Politics – Israel has been a very expensive ally for the US. Direct costs are at least $247 billion and indirect costs, up to $3 TRILLION. Giving any country unconditional backing encourages irresponsible behavior - in the case of Israel it has led to an apartheid state. Politicians hold their tongues for fear of being labeled as anti-Semitic.
fta:
'as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it, Israel facing "a South African-style struggle."'
Is Minister Olmert anti-semitic?
'as tehranchik put it, "Where are these threats? What are these threats?"
Here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ar...
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1209...
http://english.aljazeera.net/English/archive/ar...
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=...
http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/breaki...
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,151...
> Is the false quote the threat?
Well, the quote(s) are hardly false considering that the entire world including BBC, Al Jazeera, Der Spiegel, Iranian Press Agency and Ahmadinejad himself repeat them on every occasion.
Silence from tehranchik...
Minister Olmert is definitely NOT anti-Semitic, tehranchik is. This is the reason he pretends not to comprehend that "a South African-style struggle" means guerilla-style war against violent gangs of terrorists. It does not imply in any way any resemblence between Israeli democracy where all citizens have the same rights and South African racist regime.
Olmert definitely IS anti-jewish.
Zionism versus Judaism
Religion รข;; Zionists have managed to unforgivably drag judaism's name through the mud for more than 60 years. Zionism might be a racist, supremacist ideology - but Judaism is most definitely not. The more Jews who make this distinction, the better: both for security of their fellow Jews, as well as to end zionist crimes against Palestinians.
http://religion.propeller.com/story/2008/04/15/...
That stale old zionist propaganda again thinker? This was shot down ages ago.
Just How Far Did They Go, Those Words Against Israel?
.. "Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map because no such idiom exists in Persian," remarked Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan and critic of American policy who has argued that the Iranian president was misquoted. "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse." Since Iran has not "attacked another country aggressively for over a century," he said in an e-mail exchange, "I smell the whiff of war propaganda."
Jonathan Steele, a columnist for the left-leaning Guardian newspaper in London, recently laid out the case this way: "The Iranian president was quoting an ancient statement by Iran's first Islamist leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, that 'this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,' just as the Shah's regime in Iran had vanished. He was not making a military threat. He was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future. The 'page of time' phrase suggests he did not expect it to happen soon."
Mr. Steele added that neither Khomeini nor Mr. Ahmadinejad suggested that Israel's "vanishing" was imminent or that Iran would be involved in bringing it about. "But the propaganda damage was done," he wrote, "and Western hawks bracket the Iranian president with Hitler as though he wants to exterminate Jews."
> Israel has been a very expensive ally for the US. Direct costs are at least $247 billion and indirect costs...
In some cases, NOT spending is way more expensive than spending. This is one of such cases. Prior to 1973 the US aid to Israel was minimal and Israel survived. In 1973, however, without urgent US help Israel would have no choice but to use nuclear weapons against Egypt... and such development would be way more expensive for the US and the rest of the world than to help Israel and bring the war to an end.
Today the situation is pretty similar to what it was back in 1973: without US aid the Arabs will try to destroy Israel and at some point Israel will, possibly, have no other choice but to turn the aggressors into radioactive piles of rubble. This will be way more expensive for the US and the rest of the world than preventing Arab and non-Arab Jew-haters from giving it a try.
"Giving any country unconditional backing encourages irresponsible behavior,"
I agree. Back in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s the Soviet Union gave unconditional backing to Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Palestinian Arabs. This unconditional Soviet backing resulted in three major wars (of 1967, 1973 and 1982) and in thousands of terrorist acts where tens of thousands innocent civilians were killed and maimed. In addition, this Soviet backing of Palestinians and aggressive Arab leaders indirectly caused the Lebanese civil war and the Iran-Iraq war where more than 1,000,000 people were killed.
Just to clarify: American aid to Israel is anything but 'unconditional'.
If that is so, then Israel has no excuse for its irresponsible behavior, just as it has no excuse for its cruelty, and just as it has no justification for its continued denial of human rights to the Palestinian people.
You can't have it both ways, buster.
> If that is so, then Israel has no excuse for its irresponsible behavior, just as it has no excuse for its cruelty, and just as it has no justification for its continued denial of human rights to the Palestinian people.
I'm not sure what you call "irresponsible behavior", "cruelty" or "continued denial of human rights to the Palestinian people".
First, the fact that only TWO Palestinians were killed in an average day of the terrorist war known as the Intifadah proves that the Israelis were going out of their way to save Palestinian lives and by doing it demonstrated EXTREMELY RESPONSIBLE behavior towards them. Any other country would end this terrorist war long ago killing tens of thousands in the process and forcing their leaders to surrender or be eliminated.
Second, the fact that Israel continues to supply water, electricity, food and a lot of other necessary supplies to the Palestinians in Gaza DESPITE the fact that the only thing coming the other way are hundreds of missiles killing and maiming Israeli civilians shows WHO's cruelty should be addressed.
Third, Israel can not deny human rights to the Palestinian people due to the simple fact that there are no Palestinian people in Israel and the simple fact that it's the democratically elected Palestinian leadership that is responsible for the rights and welfare of people who elected this leadership.
Not a member? Sign-up today!
alamala
SunnyDays
Truzseeker
BJTJ
1-2-Oscar
livia1954
jovial
Shankari25
take_no_side
bubba2
tehranchik
berkeley
Locky12
lawrencee
hyperbola
About Propeller | Frequently Asked Questions | Help
© 2003-2008 Propeller. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
19)
Vote
Washington Report on Middle East AffairsSpecial Report
The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion
http://www.wrmea.com/archives/june2003/0306020....