There Oughta Be A Law!

AGAINST allowing Americans to support murder!!

from Desert Peace

Just let some other group here try to raise money for the military of any other country! They’d be behind bars so quickly they wouldn’t know what hit them.

Ashkenazi raises over $20m. at IDF fundraiser

Hundreds of protesters march outside the $1000-a-plate gala at the Waldorf-Astoria

NEW YORK – There was scarce evidence of the global recession at a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser for the IDF in New York City on Tuesday night.
Even as protesters outside the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel decried the guest of honor – Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi – donors pledged six-figure sums, topping $20 million by the end of the night. Inside a glittering ballroom, Friends of the Israel Defense Forces staged a theatrical show that tugged on the heartstrings – and purse strings – of the nearly 1,400 in attendance.

On the heels of a trip to Washington, where he met with top US officials, Ashkenazi emphasized the threat of Iran’s nuclear program and called on the international community to stop the Islamic regime.

“All options should remain on the table,” he said.

But outside, a coalition of left-leaning groups led hundreds of protesters in a single-file march around the perimeter of the hotel. Clad in black, they hoisted signs emblazoned with the words, “War crime,” “End the siege on Gaza” and “Israeli war criminals feast at the Waldorf.”

“Everyone feels that Operation Cast Lead was an outrage,” said Dorothy Zellner, of Jews Say No!, which mobilized early. “As a Jew, I can’t tolerate that the country that did this claims it is doing it for me.”

Read the rest here.

Read about the demonstrations outside here.

There is a US law against giving free money called foreign aid to any country developing or having nuclear weapons without being an in compliance signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

If anyone should be barred from receiving federal contracts or aid it is the State of Israel, who has refused to sign the NNPT and have illegally pursued a nuclear weapons program of their own. The 1976 Symington Amendment to the Foreign Appropriations Bill of 1961 forbids the United States from giving foreign aid to any nation that is developing nuclear technology outside the NNPT.

Despite this, approximately 1/3 of the total foreign aid budget of the United States is annually sent to Israel even though they comprise less than .001 of the world’s population and has one of the world’s highest per capita incomes.

Former Congressman James Traficant rightly pointed out recently that between the direct foreign aid grants to Israel, along with all of the other benefits including trade compacts, economic and military assistance, “Israel gets approximately $15 billion a year from the American taxpayers. That $15 billion is $30,000 for every man, woman and child in Israel.” (more - Keith Johnson)

While we're at it, why is there not a law against dual citizens, specifically US-Israelis, from holding positions in the government?

If you think we're being unfair here, ask yourself: How you would react to the Head of Homeland Security if he or she were a dual national with citizenship in Iran, Lebanon or Saudi Arabia? Ask yourself why you don't feel the same about Israeli dual citizenship. Then you will understand how powerful the Israeli lobby has been in "adjusting" your acceptance of their special status. {more}

Now consider another disturbing fact. A large number of key government officials and policymakers in the Defense Department and in the State Department during the Bush administration were not only pro-Israeli, they were dual US-Israeli citizens. Some of these officials are no longer in government, but many remain in a position to influence our government’s policies toward Israel. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, is a dual Israeli-US citizen. That creates not only distortion and bias in the way that events are seen at the White House, it creates divided loyalty in how the US responds to events in that part of the world. {more}

And why in the hell should the most powerful lobby in this country be that of a foreign country? You might think there would be a law against it.

In the early 1960s, the late Sen. William J. Fulbright (D-Ark.) fought to force the American Zionist Council to register as agents of a foreign government. The council eluded registration by reorganizing as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC has since become what Fulbright most feared: a foreign agent dominating American foreign policy while disguised as a domestic lobby.

Israelis and pro-Israelis object when they hear that charge. How, they ask, can we so few wield such influence over so many? Answer: it’s all in the math and in the single-issue advocacy brought to bear on U.S. policy- making by dozens of “domestic” organizations that compose the Israel lobby, with AIPAC its most visible force. {more - Jeff Gates}

AIPAC even writes many if not most of our foreign policy laws that deal with the middle east.

The Israel lobby’s campaign against US and international corporations doing business with Iran is gearing up this week. The tip of the spear is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee sponsored expansion of the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996. If signed into law by president Obama, the legislation would institute onerous new monitoring to ensure exports never enter Iran, along with mandatory divestment from and penalties for any corporations discovered doing business in Iran. A new type of "office of special plans" at the Treasury Department that AIPAC and its think tank lobbied to create by executive order in 2004 is also on the warpath.

Americans should be outraged that a foreign lobby like AIPAC is actually trying to write the rules — when warranted application of the law would have abolished it years ago. AIPAC and other nodes of Israel’s lobby successfully broke important US laws to seize power in America. They now expect US private enterprise and workers — the world’s best — to open their own little "offices of special plans" to carefully track company products, profits, and investments in the name of Israel.

Israel and its US lobby actually think Americans will go for all of this, that we’re a forgetful and obedient lot, who don’t care much about our laws, economy, or jobs — who are just aching to get into AIPAC’s newly fabricated economic straightjacket.

Better think again. (more at antiwar}

We have too many laws as it is but when it comes to Israeli power over the American government ... we don't have enough or the ones we do have are totally ignored.

It's time to change that.