RFQ

Correction: American tax dollars pay for Israel's defense.
Is U.S. going above and beyond for Israel?
By Walter Pincus, Published: May 16, 2012
Should the United States put solving Israel’s budget problems ahead of its own?
When it comes to defense spending, it appears that the United States already is.
Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, will meet Thursday in Washington with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta to finalize a deal in which the United States will provide an additional $680 million to Israel over three years. The money is meant to help pay for procuring three or four new batteries and interceptors for Israel’s Iron Dome short-range rocket defense program. The funds may also be used for the systems after their deployment, according to the report of the House Armed Services Committee on the fiscal 2013 Defense Authorization bill.
The Iron Dome funds, already in legislation before Congress, will be on top of the $3.1 billion in military aid grants being provided to Israel in 2013 and every year thereafter through 2017. That deal is part of a 10-year memorandum of understanding agreed to in 2007 during the George W. Bush presidency.
“Those funds are already committed to existing large-ticket purchases, such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, C-130J transport planes and other items,” according to George Little, spokesman for Panetta. He also said the Israelis had increased their own spending on Iron Dome this year and the U.S. funds are to “augment” their funding.
And there’s more money involved. The House committee version of the defense authorization bill, up for debate on the House floor this week, includes another $168 million “requested by [the] Government of Israel to meet its security requirements,” according to the panel’s report. This money is to be added to three other missile defense systems that have been under joint development by the United States and Israel. The $168 million is in addition to another $99.9 million requested by the Obama administration for those programs.
Israel has had its own debate over what its defense budget should fund. Given its economic problems, the country has cut its defense budget for this year by roughly 5 percent, with another 5 percent cut planned for next year. Its defense experts have debated whether it was more important to put scarce funds into offensive weapons that could destroy enemy missiles or into missile defense systems to protect civilian and military targets. In contrast to the United States, it has also raised taxes on wealthier citizens and upped its corporate tax rate.
The Israeli military has long-term plans to deploy 13 to 14 Iron Dome batteries to defend military and civilian targets against rockets launched from Gaza and Lebanon. If there is any doubt that the U.S. Congress will continue to support the program, one only has to look at the Iron Dome Support Act. The bill was introduced in the House in March by Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.), the ranking minority member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, along with the panel’s chairman, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.). A companion measure is in the Senate.
The first four batteries of Iron Dome, deployed last year in towns near the Gaza Strip, have proved successful in protecting against Hamas’s rocket attacks. Israeli military sources have said the system had more than a 70 percent success rate last month against incoming rockets.
In early 2007, then-Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz chose Iron Dome to meet the short-range rocket threat. Testing began in 2008, and by January 2010 the system showed it could be effective.
In May 2010, President Obama announced he would ask Congress to add $205 million to the fiscal Pentagon budget for the production phase of Iron Dome. The funds were approved, and in March 2011 the Israel Defense Forces declared the first batteries operational.
Iron Dome was developed and built by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., an Israeli government-owned, profit-making company that, since 2004, has been headed by retired Vice Adm. Yedidia Yaari, the former commander in chief of the Israel Navy. Rafael’s board chairman is retired Maj. Gen. Ilan Biran, former general director of the Ministry of Defense. In August, Rafael joined Raytheon Co. to market the Iron Dome system worldwide. The two are already partners in one of the other anti-missile systems that is being jointly run by Israel and the Pentagon.
The House committee report noted that the United States will have put $900 million into the Iron Dome system if the full $680 million is used on the program “yet the United States has no rights to the technology involved.”
It added that Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O’Reilly should explore opportunities to enter into a joint production arrangement with Israel for future Iron Dome batteries “in light of the significant investment in this system.”
So here is the United States, having added to its own deficit by spending funds that it must borrow, helping to procure a missile defense system for Israel, which faces the threat but supposedly can’t pay for it alone.
To add insult to injury, Pentagon officials must ask the Israeli government-owned company that is profiting from the weapons sales — including Iron Dome — if the United States can have a piece of the action.

(laughing) Abraham was not Jewish. There was no such thing as a Jew or Arab before Abraham. The Jews are decendents of one of his sons and Arabs are decendents of the other. You and I are neither. Who are we to decide which decendents of what sons get the land promised to them?

Abraham was not Jewish. He is described in the Bible as a Hebrew, a linguistic designation, not a religious one. He settled in Canaan Now Palestine/Israel), and his first born was Ishmael, a son with his Egyptian concubine. Ishmael is considered by theologians as the first Arab. The first Arab was born in what is now Israel. There have been Arab in the region ever since.
Christian Palestinians are also involved in the leadership and support of Hamas.

Still citing Joan Peters ?
Actually, the ancestors of those people living in Gaza include the ancient Canaanites as well as the ancient Hebrews, and they are part of a core population that has never lived outside of Palestine. Why should they be forced to leave their native homeland so that a bunch of European Jews can move in and turn it into their exclusive ethnocracy ?

