Israeli Elections

"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say ‎it." From "The Friends of Voltaire", 1906, by S. G. Tallentyre (Evelyn Beatrice Hall) ‎

On March 17th,2015 we Israelis –Jews and Arabs alike- will go once more to the polling stations ‎and vote for a new government, yet again after less than two years. In respect to the ‎subject of elections there are many things here I could speak about. The most important ‎of them being the drastic need for a change in the Israeli electoral system which, I may ‎add, has been a problem since the creation of the state. Israel is unique in that it is one of the few a true democracies. This is quite evident  by the many varied and different views that are realized at election time. We have our ‎mainstay large political parties but we also have political parties from all walks ‎and spectrum's of life.

Ever since Moses came down with the Ten Commandments and in ‎a fatherly “pissed off at the kids urge” move and smashed the Tablets of God’s Ten ‎Commandments. We Jews have had a problem with leaders and taking orders since we ‎are truly the “stiff necked” people. Israeli politics reflects this part of our Jewish psyche. As humans have done ever since before the "Tower of Babble" we have expressed our ‎need to argue and to be different. I guess that is why we have so many political parties.‎

As the years go by it seems, at times, that it only gets worse. Though in the past Knesset the ‎members did vote in favor of raising the percentage of votes for a party to receive ‎representation. Alas as in the Middle East bazaar, this has created a farcical market for ‎small parties to sign agreements for favors for their “Lost” votes with larger parties. ‎

In addition to the drastic need for electoral change is the need for the writing of a constitution for the ‎establishment of a set of Israeli laws – many do not realize that we still use British and ‎Mandatory Laws.‎

Clarification

Before I continue I wish to clarify. Here in Israel there are two main groups / camps that are labeled either "Leftists" or "Rightists". There are extremists on both sides of this spectrum and the intensify of the level of hysteria that one holds in regard for the other is despicable in it's blindness of human reasoning. It is literally biblical Cain versus Able. At times there is almost no possibility of civil debate between the two sides. However whenever the two sides begin a discourse the tone of speech is laced with epithets of blind hatred to the point of violence at times.

So very few people alive today remember that the dream of a Homeland for the Jewish people was only achieved a mere 67 years ago. The memory of it's foundation blackened and distorted by the tidal wave of abject anti-Jewish hatred and jealousy by a some of the people who resided here. But also by those who have loathed and despised the Jewish people through out history. In the beginning some of the Arab leadership even welcomed the return of the Jewish people, while those of the old Islamic ways hated our arrival from the beginnings and disapproved of our return. That the country's foundation is derived from the dire need to find a safe haven in the world for our people in our ancient homeland. The fact that finally and reluctantly occurred only after the systematic murder of six million of our relatives in Europe at the Partitioning of the Mandate by the United Nations vote of November 1947 will be forever a blight on the face of mankind.

On the Left of the political sphere in Israel are those who are from the original Communists secularist movements of the Haskalah movement from before the creation of the state who grasped the idea of society as expressed in the 'Critique of the Gotha Program'  by Karl Marx:

"In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

The first pioneers in the 1880's to Israel were believers in the dream that all men are equal and that all must be shared. That is the meaning of the commune or the Kibbutz. Those young idealist pioneers who came to farm and build the land of  Israel had learned in the Haskalah movement. They had rejected the Orthodox Jewish traditions and teaching but instead grasped the Biblical concept of reclamation of our homeland by hard physical labor and not by religious religious study. They also believed that religion and belief in God is abhorrent and that it leads to the base hatred between not only men/women but nations and peoples as well. They attempted to live and share with their Arab neighbors but they learned very quickly that not All Arabs were keen to the idea and because of this they formed Militias or Guard Movements to provide for the defense of their communities from Arab marauders.

On the other hand a large part of the Old Yishuv spent their time studying the Torah and lived off Ma'amodot (stipends), donated by Jews in the Diaspora. The Old Yishuv religious Jews, lived mainly in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron. Smaller communities were in Jaffa, Haifa, Peki'in, Acre, Nablus, Shfaram and until 1779 also in Gaza.

The parties of the far "Left" "Mapam" "Hadash" and "Meretz" are vilified and despised to the point of hatred and even violence by those on the right. They are widely vilified for their willingness to bend over backward to appease the Arabs in their rush to sue for Peace. They are not interested in the "Jewishness" of the link to the land. They see themselves merely as inhabitants who reside here.  They are hedonists and believers of "Gay" Liberal rights. The believe in a classless society. I call it the 'Kumbaya belief", a totally unrealistic view, since man's inner hostilities and fears of others have not developed enough throughout mankind to exist. One need only to look no further that the events of the ISIS in Syria and Iraq to understand the stupidity of this thought at this time. And regretfully as Mr Spock would surely believe we are not living in some science fiction movie of the future in space.

