Rick,

Here is why we give aid to Israel.

All of the aid to Israel has been military for years. The reason we give it to them is to balance the military aid/sales we give to Egypt, Jordan Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Since 1990, the primary arms supplier to the Middle East has been the US.

To give you some idea of the scope, since 1990 we have given Egypt alone 2,500 main battle tanks (including 750 first rank M-1 Abrams), 550 M-109 155mm self propelled howitzers, 250 F-16 fighters and 4 Perry class frigates. They have more tanks than the UK and France combined.

We give Israel arms and military aid to protect them against the arms and military aid we give to their enemies/potential enemies.

Of course this must be some devious plot by the Israeli lobby to get US aid.

As to the alien Jewish invaders, 40+% of the Israeli population is descended from Jews who were ethnically cleansed from the other Arab states in the 1930's to 1950's or more recently the 75% reduction in Jews in Iran since 1979. There were almost 1,000,000 Jews in the Arab states in the late 1940's. Now there are a few thousand.

Maybe you should be looking for the other Arab states to give the Palestinians what they took from their Jews. They are the ones who pushed them into Israel.

Rick...you need to get clear about this. Both the Palestinians and Israelis have gotten the short end of the stick. There is no more justice here than the American Indians have.

When the Palestinians lay down their arms (really) and put a realistic proposal on the table (one that doesn't include taking back into Israel every person who claims to be a Palestinian) they will get a country, tons of money from the US, Europe and the Arabs and a real life.

It won't be any more justice than exists for the Jews now in Israel who ended up there because everyone else killed them or threw them out.

But it will be peace and the Palestinians can have a productive life.

Given my prior two comments here, I thought I should note that I took heart in seeing an article on the hardships of Gazans in this morning's paper:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/14/AR2007121402214.html

Israel is dependent on imported oil and gets it primarily from Russia. But are they a reliable source? Recall that they recently threatened to cut off their East European customers if they didn’t behave as expected.

http://www.slate.com/id/2145704/

Where Does Israel Get Oil?If you're selling, they're buying.

By Daniel Engber
Posted Friday, July 14, 2006, at 6:19 PM ET

The leader of Hezbollah declared "open war" against Israel on Friday following the bombing of his offices in Beirut, Lebanon. The president of Iran has announced that if Israel were to expand the hostilities by attacking Syria, that would represent "an attack on the whole Islamic world and the regime will face a crushing response." Given the grim state of Arab-Israeli relations, where does Israel get its oil?

From Russia and former Soviet republics. Israel produces only a couple thousand barrels of oil a day, which means it relies on the global market for more than 99 percent of its consumption. It's difficult to name all of the country's suppliers—in 2004, Israel's minister of national infrastructures admitted that "Israel's situation is complicated. We don't have diplomatic relations with most of the countries from which we import oil." But over the past 25 years, significant fuel imports have come from Angola, Colombia, Mexico, Egypt, and Norway. In more recent times, the Israelis have turned to Russia, Kazakhstan, and some of the other -stans for the bulk of their oil.

Israel has long sought a local source of oil, especially since the oil crisis of 1973. Having a nearby supplier would increase Israel's energy security and reduce the cost of its imports. Iran filled that need for a while: Starting in 1968, the Israelis used a pipe called the "TIPline" to import Iranian oil from the Red Sea. But the shah was overthrown in 1979, and Iran shut off the tap. (These days, Israel lets the Russians use the TIPline to pump oil in the opposite direction.)

Here’s an article about two mothers who lost their daughters (17 and 18 years old) in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem that shows how difficult (or impossible) this is going to be.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/26/AR2007112601853_pf.html

“Beyond the Reach of Annapolis
__
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, November 27, 2007; A17

On March 29, 2002, an 18-year-old woman walked into a Jerusalem supermarket and blew herself up. One of her victims was a woman just a year younger than herself. The two women looked so much alike, Palestinian and Israeli, and their mortal wounds were so similar, that the pathologist had trouble reassembling the two girls. They had so much in common...

