Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Israel who?

Stays on top today - G

At the risk of being called an anti-Semite once again (not that I care anymore), at what point to we say "enough is enough"? At what point does Israel have to pay a price for their actions? At what point do we say, "Israel has become what it despises the most"? At what point do American Jews stop having the knee-jerk reaction to protect and defend anything that Israel does to the point of labeling anyone who disagrees an anti-Semite? And, at what point do our politicians stop kowtowing to Israeli lobbying groups in this country?

What Israel is doing - squeezing the Palestinians out of the West Bank through continued settlement expansion (my people called it Lebensraum), through the siege of Gaza, and disproportionate responses to any Palestinian transgression - is indefensible and unjustified under the blanket statement of "protecting Israel's security". Thanks to our alliance and unquestioned protection of Israel, our troops in the region are put in more danger than they already are. Our diplomatic efforts in the region are consistently undermined by Israel's unilateral aggression toward its neighbors, tainting us with the stench of their inhumanity.

JERUSALEM – Israeli commandos rappelled down to an aid flotilla sailing to thwart a Gaza blockade on Monday, clashing with pro-Palestinian activists on the lead ship in a botched raid that left at least nine passengers dead.

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Their ruthlessness, their indifference to the human suffering (the direct result of Israel's policy toward the Palestinian areas) just across the border, and the Israeli government's adamant defense of those policies only makes them a 21st Century Nazi Germany. They learned well from those who once oppressed them.

As everyone in this country is complaining about how we're going broke (thanks to the two wars we're fighting, an underlying result of our alliance with Israel), I have a serious problem sending billions of dollars of my tax money (in the form of direct payments and military support) over there. I'm tired of our government looking the other way when Israel persists in implementing their plan to take whatever land the Palestinians have left and either shove them across the Jordan River or over the border into Egypt, or just kill as many as they can.

The United States can no longer afford to give the Israelis diplomatic cover in the U.N. with their veto power over the Security Council. I am very sorry for what my people did to theirs, there is no excuse or justification and will be a stain upon Germany for centuries to come, but that does not make Israel 'untouchable' (because, underneath it all, the label "anti-Semite" is inferring Nazism and if you say a cross word about Israel ...). It does not make them unaccountable for their actions and the consequences resulting. They certainly have no right to determine U.S. policy in the region.

If we expect to ever get our troops out of the Middle East, our policy toward Israel has to change. If we ever want to stop living in fear of a terrorist attack, the likes of which we saw here on 11 September, we have to distance ourselves from a government we have no control over. It's time to stop treating Israel as the 51st State.

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