The Obama administration on Wednesday signed a formal memorandum of understanding that would increase the annual military aid package to Israel, rewarding it with a record $38 billion over 10 years.
This increase in aid comes as the Benjamin Netanyahu-led Israeli government, which took office in 2008, has vastly expanded the network of illegal settlements deep into the Palestinian territories in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Shortly before Netanyahu took office, 474,000 Israeli settlers were living in these territories. By the end of 2014, the last time the Israeli government released comprehensive statistics on the matter, that number had grown to around 570,000.
The United States and the international community consider these settlements to be a primary obstacle to Palestinian independence. The network of military checkpoints, erected barriers, and private transportation networks that sustain them cut deep into Palestinian territory, undermining its territorial contiguity.
Watch an AJ+ explainer on the topic:
This expansion of settlements isn’t Netanyahu’s only affront to U.S. diplomatic efforts. The Israeli leader has spoken without a presidential invitation before the U.S. Congress trying to scuttle the Iranian nuclear deal while cutting a campaign commercial; engaged in two long and brutal military campaigns in the Gaza Strip; assembled a cabinet opposed to Palestinian statehood; and just last week, compared international demands to end settlements to “ethnic cleansing” – causing the even reliably pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League to rebuke him.
It’s important to remember that this aid largely benefits the U.S. defense industry and the Israeli occupation, but not the average Israeli. Politico reports that “under the agreement, Israel’s ability to spend part of the funds on Israeli military products will be gradually phased out, eventually requiring all of the funds to be spend on American military industries.”
Meanwhile, Israeli child poverty was the highest among 41 countries ranked by the United Nation’s Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) earlier this year.
Top photo: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a statement to the press during a visit to Har Homa, an Israeli settlement neighborhood in east Jerusalem, on March 16, 2015.
Israel’s claim to Palestinian land is a wilfully moronic argument that doesn’t hold up to ANY form of scrutiny.
1) There is no validity to the notion that everything any of your ancestors ever owned, now belongs to you. That vapid conceit ignores all of the families who have had rightful ownership of that property in the thousands of years SINCE then, as well as all of the families who had rightful ownership of that property PRIOR TO then.
2) The Jewish Middle Easterners of two millennia ago are NOT the ancestors of the Jewish Europeans and Americans who have violently annexed Palestine, so even if a person is stupid enough to embrace the vapid conceit that asserts that descendants of people who left two thousand years ago should be allowed to come back and take over a country, that STILL wouldn’t validate the European-American takeover of Palestine.
If I started worshiping Odin, that wouldn’t give me the right to perpetrate a genocidal annexation of Norway, on the basis that the current inhabitants are a bunch of Christians who don’t belong on my ancient Viking land.
There is no justification for Israel’s genocidal annexation of Palestine; the Israeli occupation of Palestine is based on NOTHING BUT the FORCE of the English-American Empire.
Can someone on this thread provide an example of another identifiable group other than Jews who demonized for building houses? Netanyahu is correct. What should be done with those 100,000 settlers? Should they be removed from the West Bank?
I am long past being surprised by how crudely dishonest Zionists are.
No one is being “demonized for building houses.”
No one is demonizing “Jews.”
Netanyahu is a genocidal lunatic.
And finally, not just the most recent 100,000, but the entire 570,000 criminals who are illegally occupying the West Bank, should, OF COURSE, be removed.
Why can’t those 570,000 “criminals” stay in the homes they built and paid for? I think a Palestinian State would benefit from a viable Jewish Minority. Should Israel ask it’s 1.8 million Arab Citizens to leave? I certainly hope Israel would never do such a thing. It looks like only one of us advocates ethnic cleansing.
Again: I’ve never understood why Zionists make such a consistent effort to respond to people who are already repulsed by Zionists’ inhumanity, with replies that amount to, “You think THAT’S inhuman. I’LL show you how inhuman Zionists can be!”
1) No one said that “Jews” should leave Palestine, and the 570,000 Israeli criminal occupiers are not citizens of Palestine. Your defamatory accusation is beyond pathetic, and your analogy-substitute is wilfully dishonest.
2) Engaging in that degree (and style) of dishonesty, just to casually mock ethnic cleansing, emphasises the point I made in my opening sentence, which, by now, you will have failed to understand for the second time.
3) Your ham-fisted attempts to forcibly usurp the position of victim – by manufacturing anti-Semitic straw men – are themselves, grotesquely anti-Semitic. They are also intellectually and morally sickening. You have no right to imply that, “Criminals who are illegally occupying the West Bank,” and, “Jews,” mean the same thing.
