60 congressmen have called on Hillary to press for the release of emergency funds to the UN to help rebuild Gaza, and push for the opening of more border crossings too. This is an anti-Israel lobby vote. Note the presence of Bob Filner, Lynne Woolsey, Lois Capps, Nick Rahall, Maurice Hinchey, Jim Moran, Anna Eshoo. Many members of the Congressional Black Caucus. I see only one of my brothers. The great Bob Filner.
Ira Glunts's analysis:
I noticed only 14 of the 60 (by my quick count) congresspersons that signed the letter were members that J Street endorses. This is out of 32 members who are currently receiving J Street funds and endorsements. One wonders if some of the congresspersons that J Street supports will ever vote against AIPAC. So far my understanding is that J Street does not feel it is in a position to press the members on these sorts of things. Robert Wexler and Barney Frank are big names for J Street but were AWOL on H.Res 34 (expressing support for Israel re Gaza, they voted for it, along with 388 other congresspeople). Their names are not on the Gaza letter either. Dennis Kucinich is about as good as it gets on the issue, but is not one of the Congress members that J Street endorses. He, of course, voted against H.Res 34 and signed the Gaza letter.
Gee, first one (so far). Look at it this way – the friends of the US in the Middle East are Israel and a bunch of dictators, a category which includes – sad to say – "royal families". The enemies of the US are, and this telling, the Middle East's largest democracy, Iran (young women there have the vote at age 15 – surely grounds for Iranian carpetbombing of US cities), and the other notable people's organizations, Hamas and Hezbullah. Til now, the US has always preferred to deal with the oligarchs/dictators, as it is, or has been, more efficient. But those common folk have stubbornly refused to get with the program, whatever it is. Maybe the program really is just to sell weapon systems. Maybe we should organize the buy them all, fire them into space, and end this mad-ness. Just some beans for the IdeaStew.
The good news is that Jackie Speir who replaced Tom Lantos signed it.
Well Tom, let's rejoice in your backflips in the grave.
Iran can not be called a democracy if the candidates must be cleared through the religious theocracy.
I would like to forward this to my representatives. Anyone know of a quick form online to do this, or is it necessary to do it manually?
Thanks Robin you made my day. Oh how I loathed Lantos.
Jesus, Berel, you act like Israel didn't just try to ban Arab parties from participating in elections.
"This is an anti-Israel lobby vote."
Indeed.
This is a middle finger to AIPAC.
Scary, ain't it AIPAC – they are getting off the reservation.
They would probably make great concentration camp guards, though, right? Right?
My congressman signed: immediately sent a note of thanks. Mike Thompson is in the Cali 1st district, contains the very liberal counties north along the coast. But he has always been part of the 395 to 2 majorities supporting Israel.
"Iran can not be called a democracy if the candidates must be cleared through the religious theocracy."
Israel cannot be called a democracy if the rabbis get to decide who can get married and who's a Jew."
"Iran can not be called a democracy if the candidates must be cleared through the religious theocracy."
It's not that much different than the Zionist informal vetting system inside the Democratic Party. Obviously the former is much more stringent, but at least it is open and honest. The reaction of AIPAC'ers to President Obama's nomination was telling … and entertaining. "WHO IS THIS GUY! WHO FRAKKED UP!" LOL
Israel cannot be called a democracy if most of Tel Aviv real estate cannot be purchased by non Jews. If Arabs are not allowed to be in the government. If Jews only highways and other public facilities are sanctioned. If torture is carried out against detained Arabs but never against detained Jews. If 200 Israeli Arabs are in prison today for peacefully protesting against the Gaza war, but no Jews for doing the same. If the state pays for Jewish studies but not for Moslem or Christian ones.
The very notion of a "Jewish state" is in many ways anti-democratic.
DAN KELLY: "I would like to forward this to my representatives. Anyone know of a quick form online to do this, or is it necessary to do it manually?
