All four candidates took the opportunity during the “debates” to once again assure Israelis in the Holy Land and Jews on K Street that their administrations would continue the annual $6 billion in direct and indirect economic and military aid . . . even as Americans are losing their homes and jobs and retirement savings.
Ifill and Brokaw might have challenged the candidates’ promise of continued economic and military aid to Israel considering:
- Israel is one of the most economically and industrially advanced countries in Southwest Asia.
- Israel ranks second among foreign countries in the number of companies on U.S. stock exchanges.
- Israel has the second largest number of startup companies in the world and the largest number of NASDAQ-listed companies outside North America.
- Israel’s GDP per capita is $31,767
- Israel’s economic growth in 2006 was the fastest of any Western nation.
- Israel has the best armed and trained military in the region and is the fourth largest weapons exporter in the world ($2 billion annually)
And the United States’ taxpayers are expected to finance Israel?
But the “depth of reality” check of utmost salience to the 70 million-plus “debate” viewers is why the candidates and most members of Congress consider Israel our “strongest ally in the world.”
In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon, igniting a civil war. America’s support for Israel cost the lives of 241 servicemen who were blown apart as they slept in their Beirut barracks.
Israel did not fight in the first Gulf War, neither did its soldiers die in Afghanistan or Iraq—a war its cooked intelligence helped to bring about. This year our “strongest ally” pushed the Bush administration to the brink of war with Iran—a war whose catastrophic reverberations would have been on a par with the current global economic meltdown.
Israel’s regional aggression and its repressive—often brutal— domestic policies regarding the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank inflames its Arab neighbors and cinches tight the explosive vest to the chests of Arab youths.
Predictably, the United States’ irrational and unconditional support of Israel makes it equally culpable and equally target-worthy in the eyes of Arabs and Persians in the Middle East and Muslims worldwide. An ally that causes more insecurity than succor can hardly be considered the strongest ally in the world—unless that ally is also the only way to the White House.
Gwen Ifill and Tom Brokaw might have challenged the candidates in a way that exposed him or her to criticism from the Israeli quarter. Unfortunately for the 70 million-plus viewers Israel is a “depth of reality” the American political system and mainstream media are unwilling to plumb.
But as a right-wing Israeli Prime Minister says, “it’s time to lay everything on the table.”
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