Since your posturing implies that you have no way of knowing:
“Jews” are people who share a common RELIGION; not people who share a common desire to brutally annex Palestine. There are plenty of Jewish people who see Zionists for the genocidally entitled monsters that they are.
The world sees them “as criminals who are illegally occupying the West Bank” because they are Jews. That is the sole reason why their habitation is controversial. They have as much right to be there as anyone else. You are ‘otherizing’ them.
You don’t need to keep proving you’re a monster. No non-Palestinian of any religion has any right whatsoever to seize parts of Palestine, and just start acting like they own it.
Telling me that the reason people like me, hate people like you, is because you’re Jewish, is an extremely stupid lie that you’ve ALREADY TOLD. You would have to be legitimately insane to honestly BELIEVE that what people hate about your group of genocidal land thieves, is that their Jewish.
There are Jewish people I like, and Jewish people I admire. I don’t harbour any doubts whatsoever about what it is that I ACTUALLY hate about you.
If you have to be a monster, then the least you could do is be a POLITE monster, and explain what motivates your paradoxical response to criticism.
I have already put it to you twice, that I’ve never understood why Zionists make such a consistent effort to respond to people who are already repulsed by Zionists’ inhumanity, with replies that amount to, “You think THAT’S inhuman. I’LL show you how inhuman Zionists can be!”
So EXPLAIN it to me. What makes you respond to people who think you’re a monster, by trying to convince them that you’re even MORE of a monster than they thought?
Nah, this impotent little Jew-baiting zio anti-Semite has been crapping out inanities in the comments sections here under the pseudonym “Jonah” for far too long now, so is now far too much of a proven psychotic window licker to ever qualify for “monster” status.
Paid who for what now, anti-Semite?
Stop exaggerating, you psychotic zio window licker.
In a word, yes.
Their presence is belligerent, illegal and brutal.
Their presence is actually a tremendous show of strength and resilience against the genocidal ambitions of Islamic supremacists.
We get it. You’re a monster.
You admire your fellow monsters, and you accuse your victims of being like you.
The problem is that you’re talking to humans. Humans don’t admire violent robbery, habitual mass murder, and vulgar lies.
Your appalling ignorance is only surpassed by your sickening racism. .
Have you read the Hamas charter? Do you watch Palestinian TV? Islamic Supremacy pervades Palestinian society the same way White Supremacy pervaded the US south. Supremacy is Supremacy. The rape of the Yazidis in Syria, the murder of the coptics in Ehypt and the attempted expulsion of Jews in the West Bank. These are all manifestations of Islamic Supremacy. They don’t get to win this battle. There’s a reason there’s Arabs in Israel and no Jews anywhere else in the region. One society is signficantly more evolved than the other. The same way Massachusetts was significantly more evolved than Mississippi. Smear me all you want. You can’t change the facts. There’s nothing monstrous about a group of people asserting their property rights. They don’t need anyone’s permission, especially yours
Your aggressively imbecilic lies are boring and redundant.
The LEAST you could do is answer my question, monster.
what is your question?
Questions are the sentences that end in a question mark, monster:
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/14/benjamin-netanyahu-added-100000-settlers-now-the-u-s-rewards-him-with-largest-aid-package-ever/?comments=1#comment-285554
ROFL…Yea, you psychotic little Palestinian-hating zio anti-Semite. There is nothing monstrous about the indigenous Palestinian people asserting their property rights in their own homeland. They don’t need anyone’s permission, especially yours, you impotent little israel-worshiping Zionist cuck.
Israel’s creeping annexation of Palestine, and genocidal disdain for the people whom it is violently dispossessing, can not be supported by any informed human being with a functioning conscience.
The progressive four part map of Israel’s usurpation of Palestine’s land, over time, is something that everyone should take a sobering look at.
It is referenced at the top of the following article:
https://www.popularresistance.org/chomsky-israels-west-bank-plans-leave-palestinians-very-little/
One man’s annexation is another man’s decolonization. Jewish self-determination is an inspiration to the world and a model for how to stop Islamic fascism dead in its tracks.
I’ve never understood why Zionists make such a consistent effort to respond to people who are already repulsed by Zionists’ inhumanity, with replies that amount to, “You think THAT’S inhuman. I’LL show you how inhuman Zionists can be!”