ME: TO SEND A PREPREPARED MESSAGE TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVE BASED ON HOW THEY VOTED -
link to capwiz.com
/>
DAN KELLY: "I would like to forward this to my representatives. Anyone know of a quick form online to do this, or is it necessary to do it manually?
ME: TO SEND A PREPREPARED MESSAGE TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVE BASED ON HOW THEY VOTED -
link to capwiz.com
FURTHER EXPLANATION: Enter or confirm your address below. On the next page you will see a pre-prepared letter. You will see a "Thank You" note if your member signed on, however, if your member did not sign on the text of the letter will be different. If your representative did not sign on, the letter lets them know that you wanted them to show their support for sending humanitarian aid to Gaza and that you are disappointed that they missed this opportunity to do so.
@syvanen
Are you a liar or a dupe? The land you are talking about can't be sold to anyone, Jew or non-Jew. It is leased not sold and it can be leased to non-Jews.
Arabs are not only allowed in government, but there have been Arab members of the Knesset since the first elections in 1949. Currently, there are 12 Arab members of the Knesset. That is ten percent of the Knesset.
Which is about the same as the percentage of African American Congressman in the House of Representatives. And ten times the percentage of African Americans in the U.S. Senate.
Israel has a system called "proportional representation. Instead of voting for candidates, you vote for parties. Whatever percentage of the vote the parties get, they get that percentage of the Knesset.
So unlike the vote of a Democrat in a Republican district in the U.S., every vote in Israel counts.
Know another country where a distributed minority of say 5% gets any representation? In Israel, they get three seats in the Knesset (assuming they vote in proportion to their numbers).
Can you cite Jews only highways? Israeli only highways don't count since there are non-Jewish Israelis.
Torture is illegal in Israel, whether of Jews or of non-Jews. Of course, not everyone in Israel obeys the law. Name me a country where there has never been an incident of police brutality.
Citation for the "200 Israeli Arabs" but no Jews please.
Israel has a state religion. So do a lot of countries. Maybe more than half, I'm not sure. Of course, in Israel, they don't execute you for trying to convert people from the state religion, unlike a lot of Muslim countries.
Oh, and "democracy" just means government determined by voting. You probably mean "pluralistic" or whatever the word is for countries that respect minority rights.
Oops, Math error, a 5% minority vote in Israel gets the minority 6 Knesset seats.
Israel cannot be considered a democracy if it issues building permits for Jews but not for non-Jews. If it's children are educated in segregated schools: well-funded ones for Jewish kids, under-funded ones for Palestinian kids. If there is freedom of speech for Jewish Members of the Knesset to advocate for transfer of the 20% of the population that is not Jewish, but there is prison for Arab MK's who speak out about the racism.
Ana, your definition of democracy smacks of propagandistic education. Permits have nothing to do with voting. Jewish political parties that advocate violence are banned, as are Islamic political parties.
Speaking lies to power merely allows others to treat you like a fool.
Maybe we should organize the buy them all, fire them into space, and end this mad-ness. Just some beans for the IdeaStew.
Hear, hear brother Stew!
Democracy is a myth, and all the parties are prefabricated, pre-sold-out shams. This is just more obvious in Israel, but it is true everywhere.
Israeli democracy? What complete bullshit!
Israel is not a democracy in any kind of sense. It has no constitution, no Bill of Rights and no law that gives equal protection to all its "citizens." There is no civil marriage or divorce. Much of the land cannot by law be leased to non-Jews — who are highly restricted as to where they can live. There are innumerable legal and administrative privileges for Jews above Arabs and rampant discrimination in public and private sector jobs, housing, education and so on.
The fact that there are worse countries is true, but little enough argument for a "special relationship" and billions of dollars in US cash for Israel each year. A real scandal.
Democracy does not require a constitution. England has no constitution and it is a democracy. the Soviet Union had a constitution and it was a dictatorship.
Every nation has discrimination. It appears to be all to human to discriminate.
