At the New York times and in Congress no less. Haha.
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There are some US troops in Israel, but they are mainly there to be trained by Israelis on close combat and also related to training US troops on Israeli antimissile systems that the US is adopting (e.g., Iron Dome). There are also US Air Force personnel who pick up equipment shipped to Israeli ports (by ship) for use elsewhere. We essentially act as a giant supply depot.
You are correct that the US troops don’t provide protection to Israel, but I believe (I can’t quite follow the discussion) that the point of the comparison is to contrast Israel to places like Incerlik, the bases in Germany, etc., where the USA does provide protection to those countries.
Again, Israel, in contrast, acts as a giant supply depot for the USA, and Israel provides the protection.
Interestingly, regarding Incirlik, there are articles today in Israeli papers that the US quietly moved the B61 nuclear bombs stored there to parts unknown, but probably Romania. Don’t know if this is true.
But it seems logical, since the purpose of Incirlik was to provide Turkey with protection from the Soviet Union and Ergodon has really ceased to be an ally of the USA and has made threats about taking over the airbase (and the nukes).
The law you say is so horrible is as follows:
The Basic Law comprises eleven clauses, as follows:
1 — Basic Principles
A. The land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people ( in which the State of Israel was established.
B. The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious, and historical right to self-determination.
C. The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.
2 — Symbols of the State
A. The name of the state is “Israel”.
B. The state flag is white, with two blue stripes near the edges and a blue Star of David in the center.
C. The state emblem is a seven-branched menorah with olive leaves on both sides and the word “Israel” beneath it.
D. The state anthem is “Hatikvah”.
E. Details regarding state symbols will be determined by the law.
3 — Capital of the State
Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.
4 — Language
A. The state’s language is Hebrew.
B. The Arabic language has a special status in the state; Regulating the use of Arabic in state institutions or by them will be set in law.
C. This clause does not harm the status given to the Arabic language before this law came into effect.
5 — Ingathering of the Exiles
The state will be open for Jewish immigration and the ingathering of exiles.
6 — Connection to the Jewish people
A. The state will strive to ensure the safety of the members of the Jewish people and of its citizens in trouble or in captivity due to the fact of their Jewishness or their citizenship.
B. The state shall act within the Diaspora to strengthen the affinity between the state and members of the Jewish people.
C. The state shall act to preserve the cultural, historical, and religious heritage of the Jewish people among Jews in the Diaspora.
7 — Jewish Settlement
A. The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.
8 — Official Calendar
The Hebrew calendar is the official calendar of the state and alongside it the Gregorian calendar will be used as an official calendar. Use of the Hebrew calendar and the Gregorian calendar will be determined by law.
9 — Independence Day and Memorial Days
A. Independence Day is the official national holiday of the state.
B. Memorial Day for the Fallen in Israel’s Wars and Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day are official memorial days of the State.
10 — Days of Rest and Sabbath
The Sabbath and the festivals of Israel are the established days of rest in the state; Non-Jews have a right to maintain days of rest on their Sabbaths and festivals; Details of this issue will be determined by law.
11 — Immutability
This Basic Law shall not be amended, unless by another Basic Law passed by a majority of Knesset members.
While the Barr “hearing” do not rise to the level of the utter fiasco that the Kavanagh hearings did…the DEMS just don’t look good. I guess that the DEMS are just not good at this kind of thing. (Whatever all of this is).
Some thoughts on what’s been posted lately.
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I am with @Jewbacca in saying that Antisemitism is neither “right nor left”…and we all probably would do best to not frame it that way. It is a hate that seems to engulf a wide swath of political ideologies.
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Omar may be close to 40 years old…but she is ignorant. Support of Israel is NOT “about the Benjamins”…but is deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian beliefs. I firmly believe that those beliefs were forever made part of our collective psyche when those first (mostly) U.S. Troops entered and liberated the concentration Camps of WW-II…and Americans began to slowly but surely learn of the atrocities of the Nazi’s. While there were many Americans whom had heard and seen the atrocities throughout the War…nothing quite compared to seeing firsthand piles of tortured and emaciated human bodies…or of learning of the ovens. Omar needs a history lesson.
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Trump has never shown throughout his Life to either be a Conservative; nor has he shown to be an unwavering supporter of Israel. I firmly believe that every move he makes have only selfish motives. I hope the Knesset sees through his facade.
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I do NOT believe that President Obama was, or is, antisemitic. I think that his “antisemitism” was part of the whole “Muslim/Not Born in America” narrative that was pushed by the Right (including the “born-again” Trump). I DO think that President Obama was naive in thinking that he could be an instrument of change for the Muslim World. By making such a attempt; he was going to come off as a de facto non-supporter of Israel/ and/or indifferent at best…and Netanyahu and the U.S. Right were more than happy to fuel the flames.
