"The additional money for Iron Dome cleared one of its final hurdles Tuesday [July 15], when a key Senate appropriations subcommittee unanimously voted to double the Pentagon's $175 million request for fiscal year 2015.
"The full committee will consider the defense appropriations bill on Thursday. Meanwhile, three other panels have already signed off on the funding expansion, making it all but certain the additional money will be provided.
"Iron Dome has received $720 million in American funding since 2011, when the United States became directly involved in the program. Iron Dome, which is built by the Israeli defense company Rafael, has kept Israeli casualties so low that it's credited with bolstering the public's support for a longer bombing campaign rather than an immediate ground invasion into Gaza."
Even with more funding for the Iron Dome, Israel was determined to go ahead with its ground invasion into Gaza on the night of July 17. Ha'aretz reported on the invasion:
"A large contingent of Israeli ground forces entered the Gaza Strip Thursday night for the first time since Operation Protective Edge began 10 days ago.
"The government made the decision after efforts to reach a cease-fire with Hamas collapsed.
"Palestinian sources reported heavy IDF artillery fire throughout the entire Gaza Strip. A Gaza resident told Haaretz, 'They're firing from every direction, everything here is shaking.'
"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the ground operation's main goal will be to deal with the threat posed by the tunnels Hamas has dug along the Gaza-Israel border."
The robotic American political response to Israel's ground invasion on top of its bombing attacks on Gaza? "Israel has a right to defend itself."
That mantra is a con man's twin to the other central Israeli narrative mantra, "Israel has a right to exist." The fundamental flaw in both mantras is that Israel considers itself to be the only party with rights.
Congress does not operate on the "General Conception of Justice" outlined in the late Harvard Professor John Rawls' ethical philosophy:
"All social primary goods -- liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect -- are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these goods is to the advantage of the least favored."
Israel apparently chooses not to remember how Proverbs 24:24-25 speaks to those who claim they are always right:
"Whoever says to the wicked, 'You are in the right,' will be cursed by peoples, abhorred by nations, but those who rebuke the wicked will have delight, and a good blessing will come upon them."
Israel is bombing and invading a small country whose only defense is an unwise use of ineffective rockets directed at Israel with little hope of doing any serious damage.
The rockets give U.S. and Israeli television news programs videos of Israeli civilians running toward shelters, incarnating another Israeli mantra, "the Jewish people are permanent victims."
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