Avigail Levy's [Jewish mother] attempt to reach an understanding with Um Samir al-Akhras [Palestinian mother] is told in an HBO documentary called " To Die in Jerusalem." It is a frustrating film, lacking the snapping flags and sleek limos of the Middle East peace conference convened in Annapolis. But more than the communiques sure to be issued and the statements sure to be made, the inability of two mothers just to meet -- not to mention understand one another -- gives a true and depressing picture of why no peace agreement is on the horizon. God is not in these details. The devil is...

Israel must relent. That's for sure. The Palestinians must forswear terrorism. That's for sure, too. The occupation has to end. Suicide bombings have to end. A Palestinian state has to be created. Gaza cannot remain a terrorist base. The West Bank cannot become a terrorist base. It's all so sensible. It's all so logical. But, really, down where it counts, the mothers of two dead daughters cannot even talk to each other.

"I didn't understand anything," Avigail says after four years of trying to establish a dialogue. "She didn't understand anything."

They issued no communique.”

A pep talk from my favorite conservative columnist:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/opinion/27brooks.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

November 27, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Follow the Fundamentals

By DAVID BROOKS

“...So it’s worth pointing out now more than ever that Dobbsianism is fundamentally wrong. It plays on legitimate anxieties, but it rests at heart on a more existential fear — the fear that America is under assault and is fundamentally fragile. It rests on fears that the America we once knew is bleeding away.

And that’s just not true. In the first place, despite the ups and downs of the business cycle, the United States still possesses the most potent economy on earth. Recently the World Economic Forum and the International Institute for Management Development produced global competitiveness indexes, and once again they both ranked the United States first in the world.

In the World Economic Forum survey, the U.S. comes in just ahead of Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany (China is 34th). The U.S. gets poor marks for macroeconomic stability (the long-term federal debt), for its tax structure and for the low savings rate. But it leads the world in a range of categories: higher education and training, labor market flexibility, the ability to attract global talent, the availability of venture capital, the quality of corporate management and the capacity to innovate.
William W. Lewis of McKinsey surveyed global competitive in dozens of business sectors a few years ago, and concluded, “The United States is the productivity leader in virtually every industry.”

Second, America’s fundamental economic strength is rooted in the most stable of assets — its values. The U.S. is still an astonishing assimilation machine. It has successfully absorbed more than 20 million legal immigrants over the past quarter-century, an extraordinary influx of human capital. Americans are remarkably fertile. Birthrates are relatively high, meaning that in 2050, the average American will be under 40, while the average European, Chinese and Japanese will be more than a decade older...

[So we can easily handle another 5 million or so from Israel.]

Question for the group:

Why does the US continue to give the Israelis billions of dollars in foreign aid each year, even though we can’t afford it and have to borrow the money from the Chinese (plus interest)?

I don’t know either unless it’s because AIPAC owns our congress, senate and executive branches of government.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/world/middleeast/26cnd-rice.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

November 26, 2007

Behind Rice’s Shift on Leading Mideast Peace Efforts

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

I found the most interesting thing in this article to be that President Bush decided in 2004 that Palestinian Refugees would be allowed to return to a possible future Palestinian State, but never to their homes in Israel. The “State Department had always taken the position that the issue — along with the final borders of a Palestinian state and how Jerusalem might be shared by the two sides — should be decided through negotiations, not by fiat from Washington.”

“…By the spring of 2004, when Mr. Bush agreed to support a plan by Mr. Sharon to withdraw Israeli settlers and forces from Gaza, Mr. Sharon asked for something more that set off a huge fight within the administration: American recognition that Palestinian refugees and their descendants who had fled in the 1940s would have a right of return to a new Palestinian state, but not to Israel itself.

