ridiculous as an Aryan state. I will have to agree with Einstien " I would much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state."- Ideas and Opinions, [Crown Publishers, New York, 1954], p. 190
As someone that actually went to the PSM, I can say it was a positive experience and atmosphere comprised of Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Atheists. The focus of the event was divestment from the companies who abet crimes against humanity. Most of these crimes occur in Israel however companies like Caterpillar and GE have exploited labor and variety of other human rights violations stretching from South America to Southeast Asia. As Americans we cannot set the laws of other countries be it labor or environmental laws, but we can determine whether or not we support them financially. This was the purpose of the 5th principle in the PSM that met so much criticism from lockstep opposition searching for a pretext.

Just to be equally asinine, I have not heard these critics speak out against Israeli terrorism. Israel has every right to defend itself, however having a war criminal for a prime minister and continuing to build Jew only settlements, segregated high schools, and destroying Palestinian homes while building an apartheid wall is not discouraging terrorism nor is it an act of defense. Israel is certainly on the offense and is certainly encouraging terrorism. This is an American problem too; September 11th 1922 was the day the British took over Palestine. You cannot aim for peace while pointing a gun in your neighbor’s face. Apartheid is wrong even when you have religious rhetoric loosely justifying your crimes with books that also advocate slavery and prejudices of all forms.

Hatred is an easy outcome of frustration but usually frustration comes from ignorance. Americans might be more interested in Mary Kate’s eating disorders, Paris Hilton Sex tapes, or Britney’s marriage, but it is our civic responsibility to educate ourselves about global affairs and American foreign policy. We are at war. We are at war not just because our inept president and a plutocratic political body of profiteers, we are at war because American people are willfully in the dark, too busy chasing shiny magazines and Hollywood gossip instead of doing some critical and ethical thinking. Capitalism can go to far it’s called imperialism.

[Via Rys2sense.com]