Republican Presidential Candidate, Ron Paul, thinks that Israel is not worth all the trouble it causes. Can he be so callous? Do the people who testify that these are his opinions, have an axe to grind with the candidate?
Read the article and let us know what your opinion is. Thanks.
Conservative Tom
But according to Dondero, the elderly congressman “wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all.”
Read the article and let us know what your opinion is. Thanks.
Conservative Tom
Ron Paul wishes Israel didn't exist'
Yitzhak Benhorin - Arutz-7, December 26th, 2011WASHINGTON – Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul negates Israel's right to exist, Eric Dondero, who served as a senior aide to the 76-year-old Texas congressman for over 12 years, said on Monday.
In a blog posted in Rightwing News, Dondero said that while Paul was, in his opinion, neither a racist nor an anti-Semite, he is very much anti-Israel.
“I worked for the man for 12 years (and) I never heard a racist word expressed towards Blacks or Jews come out of his mouth… I can categorically say that I never heard anything out of his mouth, in hundreds of speeches I listened to over the years, that could be called, anti-Semite,” he writes.
But according to Dondero, the elderly congressman “wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all.”The congressman's former aide insists in his blog that Paul expressed the controversial sentiment “numerous times in our private conversations.”
Paul's view, he said, “is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the America taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.”
Following Dondero's statement, Executive Director of Republican Jewish Coalition Matthew Brooks said that the former senior aide's blog “simply confirmed what we already know – Paul is against the Jewish State of Israel.”
Brooks had previously called Paul's views on Israel “misguided and extreme.” He was also excluded from a Republican presidential candidates' panel hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition in November.
Ron Paul's predictions in November, 2002 regarding the Iraq War, Israel, etc….
ReplyDeletehttp://www.antiwar.com/paul/paul55.html
Most of his predictions have come true. Party leaders didn't listen to him then. They still don't.
--David
David, his comments DID NOT come true. The only one that did come true is that there would be more Islamic fundamentalism. All the rest of the article, including a nuclear conflagration, Israel's massive expansion of settlements, the Iraqis supporting Sadaam and fighting the US and giving the Kurds to Turkey did not materialize.
ReplyDeletePaul's Predictions….
ReplyDelete1. "…the Iraqi people blame the U.S.-led sanctions and the constant bombing by the U.S. and British. Hussein has increased his power and the people have suffered from the war against Iraq since 1991. There are a lot of reasons to believe this same reaction will occur with an escalation of our military attacks." TRUE. The Iraqis fought against the occupation. What was it Dick Cheney predicted? Something like, "We will be greeted as liberators."
2. "Training dissidents like the Iraqi National Congress will prove no more reliable than the training and the military assistance we provided in the 70's and the 80's for Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein when they qualified as U.S. "allies." TRUE. Here we are after 8 years of "training" Iraqis, and its still a mess. In fact, Obama wanted to leave 5,000 military there beyond 2011 to continue the "training." The only reason we got out was because they kicked us out of the country per the SOFA.
3. "Pre-emptive war against Iraq may well prompt traditional enemies in the regions to create new alliances, as the hatred for America comes to exceed age-old hatreds that caused regional conflicts." TRUE. The al-Maliki government has close ties to Iran. Supported Lebanon against Israel. Supports the bloody dictator is Syria even today!
4. "As the balance of power continues to shift in the U.S.'s favor, there will be even more reasons for countries like China and Pakistan to secretly support the nations that are being subjected to U.S. domination in the region." TRUE. China works against us in the region, and Pakistan is the new home of al-Qaeda headquarters. Osama bin Laden was living in Pakistan next to their largest military base. They claim they didn't know he was there (gotta be kidding me!).
5. "The Kurds may jump at the chance, if chaos ensues, to fulfill their dream of an independent Kurdish homeland. This, of course, will stir the ire of the Turks and the Iranians. Instead of stability for northern Iraq, the war likely will precipitate more fighting than the war planners ever imagined." TRUE. The Kurds are more independent than ever from the central government. They even do their own oil leases in opposition to the central government. Turkey is at war with Kurdish terrorists crossing their borders from Kurdistan. Kirkuk is still unresolved, and you can expect continuing conflicts between Sunnis and Kurds over their oil.
6. "Islamic fundamentalism in the entire region will get a shot in the arm once the invasion of Iraq begins, especially in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Turkey." TRUE. You post articles yourself on this about every week.
continued...
7. "Expect Israel to use the chaos to further promote their occupation and settlements in the Palestinian homeland" TRUE. Israeli expansion of settlements in West Bank continue with no end in sight.
ReplyDelete8. "Our government would like to ignore this fact, but a new war literally could create an epidemic of casualties of the same sort, since the exact etiology is not completely understood. The number of deaths and injuries that might occur from an occupation of Iraq is unknown, but conceivably could be much higher than anyone wants to imagine." TRUE. Over 4,000 American soldiers killed, and more than 30,000 wounded. Countless PTSD cases for those who served multiple tours in Iraq. The long-term costs of this are staggering.