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I personally am an unapologetic supporter of Israel and Her survival. She represents a little strip of oil-less, dry land; surrounded my Millions who want her and her People wiped out of existence. Does anyone really think that the Middle East problems are because of Israel? If so…then you need to look in the mirror. And if Muslims in the Middle East fight and kill each other on a daily basis…why are we to believe that they somehow care about the Palestinians? Palestine is a difficult problem to which rich and powerful Middle Eastern States have shown no.moral leadership in helping to resolve. Their “solution”? Kill Jews and give the land “back”.
I never said it was horrible, I said it wasn’t fair. Haven’t the Druze served and died in the IDF?
(Great discussion that past 2-3 weeks, guys. Thanks!)
Do you know which country was the first to recognize de iure the State of Israel? The Soviet Union. They thought that Israel would became a socialist state (Kibbutzim cough cough) and therefore serve as a springboard against “Western Imperialism”. Of course, things completely reversed in the 50ies, but it’s remarkable history nonetheless.
Soviet Diplomatic Support
The struggle of the Jewish community in Palestine was endorsed completely by what was then called “enlightened public opinion,” above all by the political Left. Andrei Gromyko, at the UN, asserted the right of “the Jews of the whole world to the creation of a state of their own”, something no official of the U.S. State Department has ever acknowledged. Soviet support in the U.N. for partition brought along an additional two votes (the Ukrainian and Bielorussian Republics within the USSR and the entire Soviet dominated block of East European states.
Taking (as always) their lead from Moscow, the (hitherto anti-Zionist) Palestinian communist organizations merged their separate Arab and Jewish divisions in October, 1948, giving unconditional support to the Israeli war effort and urging the Israel Defense Forces to “drive on toward the Suez Canal and hand British Imperialism a stinging defeat”!
World Wide Support from the Left
The most famous and colorful personality of the Spanish Republic in exile, the Basque delegate to the Cortes (Spanish Parliament), Dolores Ibarruri, who had gone to the Soviet Union, issued a proclamation in 1948 saluting the new State of Israel and comparing the invading Arab armies to the Fascist uprising that had destroyed the Republic. Just a few months earlier, the hero of the American Left, the great Afro-American folk singer, Paul Robeson had sung in a gala concert in Moscow and electrified the crowd with his rendition of the Yiddish Partisan Fighters Song.
Jewish Attempts to Buy Arms and Czech Approval
The major Arab armies who invaded the newly born Jewish state were British led, equipped, trained and supplied. The Syrian army was French-equipped and had taken orders from the Vichy government in resisting the British led invasion of the country assisted by Australian troops, Free French units and Palestinian-Jewish volunteer forces in 1941. In their War of Independence, the Israelis depended on smuggled weapons from the West and Soviet and Czech weapons.
The leaders of the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine), already in the summer of 1947, intended to purchase arms and sent Dr. Moshe Sneh (the Chief of the European Branch of the Jewish Agency, a leading member of the centrist General Zionist Party who later moved far leftward and became head of the Israeli Communist Party) to Prague in order to improve Jewish defenses. He was surprised by the sympathy towards Zionism and by the interest in arms export on the side of the Czech Government. Sneh met with the Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Clementis, who succeeded the non-Communist and definitely pro-Zionist Jan Masaryk. Sneh and Clementis discussed the possibility of Czech arms provisions for the Jewish state and the Czechs gave their approval,
In January, 1948 Jewish representatives were sent by Ben-Gurion to meet with General Ludvik Svoboda, the Minister of National Defense, and sign the first contract for Czech military aid. Four transport routes were used to Palestine all via Communist countries; a) the Northern route: via Poland and the Baltic Sea, b) the Southern route: via Hungary, Yugoslavia and the Adriatic Sea, c) via Hungary, Romania and the Black Sea, d) by air, via Yugoslavia to Palestine.
ven with Czech weapons and Soviet aid, Israel would undoubtedly have been unable to halt the Arab invasion without a massive inflow of manpower. The United States, Canada and Europe provided no more than 3000 volunteers, many of them combat hardened veterans from both the European and Pacific theaters of war plus a few score idealistic youngsters from the Zionist movements with no combat experience or training.
But their numbers were a drop in the bucket compared to more than 200,000 Jewish immigrants from the Soviet dominated countries in Eastern Europe, notably, Poland, Bulgaria (almost 95% of the entire Jewish community) Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the former Baltic States and even the Soviet Union who emigrated to Israel arriving in time to reach the front lines or replenish the depleted ranks of civilian manpower. Without both the arms and manpower sent from the “Socialist Camp”, to aid the nascent Israeli state, it would have been crushed.
The About-Face of The Party Line on Zionism
Jewish Marxist theoreticians the world over including several high ranking Party activists, all dedicated anti-religious and anti-Zionist communists had followed the Party Line and even praised a vicious pogrom by Muslim fanatics carried out against ultra-Orthodox Jews in the town of Hebron in Palestine in 1929. The Party Line then was that the Arabs masses were demonstrating their anti-imperialist sentiment against British rule and its sponsorship of Zionism.