Ms. Rice well knew that allowing Palestinians to return to Israel would overwhelm the Jewish population and effectively obliterate Israel’s identity as a Jewish state. Mr. Cheney and his allies supported Mr. Sharon’s request, but the State Department had always taken the position that the issue — along with the final borders of a Palestinian state and how Jerusalem might be shared by the two sides — should be decided through negotiations, not by fiat from Washington.

Aware of the debate within the Bush administration, Tzipi Livni, now the Israeli foreign minister but then the minister for immigrant absorption, went to plead her case to Ms. Rice in Washington. “I had the opportunity to convince Rice,” Ms. Livni said in an interview with The New York Times earlier this year.

Ms. Rice said she understood the issue was “very, very core” to Ms. Livni, and acknowledged that Ms. Livni’s appeal “was taken into account in the president’s words” when Mr. Bush made a pivotal announcement, in April 2004, that any “just, fair and realistic framework” for Israel would mean that Palestinians would have to settle in their own state — an enormous benefit for to Mr. Sharon…”

[This was a huge mistake in my opinion. We should not be dictating to the people of the region that they must accept an apartheid, racist, theocratic state in the place of historic Palestine.]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/world/middleeast/25annapolis.html?pagewanted=print

“News Analysis

In Annapolis, Much Hope for Leaders’ Cooperation, but Little for Results
By STEVEN ERLANGER

Israeli and Palestinian leaders gather tomorrow under American tutelage, with Arab foreign ministers in attendance amid anxiety about Iran, to try again to negotiate an end to nearly 60 years of conflict.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, respect each other. They have the potential to negotiate and sign the most far-reaching agreement ever between Israelis and Palestinians. But even if they do, can they carry it out?

“There’s never been less skepticism about the peaceful intentions of the leadership of the other side,” said David Makovsky, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But there’s never been more skepticism about their capabilities to deliver.”

If Israel is serious about peace, it has a major internal conflict coming with the settler movement, with those who do not wish to risk the security of Israel by withdrawing from the West Bank and from those who believe that Jerusalem must never again be divided…

There is a deep sense, among Palestinians and not just Israelis, that Mr. Abbas, although he was elected essentially unopposed, is a virtual president in charge of little, and that if the Israeli military pulled out of the West Bank, he would not last more than a day…

As important, Hamas remains ideologically opposed to a permanent two-state solution and the right of Israel to exist. Hamas remains committed to taking over the Palestine Liberation Organization, which Mr. Abbas and Fatah dominate…

Hamas’s formal position is that Annapolis is a waste of time and that Mr. Abbas must not make serious concessions to Israel…

As Hamas builds an army in Gaza — contradicting the diplomatic consensus that a new Palestinian state should have a police force but no army — the temptation for Israel to invade Gaza will be severe. But the damage of such an attack to Mr. Abbas, who may be seen as riding an Israeli tank back to power in Gaza, could be fatal — threatening not just his negotiating authority, but his life…”

[In my opinion, Hamas represents the Palestinian people, not the appeaser and collaborator Abbas. As much as I would support a successful two-state (or any workable) solution, this attempt at a two-station solution is doomed to failure. The Israelis have no claim on this land from which they were absent for nearly two millennia prior to the twentieth century illegal Zionist invasion and occupation. The single-state solution with Palestinian right of return is the only just and workable solution. The Israelis must and will be coerced to leave once again.]

We need AIPAC to ensure the continuation of the illegal Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/23/AR2007112300401_pf.html

Uneasy neighbors in occupied West Bank

By Alastair Macdonald
Reuters
Friday, November 23, 2007; 6:26 AM

ARIEL/MARDA, West Bank (Reuters) - The rolling hills inland from Israel's busy coastal strip are dotted with towns and villages nestled under towers rising above the olive groves.

Look closely, though, and one sees differences. Some towers are the minarets of mosques, others are concrete lookout posts for Israeli troops guarding Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

These are uneasy neighbors and the future of the settlers, who have built on land occupied by Israel in 1967, is among the "core issues" Palestinians and Israelis must resolve if they are ever to make peace in negotiations to be launched at next week's U.S.-hosted Middle East conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

Few around the settlement of Ariel see much chance of that -- Israeli residents are determined to stay and build, whatever their government decides, and Palestinians insist the settlers must go in order for them to establish a functioning state.

