Phony-Baloney "Freedom" Tower. New York City's Jewish mayor, Michael Bloomberg, laid the cornerstone for a new, preposterously named "Freedom Tower" on the site of the old World Trade Center yesterday, and uttered these ridiculous words:

"I cannot imagine a more appropriate day to stand on this sacred ground and lay a cornerstone dedicated to freedom, the defining principle of our nation and the reason that we were attacked on September 11, 2001".

What inexcusable drivel!
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The United States was attacked by Arabs on September 11th to retaliate for endless attacks by the United States Government upon the Arab world incited by people like Michael Bloomberg, the vile "Israel lobby" that has made the United States rightly hated by all decent people worldwide — including increasing numbers of Americans, who are desperately ashamed of their country's behavior in endlessly backing the most outrageous atrocities by Israel against non-Jews.
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The Jews of the United States are scared shitless that American Christians and other non-Jews will wake up to the fact that Zionism brought on the WTC attack and the ongoing war against us by Moslem militants, and blame the Jews for 9/11 — for which they do indeed bear responsibility. Thus, American Jews have tried to invent a different reason than the utterly obvious only reason for the attacks. They came up with the ridiculous, utterly implausible and unbelievable contention that ARABS are attacking AMERICANS, 6,000 miles from home, because we are free! Who on Earth is so stupid as to believe such nonsense?
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Who commits suicide to attack someone else's freedom? It's ridiculous.
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Most of the world is not free, yet we are not under assault from sub-Saharan Africans nor from Chinese nor Cubans, Vietnamese, or any other group but Moslems generally and Arabs most particularly. Nor are they sending terrorists to destroy Tokyo and kill free Japanese.
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Everyone knows why we are being attacked by Arabs. Everyone knows! But we are not allowed to admit it aloud. That has got to end.
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Policy must be predicated upon truth, no matter how unpleasant that truth may be. To base policy upon a fraudulent premise is to guarantee that it will fail.
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The policy that we must recognize as having produced endless war against us by Arabs is mindless, blank-check support for the insane idea of Nineteenth Century Central European Jews of recreating ancient Israel in modern Palestine. The idea was, when first proposed, absolutely off-the-wall nuts. It remains, to this day, absolutely off-the-wall nuts.
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We have poured an astonishing amount of taxpayer money into this insane scheme. Ohio's Columbus Free Press suggests this tally:

Since 1976, Israel has been the leading recipient of foreign assistance from the United States. From 1949 through fiscal year 2000, the United States has given Israel over 81 billion dollars in foreign aid, making Israel the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. It is important to note, however, that $81 billion is a conservative number for U.S. foreign assistance to Israel. The figure, $81 billion, does not include Department of Defense allocations for joint defense projects such as, for example, the $200 million allocated in past years for Israel’s development of the Merkava tank. Moreover, the figure does not reflect imputed interest Israel receives from early disbursement of U.S. foreign assistance. U.S. foreign assistance to Israel is unique because repayment on loans to Israel is waived [and thus we are not really talking "loans" at all, but outright grants] and the United States has pledged in the Cranston Amendment to provide Israel with economic assistance not less than the amount Israel owes the United States for previous loans. A more accurate total of cumulative U.S. foreign assistance to Israel may be closer to $91 billion.

And that's only PUBLIC money, thru the year 2002.
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A wider view is afforded by a report by the Congressional Research Service, which tallies all sources of aid for Israel (which happens to be essentially from the United States alone):

Israel is not economically self-sufficient, and relies on foreign assistance and borrowing to maintain its economy. Since 1985, the United States has provided $3 billion in grants annually to Israel. Since 1976, Israel has been the largest annual recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, and is the largest cumulative recipient since World War II. In addition to U.S.
assistance, it is estimated that Israel receives about $1 billion annually through philanthropy, an equal amount through short- and long- term commercial loans, and around $1 billion in Israel Bonds proceeds.