Since your posturing implies that you have no way of knowing:
1) The shameless inhumanity that it takes to shrug off your atrocities by rebranding them, only makes you seem like MORE of a monster.
2) It’s delusional – in a creepy way; not in a way that makes anyone feel sympathy for you – that you tell yourself the world is “inspired” by Israel, despite the fact that THE WORLD has explicitly, and repeatedly, condemned Israel’s criminality.
3) It’s delusional – in a pathetic way, but still not in a way that would make anyone feel sympathy for you – that you claim the fascist criminality that Israel has been indulging in for decades, “stops Islamic fascism dead in its tracks.”
Israel’s hostile aggression against defenceless civilians, incites and inflames Islamic fascism.
Your claim about the roots of Islamic Fascism have been debunked. Suicide Bombs happen everywhere, not just Tel Aviv. Thus it is clear that Israel is not the problem. If it were, we would see Zionists setting off bombs all over the world. We don’t. Followers of Islam are the ones doing that. How do you get around that inconvenient fact?
Learn to read.
Johan
Au contraire. As many eminent Israeli commentators have observed, it is Israel that is fascistic. Actually, Israel fills all the requirements for being described as such: chronic racism, expansion of territory through force of arms, massacres, mass rape and intimidation; using an occupied people as a source of cheap labour and violating their human rights, etc. Of course the other factor that links Zionism/Israel with fascism is that like Nazi Germany, which used the myth of Aryan supremacy, Zionists view themselves as “Chosen” by God. The similarity is truly remarkable. I’m sure that If the 6 million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis could rise from the dead they would forthrightly condemn Zionism for its monstrous crimes against Palestine’s native inhabitants. Look in the mirror. You and your ilk are monsters.
Wonderful. Holocaust Inversion. How original.
Only monsters are amused by what amuses you.
Your holocaust against Palestinians isn’t “inverted,” and there is nothing unusual about pointing out the fact that Zionists have copied the Nazis in every manner they could successfully transpose to the Israel/Palestine context.
It’s a fact that has been pointed out a million times.
Jonah
Feeble response.
LMAO…Yea, you inane little Jew-baiting anti-Semite, except that your foreign zio-fascist, invaders, ethnic-cleansers, occupiers, murderers, thieves and colonizers haven’t actually annexed even a square inch of Palestine.
Nah, you insipid little zio cretin,
“Jewish self-determination”your cancerous Zionism is an inspiration to all the genocidal psychopaths of the world and “a model for how to stop” all intelligent thought dead in its tracks.WHY are my taxes going to people who SPIT on MY GOD?!
Every year YOU give $4+ BILLION of your taxes to Israel.
Then “your” politicians give some bogus excuse why they HAVE to take a trip to Israel.
How much of YOUR money is being used to BRIBE “your” politicians?
YOUR taxes coming back to YOUR country in “your” politician’s pockets.
——————————————–
Israel demands the Palestinians “recognize Isreal’s right to exist” —- WELL,
How can People that “Do not EXIST” recognize their DENIER’S “right to exist”?!
Where is Israel’s Recognition of the PALESTINIAN’S RIGHT to EXIST!?
Palestinian DENIERS are Christ DENIERS.
Israel is attempting to create a MYTH that the Palestinians “do not exist”
That is standard “dehumanizing prior to exterminating”
Israel also DENIES Jesus Christ.
WHEN Israel acknowledges HIM at all
Israel calls Jesus “the BASTARD of a Roman soldier and Mary, a PROSTITUTE”
Israel claims that JESUS is in HELL, boiling in excrement.
Israel is a HUMANITY DENIER.
Israel is a SOCIALIST, FOREIGN, country and America doesn’t owe them ANYTHING.
In “Democratic” Israel there are fifty laws that discriminate against non Jewish citizens, That would be you, GOYIM/GENTILE/SHIKSA. Any American politician who puts Israel’s interests ahead of America’s is a TRAITOR. If Israel does not like what we did Israel can quit cashing those GOYIM/GENTILE/SHIKSA CHARITY CHECKS. Refuse America’s WELFARE if you are mad at us.
Americans are only allowed a few years on welfare . Israel has been a WELFARE QUEEN for over SIXTY YEARS. Americans have to prove they have no “assets” to get welfare. Israel has over SEVENTY BILLION DOLLARS in savings, but STILL collects American CHARITY CHECKS. Americans just got their FOOD STAMPS cut, Israel got an INCREASE while Americans go hungry.
