“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the
people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of
the time.”
This quote, attributed to Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the
United States, is coming true. It is coming to haunt the US Zionist
lobby and its hemorrhaging of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars to prop
up the apartheid state of Israel while Americans become destitute and
America’s infrastructure falls apart.
Americans are waking up. One has only to look at the grassroots
campaigns that are cropping up across the US, something that would have
been inconceivable just a few years ago.
Below we’ll take a brief look at just three campaigns, but please
send us the details of others that we might want to highlight.
No Tax Dollars to Israel
No Tax Dollars To Israel is a project dedicated to ending US
tax support to Israel. Among the reasons it gives for this are:
- Israel is a wealthy
nation. Its per capita income (GDP) is higher than most of
Europe. It is not a needy country.
- The US needs the
money at home. Almost any domestic need is of higher priority
than sending money to Israel.
- Israel refuses to
act in US interests. US foreign policy requires Israel to stop
building settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan
Heights… Israel refuses, but the US continues to send aid. Does
this make sense?
- Israel has conducted
some of the most massive spying operations against the US
government, and has killed US citizens, including Rachel Corrie,
James Miller, Furkan Dogan, Dr Khaled Salah, Mohammed Salah and
many others.
- Israel deliberately
attacked US naval forces in an unprovoked attacked on a lightly
armed vessel, the USS Liberty, in international waters on 8 June
1967, with more than 200 American casualties, including 34
deaths, almost sinking the vessel, despite clear US Navy
markings, including a large American flag.
- Israel pushes the US
into wars that benefit Israel much more than the US, such as
Iraq…
- Israel is committing
massive human rights violations, often with the support of US
aid. Israel refuses to allow its non-Jewish citizens (mostly
Palestinians) to live in more than 90 per cent of the country,
and discriminates in jobs, schools, public services and many
other ways. Why should we support this?
- Israel promotes war
and discrimination in many parts of the world through the use of
weapons, spy agencies and mercenary services.
Coalition to Stop
$30 Billion to Israel
The Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel, according to its
website,
advocates an end to the 10-year commitment of 30 billion dollars
in US taxpayer-funded military aid pledged to Israel in 2007 by the
Bush administration. To further our mission, we work to inform the
public and our elected officials how the Israeli military misuses
American-made weapons technology and violates human rights. We also
shine a light on the support that New Mexico’s state government,
defense contractors and institutions of higher learning provide to
the Israeli defense establishment. Israel’s ongoing occupation and
control over Palestinian territories – East Jerusalem, the West Bank
and Gaza Strip – are illegal under international law and contribute
to unceasing conflict and suffering. The Stop $30 Billion Coalition
supports an end to the occupation and the establishment of justice
and equality so that both sides can live in peace. Coalition
organizations:
Amnesty International Chapter 101, Albuquerque
Another Jewish
Voice (Albuquerque)
Another Jewish Voice – Santa Fe (AJVSF)
Irish Freedom Committee
Middle East Peace and Justice Alliance
Muslim Women Outreach
The Social Concerns Committee of the
Albuquerque Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
New Mexico People’s
Weekly Forum
Pax Christi Saint Bernadette (Albuquerque)
Stop
The War Machine
United Nations Association, Albuquerque Chapter
Veterans For Peace – Santa Fe (VFPSF)
Veterans for Peace –
Albuquerque (VFPA)
Pax Christi New Mexico.
If American Knew
Perhaps the best known of the American awakening campaigns,
If Americans Knew’s mission “is to inform and educate the
American public on issues of major significance that are unreported,
underreported, or misreported in the American media”.
Among these issues is the massive and ongoing bonanza of US tax
dollars handed over to Israel, a criminal settler-state that has no
regard for international law and civilized bahaviour, in perpetuity, it
seems.
As highlighted on If Americans Knew’s website,
Israel is the largest recipient of US aid in the entire world. It
receives more aid than that given to all the countries of
sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, put together.
Israel receives about 8.4 million dollars per day from the
United States, and there is evidence that the total cost to American
taxpayers is closer to 15 million dollars a day…
Empowered by American money, Israel is occupying land that does
not belong to it, is breaking numerous international laws and
conventions of which it is a signatory, and is promulgating policies
of brutality that have been condemned by the United Nations, the
European Union, the National Council of Churches, Amnesty
International, the International Red Cross, and numerous other
international bodies. This truth is also rarely reported.
Through the money and weaponry provided by the United States,
Israel is imposing an ethnically discriminatory nation on land that
was previously multicultural. There is ethnic and religious
discrimination inherent in its national identity, and a doctrine of
the supremacy of one group over all others permeates its political,
financial, and military policies. This also is virtually never
reported…
American support of the Israeli government is against our
national interest on every level: it places us at war with
populations whose desperate plight we are helping to create, and
who, quite correctly, place the responsibility for their sufferings
on us. It makes us an accomplice to war crimes and an accessory to
oppression…
We believe strongly that if Americans knew the truth about Israel
and Palestine – about the massive amount of our tax money that is
being given away to Israel, and about the human costs of Israel’s
American-financed militarism – they would demand an immediate
rethinking of our policies in this region…
Americans, through our blank check to Israel, are empowering the
worst elements of Israeli society, and undermining those working for
a just, peaceful, and nondiscriminatory nation.
We are driving the violence in this region.
We can stop it.
We can and we will stop it.
Let us know about your campaign to stop taxpayer-funded support of
Israeli crimes.