The bulk of those additional $3 billion per year is from U.S. sources: U.S. philanthropists, U.S. commercial lenders, and U.S. purchasers of Israel Bonds.
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Think about that: $6 BILLION dollars pretty much from only one country, the United States, each and every year, year after year after year. By contrast, U.S. assistance to Palestine totals about $100 million — that's "million", with an M: 1,000th of a billion. This means that if Israel gets $3.3 BILLION in a typical year and Palestinians get $100&Million, Israel gets 3,300 TIMES as much money from taxpayers as do Palestinians. Are there 3,300 times as many Israelis as Palestinians? No, there are not.
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Actually, the total population of Israel is about 6.3 million, only 80% of whom are Jewish — but virtually all of the benefit of U.S. aid to Israel goes to the Jewish portion of the population. I tried to find population information on Palestine from the same source as for Israel's population, The World Factbook of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. But, astonishing and appalling to say, "Palestine" does not exist, to the CIA. They never heard of it. It is not a listed country; the "Reference Map" of the Middle East on the website does not show the existence of any such thing as Palestine! Oh, that's even-handed, isn't it?
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You have to think to look up, separately, "Gaza Strip" (1,324,991) and "West Bank" (2,311,204 ) to find that Palestine has a population of 3,636,203. So Israel has 6.3&million people (including a maltreated 20% minority of "Israeli Arabs" (Palestinians by another name) who get little of that), which is only 1.73 times as many people as Palestine; if we count only Jews as recipients of U.S. aid to Israel, which is fair, the difference is about 5,040,000 Israelis as against 3,636,203 Palestinians, or 1.39 times as many Israelis as Palestinians.
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These 5,040,000 Jews (the largest number there has ever been in Israel, tho that "country" has been receiving this same order of U.S. aid for decades, when the numbers of recipients were much smaller) amounts to $3.3B (of public money) divided by 5.04M = $655.76 for every single Israeli man, woman, child, and babe in arms, every year, year after year without end.
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By contrast, $100M for Palestinians divided by 3.6M = $2.78 per person a year.
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An Israeli family of five — and yes, the typical Israeli family is larger than the typical U.S. family — thus receives $3,273.81 from the U.S. taxpayer each and every year. A Palestinian family of six (yes, one more child) receives $16.68 A YEAR! And that's counting only the direct tax benefit. Since Israel actually receives on the order of $6.3B from all U.S. sources each year, the typical Israeli family actually receives on the order of $6,000.00 from the U.S. each year, while the typical Palestinian family still gets only $16.68!
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Let's put this difference, of 353 times as much per family, into a U.S. context. Let us posit that the government were to give $6,000 per white child in school but less than $17 per black child. Would we regard that as equitable, fair, "equal treatment under law" in keeping with our declared national purposes in the Declaration of Independence and other basic documents that Bloomberg so proudly invoked? Or would blacks erupt with violence every few days to shake society out of this insanity, with devastating effect — the equivalent of a new WTC attack every week?
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And what about the rest of this starving planet? Israelis aren't starving (tho Palestinians practically are). Every dollar given to Israel is diverted from starving children in the Third World.
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It amazes me that Americans, who like to think themselves fair and decent people, consent to grotesque unfairness in the Middle East, carried out in their name, which of necessity produces hatred for us in decent people everywhere. Even passing over the mass death and destruction that Israel commits every month against Arabs, without end, just the constant maintenance of Palestinians in bitter, dehumanizing poverty while Israelis luxuriate on U.S.-taxpayer-provided welfare would produce violence against us.
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The whole damned country of Israel is on welfare! and Americans, who bitterly disapprove of their own countrymen gorging at the public trough, consent year after year to keep Israelis living unfairly well at our expense, while keeping Palestinians miserable.
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It is that misery that makes people embrace suicide bombing as liberation. They seek "Freedom" too, Mr. Bloomberg, freedom from Israel, freedom from the Israel lobby, freedom from active oppression by the United States Government.
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Thus, for Michael Bloomberg to declaim that he can think of no more fitting day to celebrate the behavior that produced the World Trade Center attacks than July 4th is an obscenity. How on Earth can you reconcile "All men are created equal" with the insanely unequal treatment the U.S. gives Jews and Arabs?
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When will we wake from this nitemare, cut Israel completely off welfare, treat Palestinians equally to Israelis (at the least), and thus bring peace the only way it can ever be brought: by doing justice?
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:22 PM