Israel has a population of approximately 7.7 million, or a million fewer than the state of New Jersey. It is among the world’s most AFFLUENT nations, with a per capita income similar to that of the European Union.[1] Israel’s unemployment rate of 6.8% is better than America’s 7.3%,[2] and Israel’s net trade, earnings, and payments is ranked 30th in the world while the US sits at a dismal 193rd.[3] http://ifamericansknew.org https://alethonews.wordpress.com/2016/02/23/the-staggering-cost-of-israel-to-americans/
https://theintercept.com/2016/07/31/as-israel-prospers-obama-set-to-give-billions-more-in-aid-while-netanyahu-demands-more/#comment-262504
While Americans argue about medical care and how much it will cost, Israel has a much more generous medical care program for its citizens and does not need to worry about the costs because it’s paid for by tax-paying American citizens in the aid we give to Israel.
MEANWHILE America’s infrastructure is collapsing and AMERICAN CHILDREN go to bed HUNGRY & SICK while YOUR TAXES pay for Universal Healthcare for Israel.
This is a Canadian but it applies https://youtu.be/mdWzLwNOlaA
The settlements are not illegal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwB7LyPhzr0
Here we see an audience of six indeviduals listening to the opinions of one indeviduals. The Flat Earth Society can muster a similar turnout.
That videos offers a very comprehensive explanation as to why Israel has legal title to land beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Is there something in that video you care to refute? Everyone thought the world was flat until we realized it was round. You, sir, are the Flat Earther. I don’t blame you though. You seem like the type of guy who glides along with progressive groupthink.
The Nazis agree with you 100%.
Au contraire. The settlers and their settlements are in gross violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is binding on all UN members and has also been ratified by Israel. There is no “special provision” in international law that enables Israel to violate it with impunity,
The real question is why you do not know these basic facts.
Johan
“The settlements are [illegal.]
To wit:
(A) Security Council Resolution 446 (22 March 1979) “[Affirms] once more that the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 is applicable to the Arab territories OCCUPIED [my emphasis] by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem,
“1. Determines that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories OCCUPIED [my emphasis] since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East;..”
(B) Security Council Resolution 465 (1 March 1980) “determines that all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories OCCUPIED [my emphasis] since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity…”
(C) Israel’s 1980 annexation of East Jerusalem was rejected by the UN Security Council in Resolution 476 (June 30, 1980): “all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the OCCUPYING [my emphasis] Power, which purport to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention”. The resolution was adopted by 14 votes to none.
(D) On 17 December 1981, the UNSC unanimously passed Resolution 497, which declared Israel’s 14 December 1981 annexation of Syria’s Golan Height “null and void.”
(E) In accordance with the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, ratified by Israel, and further underscoring the illegality of the settlements, Part 2, Article 8, section B, paragraph viii of the Rome Statute of the International Court (1998) defines “the transfer directly or indirectly by the Occupying power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it OCCUPIES [my emphasis]” as a War Crime, indictable by the International Criminal Court.
(F) On 24 February 2004, the U.S. State Department reaffirmed its earlier position in a report entitled Israel and the OCCUPIED [my emphasis] Territories, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: “Israel OCCUPIED [my emphasis] the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights after the 1967 War…. The international community does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over any part of the OCCUPIED [my emphasis] territories.”
(G) In its 2004 ruling, the International Court of Justice unanimously ruled that “No territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal.” The World Court denoted this principle a “corollary” of the U.N. Charter and as such “customary international law” and a “customary rule” binding on all member States of the United Nations.
(H) In the summer of 1967, “[t]he legal counsel of the Foreign Ministry, Theodor Meron, was asked [by Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol] whether international law allowed settlement in the newly conquered land. In a memo marked ‘Top Secret,’ Meron wrote unequivocally: ‘My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.’” (New York Times, 10 March 2006)
(I) US Secretary of State, John Kerry: “The US views all of the settlements as illegitimate.” (13 August 2013, Reuters Video)
(J) British Foreign Secretary William Hague regarding Jewish settlements in the West Bank (5 April 2011): “This is not disputed territory. It is OCCUPIED [my emphasis] Palestinian territory and ongoing settlement expansion is illegal under international law…”
(K) Even the Israeli Supreme Court has declared the West Bank (and Gaza Strip) to be under belligerent OCCUPATION [my emphasis]. In 1979, the court declared “[t]his is a situation of belligerency and the status of [Israel] with respect to the OCCUPIED [my emphasis] territory is that of an OCCUPYING [my emphasis] Power.” In 2002, the court again held that the West Bank and Gaza Strip “are subject to a belligerent OCCUPATION [my emphasis] by the State of Israel” and in June, 2004, it proclaimed “[s]ince 1967, Israel has been holding [the Palestinian Territories] in belligerent OCCUPATION [my emphasis].”