Seems your pissed that israel receives 2 dollars out of your pocket each year. Sucks being you.
Thom.
Last update – 09:46 20/03/ 2008
Top Yesha rabbi says Jewish law forbids renting houses to Arabs
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent
link to haaretz.com
/>
In an interview published by "Eretz Israel Shelanu" (Our Land of Israel), to be distributed this Saturday in various synagogues, Lior said that "since this is a matter of endangering souls, it is clear that it is completely forbidden to employ them and rent houses to them in Israel. Their employment is forbidden not only at yeshivas, but at factories, hotels and everywhere.
Israel has a parliamentary government. Your description of it is lacking. The issue of votes has nothing to with whether a country has a human rights charter.
Your definition of democracy is wrong. Here's the correct one from Wikipedia with cites:
3 Liberty and justice for some at Economist.com
4 a b Aristotle, Politics.1317b
5 R. Alan Dahl, I. Shapiro, J. A. Cheibub, The Democracy Sourcebook, MIT Press 2003, ISBN 0262541475, Google Books link
6 M. Hénaff, T. B. Strong, Public Space and Democracy, University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 0816633878
England has no constitution and it is a democracy.
England (I assume you mean the UK) is no more a democracy than any other state. You are just parrotting ideological garbage, as usual.
berel.
Seems your [sic] pissed that israel receives 2 dollars out of your pocket each year. Sucks being you.
It's between $125 to $188 per taxpayer per annum. If all the money given to Israel since 1949 had been placed in a bank account at 6% interest, the USA would have $7 trillion in the Treasury in 2008.
MRW, are you counting in the costs of the wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, ?Pakistan) and the bribes we have to pay (Egypt) to keep Israel afloat? Probably not…the end is nowhere in sight. Boy, it must suck to be Israel right now, just when the world is recognizing you as the greatest threat to world peace and your sugar-daddy is having money problems.!
Thank you John Lewis-Dickerson.
@MRW
So, are you that stupid, or are you just hoping that we are? That Rabbi doesn't make the laws that govern Israel any more than a priest in an American town can make a law that governs America.
The guy is chief Rabbi of a town about the size of the hick town that Sarah Palin was mayor of. Much as I hate to burst your bubble, we are the Jews, not the Borg. We don't speak with one voice. So when someone on our lunatic fringe says something stupid that doesn't make it the law of the land, or even something that more than a fraction of Jews would agree with.
Whatever crap the nutjob Rabbi says, that doesn't make it an Israeli law. The Knesset determines the laws in Israel, not some hick town Rabbi.
If you knew that, you are a liar. If you didn't know that, you are an ignoramus. So which are you, liar or ignoramus?
A little snippet from democracy in Israel, as determined by Knesset:
Israel's High Court has narrowly upheld a law denying Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza married to Israeli citizens the right to live in the country with their spouses.
The judges voted by six to five not to cancel a four-year-old amendment to the Citizenship Law which outlaws "family unification" in Israel between Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel.
It was passed as a one-year emergency measure in 2002 on the ground that it was needed to protect Israeli security. But the amendment, described yesterday by the Knesset member Ran Cohen, of the left-wing Meretz party, as "rooted in racism", has been renewed every year since then.
Israel's Chief Justice, Aharon Barak, sided with the minority on the bench, declaring: "This violation of rights is directed against Arab citizens of Israel. As a result, therefore, the law is a violation of the right of Arab citizens in Israel to equality."
Israel: Jewish for Arabs and democratic for Jews.
The beauty of a democratic society. Majority rules, minority gets to complain. So different from the surrounding Islamic Dictatorships.
'Jewish political parties that advocate violence are banned'
Ho ho, you are a riot. Some parties that advocate violence are obviously more equal than others. Hell, some of the major ones when they get into gov't go and commit violence on a grand scale, never mind just advocating it – that's for pussies. Up is down and black is white in the fevered Zionist brainbox.
'chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba, Rabbi Dov Lior,'
That would be the Kiryat Arba that has a government-approved memorial shrine to mass murderer Baruch Goldstein I suppose. And that rabbi, is he the charmer that opined '1000 Arabs are not worth one Jewish fingernail'?
'It's between $125 to $188 per taxpayer per annum. If all the money given to Israel since 1949 had been placed in a bank account at 6% interest, the USA would have $7 trillion in the Treasury in 2008.'
Oh. My. God.
'So, are you that stupid, or are you just hoping that we are?'
You always seem to start that way when cornered Thom. I guess it's possible you'd be a decent dinner companion, but not very likely.
'So which are you, liar or ignoramus?'
Wow, you're finishing like that now too. Let it all hang out – your descent will provide us with a rough index of how well we're going.
@Glenn Condell
Since the people I am addressing when I say that are either lying or incredibly willfully ignorant, there isn't much point in being polite to them. The ones that are lying deserve it and the ones who are willfully ignorant need a wake up call about just how far from reality they have strayed.
As to the current value of the aid given to Israel, his math is wrong. Sixty years at compound interest of 6% creates a multiplier of about 33. We didn't give Israel a lump sum of 212 billion in 1949. This guy seems to have taken all the money the U.S. has given to Israel over the last 60 years (about 200 billion according to Wikipedia) and applied interest to it as though it was a lump sum payment 60 years ago.
BTW, if you put $1 in the bank in 1492 at 6% interest you would have $12 trillion. It's irrelevant, even if true, since the money would have been spent on other things that would not have been as useful to the U.S. as Israel.
It doesn't matter what the lunatic Rabbi said anymore than when Fred Phelps says represents U.S. policy.
You anti-Semites waver between "Jews are incompetent" and "Jews are superhumanly perfect so everything they do is planned and coordinated". We have our lunatic fringe as well.
As to the memorial, Israel isn't a dictatorship. If a bunch of shitheads want to spend their own money putting up a memorial to another shithead that doesn't mean the government approves of it.
The government of the U.S. doesn't like neo-Nazi hate groups speech, they also don't ban it. "Not banning" is not the same thing as "approving".
Yeah, the Citizenship Law Amendment (2003) is pretty much crap, and a cynic might say that citizenship makes no difference in the number of Israeli-Arab-Palestinian suicide bombers (1) and that of Palestinian-married-to-Israeli-Arab-Palestinian suicide bombers (3). Both are marginalia compared to the overall number of people appealing the 2003 law each year (60 or so). Laziness and ham-handedness of the security vetting process, backed up by inadequate case law and the lack of an equal protection clause.
Glenn, you may just be that stupid. I never said how much per person in America, I stated how much you paid. About 2 dollars.
If you have a hard time doing the math, try to realize that entities other than people also pay those taxes that support Israel. Once you take out that contribution, it works out to about $2 out of your pocket.
The budget is 2.7 trillion. There are about 150 million tax payers. That's 18K each. My income is well abouve median yet I pay less than 5K. As the money given to Israel is about 3B – 6B, worse case makes it 0.2% or $10 out of my pocket. As you appear to be some one in a lower socioeconomic cirsle, no doubt it is only $2 out of yours, if you pay any at all.
Whatever the amount, it should go to Americans. Not Israel, which is a country that is not deserving of 20% of US foreign aid, actually more as what Egypt gets (the next highest taker) is just a bribe to
placate Israel.
This is especially so since most Americans are not in the economic arena chris says he or she is in; there fore, what they give Israel takes a lot more out of their pockets. Fuck the Israelis, give it all to
American kids.
Weiss – this might interest you…the first piece on the blog…about an attempt to get a resolution through the Colorado legislature supporting Israel's war in Gaza
www.cpjnews.com/blog.htm
Cheers,
Rob Prince/Denver
Thanks, and there I was, thinking badly of Colorado. Lo and behold, they redeem themselves.