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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Machaon who wrote (15869)	8/1/2007 1:26:56 PM
From: Elroy	Respond to of 22250

You might as well bring this discussion to the FADG, although it has been hashed over 1,000s of times. People on this thread are more into massive conspiracy theories than just ordinary political discussion. Maybe start about here: Message 23751082

To: Machaon who wrote (15869)	8/1/2007 1:36:38 PM
From: steve kammerer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

Israel is quick to go after every bit of reparation money, Swiss bank account money etc, except for $80 billion (yes, billion) paid to Israel by Germany as reparations for these people. Holocaust Survivors Blast $20 Stipend Jul 31 04:24 PM US/Eastern By LAURIE COPANS Associated Press Writer JERUSALEM (AP) - An Israeli government offer of a new $20 monthly stipend for Holocaust survivors provoked outrage Tuesday, with survivors charging the meager allowance will do nothing to make up for years of neglect of the 240,000 Israelis who lived through Nazi horrors. Survivors have long claimed that European countries treat them far better than Israel, where many elderly survivors live in poverty. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's announcement of the new allowance did nothing to change that impression. One survivor called the offer "absurd and insulting." Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II. Hundreds of thousands who survived concentration camps came to Israel after the war. Many suffered physical or psychological damage from the torture and deprivation they suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Six decades after the war ended, the remaining survivors are elderly, and many have been unable to provide for themselves in their final years, suffering chronic shortages of money for medical and psychological treatment and in some cases even food. Israel TV showed video of an 85-year-old survivor who said the only meat he could afford was chicken necks. Olmert presented his program as a solution. "We are correcting a 60-year-old blight," he said. "Holocaust survivors living in Israel are entitled to live respectably without reaching a situation in which it is beyond their means to enjoy a hot meal." Beginning next year, the amount allocated for 120,000 needy survivors, about half the total number still living in Israel, will be $28 million annually, according to Olmert's statement. But that works out to an average of just $20 a month for each survivor. "Of course the survivors cannot accept such an offer," said Dubby Arbel, chairman of the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Survivors in Israel. Arbel said about 65,000 survivors are in acute need of assistance, but his foundation can provide for only half of them. Many survivors were outraged. "This doesn't solve anything," said survivor Avraham Roet, 79. "The government doesn't understand the significance of the Holocaust and what horrors the survivors went through. If they did, they wouldn't propose this absurd and insulting plan," he told The Associated Press. The new payment is in addition to government support already given to survivors, including those deemed physically or psychologically handicapped, and regular pension payments of about $487 a month. Survivors groups charged—in what was meant to be an especially painful dig at the Israeli government—that survivors are treated better in Germany. "We know what the conditions of the Holocaust survivors are in Holland, France, Germany and Poland. They are much better than in Israel," Noah Frug, chairman of a consortium of Holocaust survivors' organizations and a survivor himself, told Israel Radio. Hillary Kessler-Godin, spokeswoman for Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, said Germany still pays monthly pensions to 80,000 survivors around the world, after starting in the 1950s. "Each survivor's pension can be different depending on their persecution history," she told the AP. Other funds have paid out billions of dollars to various categories of Nazi victims. Roet said the average stipend for survivors in Holland, where he was born, is between $2,740 and $4,110 a month. Arbel urged Olmert to raise the allowance "for the sake of Jewish identity and Zionist identity, and so that we can all tell our grandchildren that we took care of the Holocaust survivors." "For 42 years I received nothing from the state," survivor Kathleen Schwartz, 71, told the newspaper Haaretz. "This grant has arrived too late for thousands of survivors. Time is working against us." Critics maintain that more of the nearly $80 billion in reparations Israel has received in compensation from Germany should have gone to the survivors. A large percentage of the money, which was paid beginning in the 1950s as Israelis struggled to build their fledgling state, went to the military and for infrastructure. ___ Associated Press Correspondent David McHugh contributed to this report from Berlin. Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

To: Machaon who wrote (15869)	8/1/2007 1:48:25 PM
From: SARMAN	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

I like to hear your comments. irak.be A little something from the site Alexis de Tocqueville once observed that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth. Certainly it has been easier for the world to accept the Zionist lie that Jews were evicted from Muslim lands because of anti-Semitism, and that Israelis, never the Arabs, were the pursuers of peace. The truth is far more discerning: bigger players on the world stage were pulling the strings. These players, I believe, should be held accountable for their crimes, particularly when they willfully terrorized, dispossessed and killed innocent people on the altar of some ideological imperative. I believe, too, that the descendants of these leaders have a moral responsibility to compensate the victims and their descendants, and to do so not just with reparations, but by setting the historical record straight. That is why I established a panel of inquiry in Israel to seek reparations for Iraqi Jews who had been forced to leave behind their property and possessions in Iraq. That is why I joined the Black Panthers in confronting the Israeli government with the grievances of the Jews in Israel who came from Islamic lands. And that is why I have written my book and this article: to set the historical record straight. We Jews from Islamic lands did not leave our ancestral homes because of any natural enmity between Jews and Muslims. And we Arabs-I say Arab because that is the language my wife and I still speak at home-we Arabs on numerous occasions have sought peace with the State of the Jews. And finally, as a U.S. citizen and taxpayer, let me say that we Americans need to stop supporting racial discrimination in Israel and the cruel expropriation of lands in the West Bank, Gaza, South Lebanon and the Golan Heights.