SOP for Wall Street’s man(ikin) in the White House. Obama can share as much of the blame for the rise of Trump as the Republicans; he has done nothing to help ordinary people that did not mostly benefit major corporations.
Hmmm, imagine what you could do with $38 billion in the US, I could think of a few projects. It’s amazing how far in debt this nation is, I guess not enough.
Every dollar we give to Israel will come right back here to the USA. Our economy is sluggish between of income inequality. The poor & middle class aren’t spending because they don’t have the money. The rich have money to invest in new factories, but what’s the point of building new factories if the great majority of people don’t have the money to buy what the factories are producing. One solution is for the government to take money from the rich & spend it. All the money we will be giving Israel will go to the US defense industry. The industry will hire workers. The workers will take their salaries & buy things & people will have to be hired to produce those things that the defense department employees are buying. A virtuous circle. Furthermore, military research often leads to new consumer products.
So, it’s actually an American jobs program. . .
Aha! Jack Green was manufactured by the same project that produced the Wolf Blitzer android. We should have known AIPAC would stop with one.
“wouldn’t”
If we are just giving money away to create jobs as is you argument then why not just give the money to Americans? Trickle down economics I suppose you might say?
Well either that or maybe it helps us keep the Palestinians and Muslims in their place, enriches the corporations that are the MIC, concentrate wealth in the hands of the 1%, because they need more while also giving enough to the average American whose tax dollars are distributed to the filthy rich.
Aha, I understand now how it works!
That’s the new laissez-faire.
Let it be, let be, let it be… I am singing as I am sure the Israeli elites are.
Give me 10,000 dollars and I swear I will use it to hire you
to paint my house, fix my cars and mow my lawn. That way your money will come back to you! Then when the money is all spent you will give me more
and the process starts over. Soon I will have all kinds of great stuff that
you have made or done for me—See how *we* have benefited?
You will then thank me!!
The ultimate result would be inflation. Anyway, that’s not an economic problem. It’s just business. If you add military aid and contracts to nations surrounding Israel, some of them openly against Israel, then the monetary value of US military package to Israel become very small. Those nations have terrible human rights record as well. Many people focus on Israel because they are just anti Semitic.
The settlements are fully illegal, but it’s not even immoral for a nation to obtain military support to protect its citizens against rocket attacks.
So we trade dollars for outright murder and more occupation of “disputed territories” in Israel…
And the new, “….consumer products?”…more depleted uranium munitions…..
Tim to upchuck.
Entirely bogus. The bottom line is that the billions of dollars of hard earned US taxpayers’ dollars will be used to benefit Israel, not US citizens whose basic needs are not being met. Those billions should be invested in the American people as a whole, not to supply armaments to illegal/brutal occupier Israel and a small number of Americans in the arms industry.
Any who want to understand how the world — but especially the United States — inherited today’s Israel-Palestine conflict, and who want to grasp the foulness modern Israel has become, should read two books.
1. Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict, by John Judis, Macmillan, 2014, and
2. Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, by Max Blumenthal, Nation Books, 2014. (Omitting link because this site’s software usually won’t post comments with more than one link.)
My former Zionism was already on the wane before I read these, but the books completed the deprogramming. Fact-based, calm, meticulously researched and generally well-written. Zionist reviewers hated both, but found almost no material errors, including not in the latter.
Can we start calling them what they actually are? These thugs are no settlers but straight up occupiers and war criminals.
The only way to stop this nation of thieves (Israel) is with a world boycott like we did it to Apartheid South Africa. Israelis will react when their pockets are hurt. Of course, the US and England will not support such a boycott. The hypocrisy of the West know no limits.
It’s not land theft. It’s a land dispute. The settlers believe they are exercising their right of return. They are just taking back their own land that was stolen from them during the Arab conquest of the Middle East in the seventh century. The settlers believe that the Jews have a deed to the land. There’s a Torah that’s over a thousand years old. You don’t have to believe in God, but this ancient document lists the names of the owners of the land (the 12 sons of Jacob [aka Israel]) & the boundaries of the land. In other words, it’s a deed to the land naming the children of Israel as the owners. If you dig in Palestine, you will find ancient synagogues & Jewish ritual baths & Jewish coins. Settlers see this as further proof that it’s their land.