"My vision is ... to build here a city of 60,000 people," says Ron Nachman, mayor of Ariel, today home to about 18,000.

"As long as I live and I have the power and the strength I'll do everything in order to fulfill this vision," Nachman added, sitting in his office in the neat, hilltop industrial town, 40 km (25 miles) east of Tel Aviv's beaches.

"I want to live in peace with my neighbors."

A few hundred meters (yards) down the hill, that vision is not shared by Sadeq al-Khuffash, the mayor of Marda: "I don't dream of us living together ... These are settlements built illegally on our lands. They should be removed ... You can't expect me to live with the people who took our land by force."…

The World Court says settlements, home to some 270,000 Jews among 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, are illegal…

Asked about an incident this week in which gunmen killed a settler nearby, Khuffash says: "This is our home and resistance is a legal right. If there is no respect for agreements and international law, things will go on like this, with violence."

But neither violence nor an Israeli government withdrawal persuade Nachman Ariel's future is in doubt: "What I have done here is a fact on the ground," he says. "When Tony Blair has passed away, and President Bush, and I, this will remain."

The Saudis are in, now al we need is Syria:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/world/middleeast/24mideast.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

“November 24, 2007

Saudis to Join Mideast Talks; Syria Wavers
By MONA EL-NAGGAR and ISABEL KERSHNER

CAIRO, Nov. 23 — Saudi Arabia joined 14 other Arab nations on Friday in an agreement to attend the American-sponsored Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md., next week, while Syria — the last key holdout — was inching closer toward agreeing to participate.

If Syria’s primary demand is met, that the conference also address the dispute over the Golan Heights, Syrian land that Israel has occupied since 1967, the conference could be the first chance in years to begin a dialogue aimed at a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace.

But it will get off to a chilly start — the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, who said he would attend, made it clear there would be no handshake with Israeli officials…

There is a saying in the Middle East, that there can not be war without Egypt — but there can not be peace without Syria. The Syrians know well the spoiler role they can play in the region and have used that as leverage — knowing that the conference will not be as credible if the chair for Damascus is empty. Saudi and Syrian attendance was seen as essential.

“We will not decide to participate until we receive the agenda and read that the second issue on the agenda is the Syrian-Israeli track, that is, the occupied Syrian Golan Heights,” said Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem…

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, hailed the Arab decision to participate. “Staying away would have ensured the meeting’s failure,” he said. “Coming gives the Arabs leverage to say to the Bush administration: ‘Do now what you didn’t do leading up to this.’” Mr. Zogby said that Arab officials would now press the United States to try to wring concessions out of Israel…

Israeli officials insist that the Annapolis meeting will focus on the Israeli-Palestinian agenda. But to encourage Saudi and Syrian attendance, they, too, have signaled more readiness in recent days to consider a comprehensive Middle East peace, and specifically, a possible resumption of Israeli-Syrian negotiations down the road…

After meeting with Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, in Sharm el Sheik on Tuesday, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, also nodded toward the Syrians and Saudis by relating to the Arab peace initiative of 2002 in warmer tones than before.

The Arab initiative, which grew out of a Saudi peace plan, was reaffirmed by the Arab League at a meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in late March. It offers Israel full relations with the Arab world in return for a full withdrawal to the 1967 lines, the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and an agreed solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.

Mr. Olmert said that Israel “attributes great importance” to the Arab peace initiative “as part of efforts to reach a comprehensive peace agreement in the end.”

The Islamic group Hamas, which took control of the Gaza Strip in June after routing pro-Abbas forces there, called on Arab countries not to normalize relations with Israel.

Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader in Gaza, told the Palestinian news agency Ramatan that Annapolis was a “dangerous” event intended to tempt the Palestinians and the Arabs into “making concessions at the expense of Palestinian rights.”

