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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zonder who wrote (9580)	4/23/2004 5:55:22 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 20773

zonder, Thanks for bringing some reality to the discussion about U.S. foreign aid to Israel. You stated: Israel gets USD 3.3 bn per year, which is ONE THIRD of total US foreign aid budget. This is a country of 6.3 mn people, by the way, compared to Egypt's population of 68 mn people. That $3.3 Billion figure is merely the appropriation. You can add to that a very sneaky game that gets played regularly. In 2003, for example, the U.S. provided loan guarantees for about $9 Billion (as I recall) that the Israeli government wanted to borrow to help build the "Security Fence", more settlement structures and other purposes. This loan amount was an escalation over prior loans guaranteed by the U.S. government, but the result will eventually be the same. The general pattern is for the Israelis to quietly default on these loans after a few years and then the U.S. taxpayer is left holding the bag through various agencies which provided the loan guarantees. It's a hidden subsidy to Israel, and it actually more or less doubles the amount of aid Israel receives from the unwitting U.S. taxpayer. *** As far as a comparison of who gets what portion of U.S. largesse in foreign aid, here's an interesting pair of statistics. A couple of years ago a study was done and found that for one dollar given in U.S. foreign aid to someone living in sub-Sahara Africa, $250 went to each Israeli citizen. For each Latin American recipient of one dollar in aid, $214 went to each Israeli. I'll bet that not one in one hundred Americans is aware of this.

To: zonder who wrote (9580)	4/23/2004 11:23:03 AM
From: E. T.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

Perhaps not merge, but growing very close, to share in medical service and such. To deny this is to revise history. I started reading your link, but I gave up, and I'm sorry, I think it's garbage. For instance, "What really happened was that the Zionist movement, from the beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Arab population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state." Only to a degree, there was much debate within the jewish community in the diaspora that discussed and warned against the radical zionist attitude. Many within the Jewish community rang warning bells in the 1920s and before that buying Arab land and then ousting the arab tenants would lead to no good. The article you posted paints a situation using too wide a brush. Look, there will be only peace when Arab nations, and Palestinians except that Israel has a right to exist. Why should Israel give up any land now, when it is faced with a view that says you should have no land at all. Saying "the end of your existance is our goal." When the PA and other Arab nations give up teaching their children to write "I love palestinians. I hate jews" Or educate their young to believe that jewish people drink the blood of kidnapped gentile children or that Jewish people control the world, then there may be progress. Raising kids to hate an ethnic group is what Nazis did in their schools. Much of the Arab rhetoric against Israel harkens back to voices that were heard in 30s in Germany. Recall, PA leadership promised in the Oslo Accord stop instilling hatred of jewish people in their young in schools....but it never stopped. The PA promised to change (Oslo) their charter to recognize Israel's right to exist, but now it turns out they signed the accord with no intention of changing the charter. "Armed struggle" remained the modus operandi as the PA all the while promised peace and dialogue. Arab attitudes need to change, need to be less like Nazis perhaps, before an Israeli government can afford to hold out an olive branch, imo.