Palestinians say that it’s Palestinian land because Palestinians have lived there for centuries.
The Torah says that God created all non jews to serve the Jews…It also says that when the Jewish Messiah arrives, the Jews are gonna enslave the remaining living population of the world and each Jew is going to own 2,800 slaves. You failed to mention how green eyes, blond hair isn’t’ native to the Middle East which basically the dominant colors of the Israeli population. How is it that those European feature made their way into the descendants of the Hebrews?????? Also, you forgot to mention how that land was also called land of Kenaan and had an indigenous population prior to the Jewish Faith that Jews have slaughtered as they invaded that land from Egypt. You also failed to mention how the Jewish kingdoms in PALESTINE were only two small parts of that land and did not cover the entire Landmass. I will gladly offer you a detailed history of Middle East if you wish Jack Green.
I’m assuming you are not a land owner, Jack. If you were, you have undoubtedly honored the Native American (or whatever aboriginal peoples formerly occupied your property) Right of Return to their ancestral homelands, which were stolen by invaders even more recently than the 7th century. Or do they have to publish their own ‘holy book’ first?
Hypocrisy: Americans living on land stolen from Native Americans accusing Israelis of stealing land even though if Israelis dig they will find ancient Jewish synagogues & Jewish ritual baths, but if Americans dig they will not find ancient churches.
Shameless Thuggery: Acknowledging the fact that you are violently dispossessing innocent people of their lands, yet having the conscienceless audacity to assert that you are entitled to perpetrate that monstrous crime, on the basis that OTHER monsters have perpetrated similar crimes.
Jack
To state what should be obvious to any thinking person and setting aside the fact that the Bible’s Old Testament is hardly a reliable source of history, that there was a brief (about 73 years) Jewish Kingdom in historic Palestine 2,000 years ago hardly gave Ashkenazi Jews of the 20th century AD the right to use their political clout in Europe and America to eventually colonize historic Palestine, dispossess and expel well over one million of its indigenous inhabitants between late 1947 and 1967 through armed might, several massacres, mass rape and intimidation and create therein an expansionist, racist, “Jewish state” that 68 years later, has yet to officially declare its borders and have them recognized as such by the international community.
To quote the renowned historian/anthropologist and “Holy Land” specialist, Professor Ilene Beatty:
“When we speak of ‘Palestinians’ or of the ‘Arab population [of Palestine]‘, we must bear in mind their Canaanite origin. This is important because their legal right to the country stems…from the fact that the Canaanites were first, which gives them priority; their descendants have continued to live there, which gives them continuity; and (except for the 800,000 dispossessed refugees [of 1948 along with the further hundreds of thousands expelled before and after the war Israel launched on 5 June 1967]) they are still living there, which gives them present possession. Thus we see that on purely statistical grounds they have a proven legal right to their own land.” (“Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan,” 1957)
In short, today’s Palestinians and their ancestors have been living continuously in Palestine for 9,000 years.
How many Syrian or Somali refugees did Israel take in?
I can’t blame them for not being as stupid as the Swedes.
There are 60 million refugees. None are Jews because Israel takes in all Jewish refugees.
Before complaining that Israel doesn’t take in enough gentile refugees, let the majority-Christian & majority-Muslim countries take in Christian & Muslim refugees. Also, let’s remember that 6 million Jews died because majority-Christian & majority-Muslim countries refused to take in Jewish refugees.
Furthermore, let’s remember why Israel was created. Israel was created to be a majority-Jewish country because majority-gentile countries had failed to provide safety for their Jewish citizens. If Israel takes in too many gentiles, it will no longer be majority-Jewish. Unfortunately, there still is a need for a majority-Jewish country because Jews are still targeted for being Jews.
“In the 48 hours leading up to Israel and the US agreeing on a record $38 billion military aid deal, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R – SC) began to push hard against it, suggesting Congress could give Israel and even bigger aid package, and telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Obama could “go F himself” if he didn’t like the larger aid”.
“Sen. Graham now says he intends to introduce a $1.5 billion additional aid deal for Israel just for this year, suggesting that Congress would be free to keep throwing similar “emergency supplementals” at Israel every year if they want to, and saying he believes there’s a lot of support for it”. Yes the US is the “Exceptional nation” exceptionally stupid.
http://news.antiwar.com/2016/09/14/senator-38-billion-israel-aid-deal-not-enough/
This largess courtesy of the American taxpayer is just a little personal parting gift to Bibi (and the U.S. arms industry) from Obama (“Hey, Ben, no hard feelings about going behind my back to scuttle the Iran deal.”) increased by who knows how many more billions if Clinton wins the election.