Here is why we need AIPAC:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/23/AR2007112300332_pf.html

We want to make sure the Zionist land grabbers keep the rightful landowners from their land.

“Father to son, keys to Palestinian home cherished”

By Yara Bayoumy
Reuters
Friday, November 23, 2007; 5:55 AM

“AIN AL-HILWEH, Lebanon (Reuters) - The portrait of Hussein Saleh al-Me'ari holding a slim iron key and the legend "We will return" hangs on a wall with peeling paint in a tiny room at the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

His 45-year-old son, Salah, was born and later married in the camp. Salah's four children and extended family live in a few cramped rooms in the sprawling, decrepit camp which is Lebanon's largest and houses about 70,000 Palestinian refugees.

There is no immediate prospect for any of them to return to the family home in what is now Israel, even as Israelis and Palestinians prepare to meet in the United States next week for talks on a Palestinian state.

Yet Salah still keeps 18 carefully folded, yellowing pages of land documents that show his father and grandfather own 67 hectares (170 acres) of land in the small Palestinian village of Akbarah, near Safed town north of the Sea of Galilee.

Salah's grandfather and father fled along with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war in which the state of Israel was created…”

Why do Americans support Israel and not Palestine? Democrats and Independents are neutral on the issue, but 77% of Republicans support Israel. So the same people who brought us George W. Bush are also responsible for our pro-Israel bias.

Here is a more recent poll only two years old.

Gallup has published a poll that clearly shows that a large majority of the American people supports Israel in their war against Palestinian Islamic terrorists:

http://factsofisrael.com/blog/archives/000832.html

...“Increased Sympathy for the Israelis

Gallup's long-standing trend question on the Middle East, first measured in 1988, asks Americans whether their sympathies in the conflict lie more with the Israelis or the Palestinians. As has typically been the case, Americans are much more likely to sympathize with the Israelis (59%) than with the Palestinians (15%), with the remaining 26% not taking either side or not having an opinion. The current figures represent one of the most lopsided margins in favor of the Israelis ever recorded by Gallup. The only other times sympathy has been this high were during the first Persian Gulf War in February 1991 (when Iraq was launching Scud missiles into Israeli territory) and shortly before the start of the second war with Iraq, in February 2003 (58%). In 2004 and 2005, sympathy toward the Palestinians, though still low, was as high as it has been historically (18%).

Republicans (77%) are significantly more likely to sympathize with the Israelis than are Democrats (50%) or independents (50%). Gallup also finds that Americans who say they follow news about world affairs "very closely" are more likely to sympathize with the Israelis (66%) than Americans who follow foreign news only somewhat closely (59%) or who do not follow it closely (52%).

Gallup's World Affairs Poll also obtains basic favorable ratings of a variety of countries each year, including Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The new poll finds 68% of Americans saying they have a favorable opinion of Israel, including 21% who are "very favorable" toward it. Twenty-three percent view Israel unfavorably. Those numbers are essentially unchanged from last year, and are the most positive for Israel aside from a 79% favorable rating in February 1991 during the first Persian Gulf War.

In stark contrast, just 11% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Palestinian Authority, while 78% have an unfavorable view (29% say their view is "very unfavorable"). Last year, opinion was considerably more positive, with 27% favorable and 62% unfavorable. In fact, the current readings are the most negative Gallup has found since it began asking about the Palestinian Authority in 2000, while last year's were the most positive...”

Why do you think that Americans support Israel while Europeans do not? The following is a five year old poll, but I think that its results are valid today.

http://www.netanyahu.org/whyamsupisan.html

Posted 5/15/2002
By Glenn M. Frazier

Glenn M. Frazier is a freelance writer and editor of GlennFrazier.com.

“The European bureautocracy is shocked by the American stance toward Israel. The common views outside the United States range from seeing Israel as an oppressor state — some say "terrorist" — to the milder "well, both sides are guilty, but Israel is stronger."...