As to the "rightist" we have those religious Jews of the "Greater Israel" movement and their backers from the Fundamentalist Christian Messianic sects. They are the religious Jews of Orthodox heritage many from the "Knitted" kippah (Hebrew word for the skullcap traditionally worn by Jewish men it is also called a yarmulke or koppel in Yiddish.) of the National Religious Party (Hebrew: מִפְלָגָה דָּתִית לְאֻומִּית, Miflaga Datit Leumit, commonly known in Israel by its Hebrew acronym Mafdal, (Hebrew: מפד"ל))

The National Religious Party (NRP) was created by the merger of two parties—Mizrachi and Hapoel HaMizrachi—in 1956. It was a political party in Israel representing the religious Zionist movement. Formed in 1956, at the time of its dissolution in 2008. Throughout the NRP's existence it attempted to preserve the relevance of Judaism on issues such as Israeli personal status laws, education, culture, and municipal issues such as prohibitions on the selling of non-Kosher food (in prescribed areas, and occasionally throughout a given municipality), prohibiting transportation and public activities on the Shabbat.

After the victory of the 1967 War messianic trends among religious Israeli Jews were reborn and with the "Liberation" of ancient Judea and Shomron, in the June 1967 War many religious Jews affiliated with the Beitar and pre-state Etzel and Lechi have returned from abroad to make their homes in our ancient Jewish Homeland of Judea and Shomron.

The resettlement of communities ethnically cleansed in 1947 and 1948 resulted in many members of the NRP moving further right. Many descendants of the ethnically cleansed Jews from the Jewish Old City Quarter of Jerusalem, the settlements of "Gush Etzion" and Hebron began to return to their homes and lands. Many falsifiers of history have deleted the truth that Jews owned land and had homes beyond the 1949 "Ceasefire" or "Green Line". To this end their communities are vilified by being termed "Settlements" and the residents are labeled "Settlers" when in essence the area was once inhabited by Jews and owned by them. On the "Left" are those who attempt to negate the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel and 
euphemistically refer to the area as the "West Bank". 

According to the League of Nations resolution for the establishment of the Mandate for ‎Palestine, the area of Judea and Shomron the “West Bank”, were illegally conquered and seized ‎by Jordan in 1947. The area had been recognized as a cestui sue trust  for the Jewish Homeland ‎in April, 1922 in the Treaty of Sèvres (Section VII, Art 94-97) by 52 countries at the San Remo ‎Conference which granted the Palestine Mandate to Britain. The League of Nations officially ‎granted Britain the Palestine Mandate on July 24, 1922.‎

Therefore Jewish communities that existed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip prior to 1919 were ‎recognized as legitimate by the Mandate for Palestine, which was adopted by the League of ‎Nations. The only administration that completely prohibited Jewish communities from existing ‎in the captured “West Bank” was that of Jordan from 1948 to 1967. ‎

Regarding Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Israeli government has not forcibly ‎transferred its population into the territories. The return of Jews to the Judea and Samaria (West Bank) is voluntary and does not displace local inhabitants. ‎The land that was being to build new residential areas, villages and towns never had been ‎under the legitimate sovereignty of any state beforehand.

There are no clauses in the Fourth ‎Geneva Convention that can be used to prohibit the voluntary return of individuals to towns and ‎villages from which they or their ancestors had been previously ejected by forcible means. ‎The Jewish communities of;  Hartuv, Kfar Etzion, Hebron, and the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem had ‎only been re established after exhaustive investigations making sure none were built on private ‎land. Israel also argues that some of the communities are built in areas purchased by a Jewish ‎land holding company in 1925 and where Jewish communities that existed before the 1948 Arab-‎Israeli War when many "West Bank" Jewish Communities were destroyed and the residents ‎massacred or expelled, It seems reasonable to refer to the land of these communities as liberated ‎as it was freed from the illegal occupation of Jordan and was returned to possession of its ‎owners, the Jewish People. Therefore in these cases the application of the Geneva Convention is ‎an entirely different issue.

 Now here is my brief introduction of the political parties.‎

The two largest parties are the Likud and the Labor Party cum “Zionist Camp”. These ‎two fractions are mainstays since before the creation of the country based on two ‎divergent Zionistic thoughts: ‎

The “Revisionists” of  Revisionist Zionism ie Likud –(pre-State Irgun and LECHI some ‎call them “Freedom Fighters and some call them "Terrorists") ‎

and the “Socialists”or Labor Zionism  / Socialist Zionism – the Labor Party of The ‎‎“Zionist Camp”- (who are identified with the The Hagannah and the Palmach)‎