Those people are descendents of Abraham LOL just as the Jews are
That land was, as even you and your nutjob gov Palin must well know, settled by Abraham's descendents long before the Romans (and Muhammad)
This was supposedly set in stone centuries ago

Yeah, they need to GO......somewhere else and stop being the bully that they are

Actually, sovereignty is not a requirement for the right to self-defense under international law.
Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention of 1949, (Act 1 C4), passed in 1977, declared that armed struggle can be used, as a last resort, as a method of exercising the right of self-determination.
The UN General Assembly's 20th session further clarified in 1965 "the legitimacy of struggle by the people under colonial rules to exercise their rights to self-determination and independent." Moreover, the assembly encouraged "all States to provide material and moral assistance to the national liberation movements in colonial territories."
Furthermore, international law has already granted the Palestinians the right to sovereignty; it has been denied that right by Israel. UNGA Resolution 3236, passed in 1974, recognized that the collective rights of the Palestinian people were fully and properly recognized, including the Palestinian people's right for self-determination in accordance with the United Nations Charter (which, in retrospect gives them the same right of self-defense granted to sovereign states.) In addition, it granted them the right of national independence, sovereignty and right of return to their homes.

A more viable comparison would be:
What if the U.S. forcibly occupied Monterrey, Mexico and a swath of Northern Mexico all along the Rio Grande, ethnically cleansed most of the inhabitants by driving them further into Mexico, bulldozed their villages, and appropriated their businesses; then started moving heavily armed American citizens, escorted and protected by American army troops, into the occupied lands; and then announced these lands were now the 51st state ? What would be the reaction from Mexicans ?

So, short story:
After dwindling rockets from Gaza for the past 5 years - directly due to the truce with Hamas - and a full year of NO ISRAELI DEATHS from Hamas rocket fire, Israel decides to get things going again by assassinating Hamas commander Ahmed al-Jabaari - the same guy who was enforcing the Hamas truce and preventing attacks on Israelis for the past 5 years - along with more than a dozen civilians including children. The assassination prompts a resumption of Hamas rocket fire, resulting in the deaths of 3 Israelis, which is all then used retro-actively to justify Israel's provocation in the first place.
Obviously, Israel decided it would be advantageous to break the truce and escalate the violence at this point in time. Anyone care to guess why ?

As I am sure you are aware, the way to start fresh in a new place is through legal means. My aunt waited for years and years and years to enter legally. Your sister doesn't get a free pass because she likes America better. Tell her to leave, buy her a ticket, and have her live in a country legally. Being an illegal doesn't give anyone dignity.

There is nothing you can do to prevent her eventual deportation. She is living here illegally.
No one is going to tell you if is is safe for her to go out now or if she should hide. Why would we help you on a public forum to commit a crime? You do know that it is a crime to harbor an illegal right? Doesn't matter that she is your sister, you are committing a crime by hiding her.
Do the right thing and send her home where she belongs. Every day that she is here means ICE could hunt her down, put her in immigration jail, handcuff her, and deport her. Unfortunately, that is her future based on the poor choices that your family has made.

Ty yaha and lynne...RFQ I sent you a pm. 8 more days and we will be back home in the U.S. Thank GOD. hope everyone still waiting is staying strong.

there are nacheed that sound sublime and ethereal to my ear. the sound of an average street discussion over the price of bread in arabic though is not as enchanting, i agree.

Hmm...here is what I come to learn about Arabs. Only 20% of all Muslims are Arabs. My husband would like to reiterate the point that he is not ARAB-- he is Egyptian, from the continent of African. Arabs come from the Arabian Peninsula he says.
So how do I feel about Arabic? I love the language and its by far easier to learn than English except the speaking part because my mouth muscles really don't move in that particular way. I feel there are a lot more Arabic speakers than there are Arabs.

Hmmm. Well, my opinion about Arabic-- it's okay. I read like a five-year-old, and speak at a similar level of coherence. My opinion about Arabs is there are a lot of them. My opinion about Arabians is they have awfully nice manes. I imagine that is on topic.

The person who so weirdly brought it up in the first place should probably follow his or her own damn advice.

From the bottom of my heart I need to express my thankfulness for this site and everyone that selflessly helped my husband and I through this process.
It is in no way of an exaggeration when i write I would not have gotten through this without VJ.
Whoa
Still dream like to think my husband and I have the approval to finally live together in the country of our choice. Awesome.
I assure you I will write my review in a few days...because I know personally how every bit helped me through the tough, sort of low times.
Everyone still waiting, please stay strong.

AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! Now its officially official. I blame you dear mates for encouraging me to take the trip. My school gave me the week off after christmas/winter break too. Found a much better price with a later return date.
o.O Alhamdulillah for the new director
im going im going!! insha'Allah

sad story, back in the good old days he would have had no problem visiting.
it seems like you have less rights if you are married.
no wonder there are so many illegals here in the USA.
a backward system, I might say.

It's super hard... if I had a dollar for every tear I shed in a cab, airport waiting room, shuttle bus, etc. when I was leaving Egypt I'd be a rich woman. But honestly, even with all of those tears, it was nothing compared to the heart-wrenching goodbye that my husband had with his family (sisters, nieces, brothers) when he was finally leaving with me. Because they all knew that he wouldn't be seeing them again for at least a few years (it's been three years now, and not sure yet when we will be able to go back to visit definitively. They were crying, then I was crying, then my daughter was crying because I was crying, and I felt like such a heel for taking him away from his family which obviously loved him so much. I think sometimes we forget that as much as it pains us to live away from our husbands/wives during the immigration process, it is also painful for them to move away from their families.

Happy Eid, to all those celebrating it
My Eid is off to an awesome start I got a sick baby and thus we are just enjoying a nice day together in the house. We have more planned tomorrow so iA we may get to celebrate then!

عيد مبارك سعيد

Happy Eid

Happy EID!