And Democrats wonder oh, my, what ever could be the reason people are leaving their party…
Hey all you Israel haters,, give up your cell phone and your computer and lots of other tech. Because it’s all designed in the hated Jewish country..
Those nice people in Gaza and the west bank are murders of course you would need to read the history to know that rather than just being an unthinking relay station of lies. something that intellectually lazy people never do.. do you?
My phone was made in China and designed by an American company. Isn’t it just like Israel to try and take ownership of something that was never theirs to begin with? I guess at least my phone isn’t a Palestinian school child or else you would have made it look like one of those recalled Samsung phones by now.
Wait a minute…! Phones that set fire to other people’s property?! Maybe Israelis did design some of our phones!
Oh! please! Enough of the theatrics. People hate deception, oppression, violence, repression and theft. This kind of land theft would never get a pass if done by any other country, it would be internationally castigated, most definitely not be rewarded to the tune of $38 billion. If Israel wants to be a valued, trusted, respected member of world then it must accept that it is not above the law and make amends for past illegal action and stop it now. The same as is expected of all countries who wish to improve their international standing and improve relationships. It is not a right, whatever your history or your friends, you earn it by positive action.
Why is there no BDS against China’s illegal occupation of Tibet?
Why is there no BDS against Turkey’s illegal occupation of Cyprus?
Why is there no BDS against Morocco’s illegal occupation of Western Sahara?
Why is there no BDS against Russia’s illegal occupation of the Crimea?
I use a Blackberry. They’re designed and manufactured in Kitchener Ontario with parts from China. But that’s irrelevant. What is relevant is that Israel’s been conducting offensive military operations and blockading the Occupied Territories.
OK: (this is the part where you call me anti-Semitic): Given the horrible lessons of the 20th Century, I find it horrendous that Israel’s treating Palestinians trapped in Gaza and the West Bank in fundamentally the same way that German forces treated the Warsaw Ghetto. If anyone should understand the wrongness of their actions, it should be Israelis.
Palestinians have been murdering innocent Jews for almost a century. Israel is defending itself. Jews were not murdering innocent Germans. Germans were not defending themselves from Jews.
Funny you accuse the Palestinians of murdering jews for a century! As far as history documents, the jews were the ones that started the killing when they immigrated form Europe at the turn of the 20th century to Historic Palestine! Have you heard of the Stern, Haghana, Urgon gangs??? They were Jewish settlers murdering Palestinian villagers and stealing their water, land and life stock and were labeled Terrorist groups. Either you are so ignorant to the true history over there, or you simply spreading lies as all Israeli supporters try to do to cover up the truth about Israel.
Haganah, Irgun & Stern were formed for defense. Palestinians had been shouting “The Jews are our dogs! Islam was spread by the sword.” as they murdered innocent Jews in 1920, 1921 & 1929.
Going further back: The British consul, William Young, writing in the 1840’s (before Zionism) said that the Jews of Jerusalem were living in fear for their lives. He attributed the plight of the Jews to “the blind hatred and ignorant prejudice of a fanatical populace…”
“Because it’s all designed in the hated Jewish country..”
Careful with that supremacy talk. We know where that leads.
So the Nazi’s invented jet engines, diesel engines and perfected rockets.
Oh and aspirin.
Do their wonderful technological inventions excuse their other behavior ?
By your logic, apparently yes
Joe
Sigh. A pathetic response. Setting aside the fact that Israel’s technological advances have for the most part been due to American ingenuity, should we have forgiven the Nazis after WWII because they had developed what was then advanced technology that we adopted?
38 billion dollars over a decade?? Enslaving how many Americans to pay that bill?? Do people realize just how much money that is? Think of making $50,000.00 a year ( could be a decent living) every cent of it going to Israel.
Foreign Aid is FRAUD and this is Military Aid to help keep the WAR going. Gaza and the number of Palestinians to be killed?.? and these new settlements are located WHERE?.? 38 billion dollars spent on affordable housing here in the U.S.A. would be a big help….to help homelessness…..
Notice how the fine details are not discussed – – smells like the T.P.P. – – – or one of the oil pipelines
If we stopped giving money to Israel, the Republicans would use that money to give tax breaks to the rich.