In 1947, when Stalin was convinced that the Zionists would evict the British from Palestine, the Party Line turned about face. Following Soviet recognition and aid to Israel in 1948-49, both the Daily Worker and the Yiddish language communist daily in the U.S. Freiheit (Freedom) outdid one another to explain the new party line in that…
“Palestine had become an important settlement of 600,000 souls, having developed a common national economy, a growing national culture and the first elements of Palestinian Jewish statehood and self-government.”
A 1947 CP-USA resolution entitled “Work Among the Jewish Masses” berated the Party’s previous stand and proclaimed that “Jewish Marxists have not always displayed a positive attitude to the rights and interests of the Jewish People, to the special needs and problems of our own American Jewish national group and to the interests and rights of the Jewish Community in Palestine”.
The new reality that had been created in Palestine was a “Hebrew nation” that deserved the right to self-determination. Remarkably, the Soviet propaganda machine even praised the far Right underground groups of the Irgun and “Stern Gang” for their campaign of violence against the British authorities.
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How is it not fair to the Druze in Israel? Are Druze denied full citizenship rights? Rights of worship? Military Pensions? Anything? Nope. It’s a curious nonsensical tempest in a teapot – caused by people that don’t like the idea of a Jewish state.
Someone informed me that “what is going on now”…from Trump (and maybe before)…to Kavanaugh…to all of these recent “hearings” is the proverbial “Political Theater”?
Okay…if that is the case…the Trumpublicans are a helluva’ lot better at it than the DEMS.
The DEMS just seem to come up looking bad when all is said and done. (IMO).
Well that explains why the worldwide left hates Israel. They’re jilted lovers.
Well, not actually. The Soviets chose to side with the Arabs in the mid-1950ies - they were intoxicated by Nasser’s apparent eagerness to embrace socialism. They believed that by opposing Israel they could get more nascent Arab countries to embrace communism. And it kind of worked for a while - the Assad clan is the legacy. Also, the traditional Russian anti-semitism came back to the fore.
US support for Israel only began in the mid-1960ies under LBJ and the relationship was much more difficult that it it now, to say the least. So much for the support predestined by shared Judeo-Christian values.
Here’s a fun story - some members of my family emigrated to Israel, delighted to have escaped the trauma of the Holocaust and the horrors of communist rule, only to end up in a Kibbutz, the pinnacle of socialism.
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I thought the US was the first to recognize Israel in the UN in 1948. Obviously USSR was not in the UN. I could be remembering wrong.
Well, 2 years provided the Dems with enough work to create the largest Dem win in what? 30 years? Trumpublicans still don’t have all of Trump’s people confirmed, despite 2 years of complete national government domination (90% of which he still has)
Fully admit the Obama era GOP was significantly better at political theatre. Benghazi and the birther movement were works of art.
Do you say this as a reflection of the political outcome of the midterms?
USSR was a founding country of the UN. It had three (!) votes - for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus which mattered in those early days before decolonization drove up the country numbers.
While Truman did de facto recognize the “provisional government of the new State of Israel” on the 14th of May 1948, the USSR was the first country to extend official recognition three days later. Official US recognition came two weeks after that.
The 1948 war provided some truly bizarre moments - namely, Israeli pilots flying German Me-109s (well, Czech copies of the Me 109) and shooting down American built P-51s and British built Spitfires in Egyptian service.
Including serving IDF officers who’ve protested?
Regarding the “fairness” comment - my understanding of Hebrew is really pathetic, but aren’t they bragging that they’ve organized a massive campaign to prevent Israeli Arabs from voting and thus have helped Bibi win?
https://www.facebook.com/Kaizler.Inbar/photos/a.360404798114400/441952863292926/
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Ah. Owned. I confused NATO and the UN.
Have to ask, @loppar;
How are you defining “support”?
No.
As a reflection of how they are looking in hearing after hearing.
2 examples; Kavanaugh and today with Barr.
No one in their right mind would think that the DEMS came out of the Kavanaugh hearings looking unscathed. It was a political fiasco.
Today I was able to catch part of the Barr “hearing”. Maybe it was just a fraction of the total, but it was when Cruz and Leahy spoke.
Cruz sounded like a Fire-n-Brimstone Baptist Preacher the Sunday morning after a night with a bunch of black Louisiana Hookers.
Patrick Leahy (who is twice Cruz’s age, by the way)…sounded like someone responding to a nurses commands in an Intensive Care Unit.
If it’s all Political Theatrics? Cruz 100; Leahy -25
Also…the Trumpublicans are in a much better position to give the DEMS a big crotch-grab, because their supporters are demanding it; especially since Trump and his Minions do it each and every day.
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I suppose just one Term in Congress is bound to make one a hypocrite (hell…some arrive already one). This is now making the rounds on-line:
" A President can be removed if this body [Congress] determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role . . . because impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”
Lindsay Graham: 1999
Honor and integrity?
Pffff…Please…
Well, I think these Wikipedia articles nicely illustrate the US policy shift in the 1960s in response to Soviet arms sales to Arab countries. Also, note that previous US Presidents, notably Bush Sr., assumed policy positions that would have been labeled “antisemitic” by Trumpians had Obama assumed them. It’s Trump that’s the outlier, not Obama.
