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Obama embraces Israel and AIPAC by AP
Obama's new budget calls for cutting $2.5 billion in financial assistance to the poor which they currently use to buy heating oil, but is increasing the amount of the taxpayer's dollars the politicians will give to Israel (from $3 billion to $3.075 billion +), Egypt ($1.3 billion +), the Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza (400.4 million), Jordan ($660 million) and Lebanon ($200 million). Obama's budget director, Jacob Lew, said, "This is a very hard cut. This is a cut that has real impact." Simply cutting aid to Israel and putting that money into the heating oil program would not only prevent the cuts to America's poor, it would allow this necessary program to expand and to help even more people in the United States.
Israel is concerned the recent political victory of the Tea Party candidates will endanger the billions of U.S. tax dollars the politicians give to the Jewish state every year. Already Tea Party backed U.S. Senator Rand Paul has called for the U.S. to cut aid to Israel as well as to all nations that are currently receiving foreign aid from the U.S. However, Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives and who is also the House Majority Leader, has a plan to hide the billions set aside for Israel every year.
Cantor is planning on simply removing it from the foreign aid budget and hiding it in the national defense spending budget. The end result would still be the same; billions of taxpayer dollars Americans worked for would be siphoned out of the country to Israel. In principle this is wrong. To make it even worse, Israel's economy is better than the U.S. economy. And add to that the fact that Israelis don't even have to worry about their own medical care the way poor and working class Americans do because Israel has universal health care.
In addition to increasing hand-outs to the biggest recipient of foreign aid, Israel, Obama has pledged the U.S. would veto a U.N. resolution which declares Israel's illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands are illegal. This exposes Obama as a liar and a fool, especially when we think back to his famous/infamous Cairo speech to the Islamic people. In that speech he spoke out against Israel's settlements on Palestinian lands. That was in 2009. In 2011 he will refuse to give any meaning to his speech by not only not vetoing the U.N. resolution against the Jewish settlements, but by not openly supporting the resolution. Obama won't even take a stand for what is right on the question of Israel ethnically cleansing Palestinian East Jerusalem.
The religious right and the neocons don't have to worry when it comes to their wishes being fulfilled in regards to U.S. Middle East foreign policy in the Obama administration. Nothing changes in regards to Israel weather the Democrats or the Republicans are in charge. Their Bible-based plan is promoted by both bought-and-paid-for political parties.
Perhaps America would be better served by following the advice of the Deist and Father of the Country, George Washington who said...
"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens), the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove, that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it.
"Excessive partiality for one foreign nation, and excessive dislike of another, cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests."