It’s considerably more than the NIH budget. And remember, while private companies put a few finishing touches on various treatments, pretty much all the groundbreaking research gets done on the government dime. So just think of it this way: instead of waiting 10 years for a treatment to come out, the sick people can just wait 11. And if someone you know happens to die on Year 10, you can rest easy knowing that they gave their last full measure for the Israel-military-industrial complex.
Corporate welfare for death merchants yet we can’t get healthcare as a right in the USA. Which, by the way, Israel has.
I’m so sick of propping up this man (Netanyahu) and his stinking government. They take, and take, and then take some more. It’s never enough…ever. Wars, Murder, Robbing Palestinians of THEIR Land, THEIR Homes and Livelihoods. I hope that I live long enough to see, with my own eyes, the zionist state’s implosion and destruction.
Their land?
Dig that land & you will find ancient Jewish synagogues,
ancient Jewish ritual baths & ancient Jewish coins?
Meanwhile we are living on land stolen from the Native Americans.
Dig here & you won’t find ancient churches.
Dig that land and you will also find relics of more ancient worship and cultures, that of many gods. The idea that one has rights to land (and the right to evict people from that land) based on ancient texts or archaeological discovery is completely absurd and screams politics, power and control. That monotheistic religions demand fealty to one god, brook no dissension and have their own unique story-line makes them easier to co-opt and use as force for power.
As for Indigenous People in the Americas and elsewhere, many were hunter/gatherer’s and their temples and gods are overwhelmingly nature itself, thus no widespread stamp of ownership upon the land. But, their continued existence on the same lands for thousands of years to now, presents a far stronger case than mere archaeological finds or ancient text. Not that anyone takes that into account, it fits no current agenda to do so. Power, politics, control and geopolitical strategy.
That is a wilfully moronic argument that doesn’t hold up to ANY form of scrutiny.
1) There is no validity to the notion that everything any of your ancestors ever owned, now belongs to you. That vapid conceit ignores all of the families who have had rightful ownership of that property in the thousands of years SINCE then, as well as all of the families who had rightful ownership of that property PRIOR TO then.
2) The Jewish Middle Easterners of two millennia ago are NOT the ancestors of the Jewish Europeans and Americans who have violently annexed Palestine, so even if a person is stupid enough to embrace that vapid conceit, it still wouldn’t validate Israel’s belligerently fraudulent claim.
If I started worshiping Odin, that wouldn’t give me the right to perpetrate a genocidal annexation of Norway, on the basis that the current inhabitants are a bunch of Christians who don’t belong on my ancient Viking land.
There is no justification for Israel’s genocidal annexation of Palestine; the Israeli occupation of Palestine is based on NOTHING BUT the FORCE of the English American Empire.
Most American’s including Americans of Jewish heritage are finally starting to see the wool pulled over their eyes. As it was over mine many years ago.
Israel is not a friend to the United States and the average Israeli complains of having to take this money from us…
So i say this – don’t give it. Don’t give them a dime. Let’s see how the dynamic of the relationship changes. Honestly the right wingers and Zionist movement folks won’t give up a single settlement because they “believe” that GOD said it was there land. How convenient.
Well, people are finally starting to open their eyes and see the truth. That with friends like the Saudi’s and Israeli’s who needs enemies? I mean really.
Let’s even take it a step further, and here is where many will think i’m nuts…
When the older generation in Iran finally passes and hopefully control of the IRGC goes along with it, the most young generation which is like 70% of Iran, will take over and maybe then, the seeds that were sown in the Iran nuclear deal, will finally carry some weight.
Then, and only then will you see a real partner in the middle east. It will take time, but oddly, it’s looking like the best long-term bet we can make. Because god knows everyone else in the region has proven to have their own agenda which doesn’t benefit us, one iota. And that statement clearly includes Israel.
I don’t get why the Obama administration has kept being so stupid. The Republicans around the world do what the Democrats always threatened to – they act locally, think globally. If Obama goes to Netanyahu or Duterte or (in the past) Harper or any other Republican anywhere in the world, he can be assured of nothing but pain and humiliation. The obvious answer is simply not to focus on those countries – don’t poison the relationships, but don’t break new ground. Focus all the effort on meeting up with international Democrats and forging new links with those countries.
I’d say Trudeau is a good start (thank you for acknowledging Harper’s innate Republicanness, something so often denied by his supporters up here).