In a poll taken by the Pew Research Center in early April, the growing transatlantic gap in opinions on the Israel-Palestine conflict was confirmed. According to the poll, most people on the continent (France 63 per cent, Germany 63 per cent, Italy 51 per cent) disapprove of current U.S. policies with regard to the Middle East, while only 26 per cent of Americans themselves polled said they "disapprove".

Further, when asked to choose sides between Israel and the Palestinians, most Europeans either primarily sided with the Palestinians (France 36 per cent, Great Britain 28 per cent), or selected "neither" (Germany 33 per cent, Italy 32 per cent). Most Americans, on the other hand, placed their sympathies with Israel (41 per cent), with 21 per cent saying "neither" and only 13 per cent choosing the Palestinians. (Interestingly, in every country surveyed, those sympathizing with "both" were outnumbered by those choosing "neither.")...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I think that religious/cultural influences play a strong role. It is telling that the mainly secular Europeans side with the underdog Palestinians, while the mainly religious U.S. sides with Israel. Most of us identify with the Old Testament stories of Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, Jonah and the Whale, David and Goliath, etc. David and Goliath is a particularly apt one considering tiny Israel being perceived as the underdog David fighting the giant Goliath Arab League of Nations; when actually the opposite is the case with the world’s only superpower giving the Israelis unconditional support.

Ignorance of the history of the conflict has a lot to do with the poll results I think. Most are unaware of the manner in which the land was taken from its rightful owners (in my opinion) and transferred to the illegal and unwanted Zionist immigrants.

A parallel case might be if a powerful alien invader were to decide that we were not the rightful owners of the good ole U.S. of A., and decided to return everything west of the Mississippi to the Mexicans and Native Americans. They would have a much more valid case to make, since we have only occupied this land for less than two hundred years, whereas the Arabs had occupied Palestine for almost two millennia.

Oh well, “things” are about to change dramatically I think. The coming energy wars, the $100 per barrel (and rising) cost of oil, and our $10 Trillion (and rising) national debt is about to cool our enthusiasm for financing our colonialist ambitions by borrowing from the Chinese. If not, the Chinese and oil exporting nations will dictate terms to us on just about any matter of their choosing.

"Israel lobby" - what?

Common sense and national interest stipulate providing the politics in resonance with terror-struggling frontier state of Israel rather than awaiting outcomes from, for instance, "peaceful nuke programs" Iran at forefront is.

AIPAC is a Jewish settlement in america. Carter hit the nail on the head with his book, and the hammer came along and pulled it from the wood. A debate moderated by the credentials of a journalist who interviewed the former director of Mossad. At what price has come the fate of the Palestinian people? The world watches and sometimes catches a glimpse of the reality there, unemployed youth waiting for a garbage truck from Israel, to dump on the ground, so they can pick through the waste.

My eyes see what they see in world affairs. What is gone from the debate is the term anti-semite. One state solution, now there's a creative idea.

The Arab-Israeli conflict does seem like an intractable conflict. A country is established as a Jewish majority nation in the Middle of Palestine, an existing country with an Arab majority consisting of Christians and Muslims.

Today as it stands, 5.5 million Jews and 5.7 million Arabs live in historic Palestine, between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean. There are only two possible solutions that are viable alternatives to the current situation of occupation and apartheid, as named by many observers, Jews and gentiles, including former President Jimmy Carter who, himself, gave Israel its most prized posession, peace with Egypt.

The first solution is a one state solution with Christian and Muslim Arabs living with Jews in one state that combines Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza into one large nation that is home to both Palestinians and Jews. The one state solution is supported by the majority of Arabs and Palestinians, but is a no deal to Israelis and World Jewry for the reason that the new state would be majority Arab.

The second solution is a two state solution where the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem form the Palestinian state. This would result in two states between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, one Jewish, one Palestinian with large minorities of Arabs and Jews respectively.

