Whatayahoo gives us the finger – again
Flipping off the ‘Road Map’ and US policy on the Palestinian question appears to be a sacred Israeli institution. Whatayahoo is going forward with the settlement expansion that Obama asked him not to do back in May.
While Obama is still enjoying high poll ratings on his foreign policy leadership, it would be a good time to really test out the power of AIPAC and start cutting back on our billions in aid.
Seriously, there’s not much point in funding a client state that not only doesn’t follow orders, but publicly humiliates us in the process. They are like the Billy Carter to our Jimmy Carter, but they don’t even give us Billy Beer – what a crock!
Stumble it!
Tags: israel, Obama, occupation, Road Map, settlements
September 9th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Israel doesn’t want or need the aid. The purpose of the aid is to provide jobs for the American arms industry. The other purpose is to make sure that the conflicts in the Middle East continue indefinitely so that the US has an excuse to sell arms there and meddle in other peoples’ countries. This is why the US always is very careful to make sure that the Saudis get just as many arms as the Israelis, and that the total aid to the Arab countries always exceeds that to the Israelis. (Of course no one ever mentions that because it doesn’t help the anti-semitic cause, which is what criticisms of Israel are all about.)
As far as the settlements go, the Obama wasn’t elected president of Israel. He has absolutely no right to make demands of the Israelis, or of any other people. It is rude and arrogant, and it’s only to be expected that the Israelis would tell him to bug off. If the Palestinians want anything from the Israelis they need to end the war and recognize Israel. At the moment, both the PLO and Hamas’ charters state specifically that their goal is to steal all of Israel’s land and wipe out all of the Jews. Until that changes Israel is going to do what it wants. And rightfully so. They’d be insane to do otherwise.
September 9th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Israel doesn’t want our $2.4B?!?! LOL
Regarding telling the Israelis what to do, we have three levers, our $2.4B, intelligence sharing/military cooperation, and sanctions. I’d start with dialing down the aid money to test the ‘mike hypothesis’ above. If we dial it to $0 and they don’t flinch, then I’d consider some basic sanctions. Finally we could stop doing business with them on the intelligence front. I bet they’d blink at the $.
I’m neither Jewish, Muslim nor Fundee Christian, and don’t really give a damn who rules the cis-Jordan, but as an American I sure as hell don’t want to bankroll the occupation of the West Bank. If Israel won’t play ball and treat seriously with the Palestinians, let them do it on their own dime and with their own damn weapons and intelligence.
In fact I agree with you to some extent regarding subsidizing the arms industry (although I differ with you as to that being the ‘sole’ reason the aid exists – a ‘little’ lobby called AIPAC certainly helps keep it there). Just for the record, if you haven’t read any of my ancient posts from ’03 & ’04, I would be very delighted to cut off aid to the various Arab dictatorships as well, I have no love for the Gulf Oil Despots nor the Egyptian cleptocracy.