9. "Anti Americanism now sweeping the world will significantly increase once we launch our attack. Already we have seen elections swayed in Europe, Turkey, and Pakistan by those unfriendly to the United States. The attitude that the world's "King of the Hill" must be brought down will escalate, especially if the war goes poorly and does not end quickly with minimal civilian deaths." TRUE. You can compare international opinion polls of attitudes toward the U.S. from years ago to those done since these wars.
10. "Al Qaeda likely will get a real boost in membership once the war breaks out." TRUE (at least with regards to Iraq). There were virtually no al-Qaeda in Iraq before the war. Now, 8 years later, they are still active in Iraq. Have you been following the reports of their bombing campaigns in Iraq since the U.S. military has withdrawn?
11. "Our very weak economy could easily collapse with the additional burden of a costly war. " VERY TRUE! Bush borrowed the money from China to finance the war, which, along with his other policies, nearly doubled the national debt by the time of the financial collapse in 2008.
12. "This war, if of any significant duration, in time will be seen as a Republican war plain and simple. Along with a weak economy, it could easily usher in a "regime change" here in the United States. The conditions may justify a change in leadership, but the return of control to the opposition party will allow them to use the opportunity to promote their domestic liberal agenda and socialize the entire economy." TRUE. When this war started, Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the presidency. They lost it all by 2008.
13. The bottom line: "The net result, regardless of the size and duration of the coming war, will be that the people of the United States will be less free and much poorer." The Patriot Act! TRUE.
--David
David, I would love to go through each of your points but it would not be worth the time as I doubt that you and I ever would agree. However, there is one point that you are way of out touch. That one is #7. Israel has not expanded its settlements as most of the development is in existing cities. Point 2, the land that the settlements are on is land that Israel won in the 1973 war and it is NOT Palestinian land. There never was a country named Palestine and the only people ever called Palestinians were the Jews who have had thousands of years of occupation. This is a fabrication of lies by those who want to eliminate Israel.
ReplyDeleteFact-checking…
ReplyDeleteIsrael's Central Bureau of Statistics last month released the most recent population statistics for West Bank settlements. The figures show that during 2010 the growth rate was 4.5 per cent compared to only 2.9 per cent for Israel as a whole. Despite the ten month construction freeze that ended in September, the Jewish population in West Bank settlements grew by nearly 15,000 and now totals 327,800. These figures do not include the estimated 230,000 Jews living in annexed East Jerusalem. The rate of growth across the settlements was not uniform. Beit El for example grew by only 3 per cent to 5,867, whilst Bracha saw an 11 per cent rise. Of the larger settlements Beitar Illit's population rose by 6.4 per cent to 40,000 and Modiin Illit by 7.7 per cent to nearly 50,000. MK Yaakov Katz, head of the of the National Union party, said that at current growth rates and without a construction freeze, the Jewish population in the West Bank can be expected to hit a half-million by the middle of 2018.
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Those numbers are facts from Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics. Anybody who says Israel is not expanding its settlement constructions on the West Bank is either ignorant or lying.
So there is growth. Most of the residents in the West Bank are orthodox and their birth rates are higher than most other Jews. So there is growth that does not mean anything other than there are more people there.
ReplyDeleteBut it really does not matter, this is Israeli territory and they should be able to do whatever they want in that territory without interference from other countries, right?
"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for the accelerated construction of some 2,000 housing units in areas in the West Bank and around Jerusalem, an official statement said on Tuesday."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45121844/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/israel-speed-settlement-building-west-bank/#.Tv5-cc1cKY8
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I wasn't able to find exact counts of new construction longitudinally, but if you are suggesting that the population growth of Jewish population in the West Bank is attributable simply to differential birth rates, that is false. Also, many of the new immigrants are settling in the West Bank. Palestinian Arabs are forced off the land. The United Nations has declared these settlements violations of international law. Palestinian Arabs have been living there continuously for 1,000 years before the state of Israel existed. That is a fact. However, I don't want to debate the legalities with you. I only want to point out that these West Bank settlements are expanding and continuing unabated, since that was the original point you disputed.
--David
jews have been in the Jerusalem for over 5000 years. Additionally, the Arabs who lived in the area were nomads without any permanent buildings.
ReplyDeleteThe units that were authorized were around Jerusalem, areas that Israel conquered in the 1973 war. It is their land, to do with as they please!
Settlements in Efrat and Maale Adumim are in the West Bank.
ReplyDeleteIndians lived here 1,000 years before any of us. Do you believe they would be justified to someday reclaim by military force all this land that we took from them by force? That seems to be your logic.
By the same logic, if Hamas could someday gain the upper hand against Israel militarily and retake the land, are you okay with that? I doubt it. They had permanent settlements there during the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years prior to 1948.
Fact-checking… Palestinian Arabs were living in settled villages in the area long before the state of Israel existed. In fact, the Jewish National Fund was created to purchase land in Palestine prior to 1948. The Arabs only sold them about 7% of their land. The rest has been taken by force after 1948 and the various military actions thereafter. Today, on the West Bank, their homes are bull-dozed to clear land for construction of Jewish settlements. Again, I don't want to get into a big debate about the legalities (e.g., U.N. resolutions that Israeli settlements violate Geneva conventions). Let's just not deny that the expansion of the West Bank settlements is happening.
--David