The reasons that induce one to conclude that the Pro-Israel lobby is too powerful in the United States are evident. For the last fourty years, the Arabs of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, which now total 4.3 million people, have the been the only people on earth with no citizenship to any country. They have no rights, nor representation, nor self-determination or any freedom that is associated with a soverign people nor are they given these rights as full citizens of Israel.

The United States has supported this state of affairs despite its obvious moral shortcomings and illegal trappings, precisely because of a strong pro-Israel domestic lobby. Furthermore, American interests would no more explain the American policy in the Middle East than morality does.

US interest would lie at the very least in a peaceful Middle East, composed of a secured Israel and a free Palestine. However, even through the Oslo years, and definitely before and since, settlement building and settler colonization of the West Bank has been going strong. The number of settlers between 1967 and 1990 is 90 thousand settlers. During the Oslo years, between 1991 and 2000, the number of settlers increased to 250,000. Since the settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have reached up to 450,000. This number approaches ten percent of Israel's Jewish population. One can no longer claim that settlers are a fringe group. The United States has never weighed heavily against Israel for its settlement policy and the two presidents that tried, Jimmy Carter and George HP Bush did not get re-elected.

The answer is not to do away with lobbies or to outlaw the Pro-Israel lobby but to awaken average Americans to the real costs incurred in their financial and military support of the state of Israel against Palestinians and the entire Middle East.

Look at the heat that former President Carter took for his very reasoned views on the Israel/Palestinian problems and it's apparent how far we have to go before a real dialogue can take place.

This article is an example of some of the crap that the Washington Post has taken to publishing:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/24/AR2007092401471.html

It made me embarrassed to be a subscriber when I read that dreck. It seemed worthy of the Dearborn Independent back when Henry Ford was using that rag to promote anti-semitic blathering.

I agree that lobbies have too much influence on U.S. decision-makiing. A big part of that is the money that lobbyists provide to lawmakers. It's important for American democracy to get the money out of politics. The Supreme Court case equating money with free speech should be re-visited. It places the power in the hands of the rich (persons, groups, corporations).

The Israeli influence comes not only from AIPAC, but from Zionists in many important positions in government. These people are well-educated and intelligent, but in my opinion they seem to put Israel's interests ahead of U.S. interests. It is not in the U.S. interest to support everything that Israel does. I also think that the Christian churches do not distinguish between the Israel of Christ's time and the Israel of today, which influences many Christians to believe that God is with Israel.

Israel is indeed passionate-- about racism. It is the last version of Apartheid on the plant. That is hardly a democracy! But again, you probably decided to sit on the fence to defend your column space in the paper....

On the matter of self-censorship, I have to say that it is my perception that the Washington Post has become much more of a cheerleader for Israel since Katherine Graham passed away.

Previously, every so often the Post would publish an article on a matter related to Israel that clearly was not a comfortable topic for Israel to see discussed publicly in the media of its foremost foreign supporter. No longer.

What I have seen, however, are some pretty stupid editorial-type ramblings (thankfully not on the editorial page that I have noticed, yet) about how some criticism of Israel is so horrible, or about how some rational consideration about dealing with Iran is so ridiculous.

I once believed that the Post at least endeavored to report fairly on matters related to Israel. I no longer believe that to be the case.

I am concerned that Israel and its supporters have too much influence on my country and her policies. A case in point is how much access Israel was given to the Pentagon by Doug Feith, leading up to the Iraq invasion. And sometimes it seems that Joe Leiberman is more concerned about the well-being of Israel, than the United States.

It is easy to understand why the American-Jewish community wants to support Israel at any cost to avoid another holocust. Their fears are well founded, however no American, regardless of religous or ethnic affilitation can allow the United States to compromise our Democratic values for their particular cause. The pro-Israel lobby is walking a very fine line and could easly find themselves as the scape goat for the failed Iraq war. The rise of anti-semitism in the US would be an even greater tradagy than the Iraq war and with far more lingering effects. Everyone needs to pull back a little to find a middle ground or all will be lost for everyone.