The other parties are:‎

Agudat Yisrael representative of the Religious; Ashkenazic (Western) “G” or Gimmel ‎and the Sephardic Shas movement of HaRav Ovadiah Yoseph the (“Jews of Arab lands”) ‎‎[or if you prefer Matza Balls and Gefiltte Fish versus Mofletot and Dag Harif.] They ‎want Torah Judaism, Yeshivot –seminaries for learning. They lead pious lives and want ‎to be left alone to study. They usually do not serve in the Army. The men study and the ‎great majority of them do not work. The wives work and provide meager incomes. They ‎live very simply with no modern “luxuries”. They ask to receive government subsidies ‎for their schools and centers of learning. ‎

“Yisrael Beitanu” The Russian Strong Man party of Avigdor Lieberman . It primarily ‎represents immigrants from the former Soviet Union.  It takes a strong line towards the ‎peace process and the integration of Israeli Arabs, characterized by its 2009 election ‎slogan "No loyalty, no citizenship"‎. 

‎“Yesh Atid” –there is a future – the party of Yair lapid basically a continuation of the party of his father Tommy Lapid. “Shinui” which was based on the Liberal Party - were derived from the “Second Aliyah” business class bourgeoisie who migrated to “Palestine” during the Mandate period from 1920. Basically they represent the middle class and the small businesses. Yesh Atid wants to reduce the financial burden –taxation on the middle class and young families especially those of small business owners.

“Meretz”, which was originally formed in 1992 with the union of Ratz, Mapam, and ‎Shinui. Meretz defines itself as a Zionist, left-wing, social-democratic party. They see ‎themselves as the political representative of the Israeli Peace movement in the Knesset. ‎They are against “settlement” in the “Occupied Territories. They believe in Gay rights ‎and in secularization of the Israeli lifestyle.‎

 HaBeit HaYehudi – The Jewish Homeland- Naphtali Bennet they basically are what is ‎left of the Religious Labor Zionist movement and the Greater Israel “Settler Movement ‎of Judea and Shomron. They do not want to be removed from the “West Bank” and they ‎are active to defeat the establishment of a 23rd Arab nation called Palestine. They believe ‎in annexing the area to Israel.‎

‎“Colanu” - All of us It is a breakaway party of ex-Likudnik Moshe Kachlon who was instrumental in ‎creating some major changes in the control of monopolies on several businesses in Israel ‎primarily the Mobile Phones monstrosity that charged ridiculously high inflated prices ‎for their use. His reforms changed and revolutionized how monopolies do business in ‎Israel. He was ousted from the Likud by “Bibi” more than probably at the urging of the ‎financial Mongols who pull the strings of the “Likud” leadership.‎ ‎

Now as to the main adversaries we have the Prime Minister Benyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu  ‎leader of the Likud Party - Hebrew: ‎הַלִּיכּוּד‎  "Consolidation". Prior to the 1973 elections an alliance of several right wing parties; Herut, the Liberal Party, the Free Centre, the National List and the Movement for Greater Israel was formed as a secular party by the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The " Likud" (Hebrew: הַלִּיכּוּד ) or "Consolidation", as it is called represents the consolidation of the right wing of the spectrum of politics in Israel. Once more the Herut or Freedom Party became the senior partner as they had been in a previous coalition with the Liberals know as " Gahal" since 1965. From its establishment in 1973, Likud enjoyed great support from blue-collar Sephardim who felt discriminated against by the ruling  "Ashkeniazic" Alignment.

The Herut or “Freedom “ party is the ‎outgrowth of the political beliefs of Zev Jabotinsky and the movement for “Eretz Yisrael” ‎and the militant Jewish Beitar –Etzel Lechi group. The “non-apologists” group for the ‎resettlement of Eretz Yisrael. The other part that formed the Likud was the Liberal Party ‎who were derived from the “Second Aliyah” business class bourgeoisie who migrated to ‎‎“Palestine” during the Mandate period from 1920.‎

The center-left is identified with the Workers party the “Poalim” the Israel ‎Labor Party. The current leader of the Labor Party is  Issac (Yitzhak) “Bougie” Herzog  The party of the Labor ‎Land movement Ohavei Zion who came in the 1880’s and established  the communal ‎farms the Kibbutzim and the Moshavim. It's ideological vision for Israel is based upon ‎the values of the Jewish labor movement, the social experience and cultural heritage of ‎the Jewish people. The Labor Party is pragmatic in its approach. It recognizes the ‎necessity to compromise in both the domestic arena and in foreign affairs in order to ‎promote political stability and the advancement of Israel's fundamental interests.‎ 

The rise to power of the Likud with it's victory in 1978 was based on the failures of the "Labor" lead government during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the cynical use of the "Sephardic" card to garnish votes. Few of them realized that the "Likud" is manipulated by the Herut, who they themselves were on the whole "Ashkenazim". 

The whole episode of the white skinned "Ashkenazi Labor Party" animosity was an out growth from the reality of the early development of the state when housing, money and building supplies were far from enough to keep pace with the young countries post independence immigration waves.

David Ben-Gurion, who had been head of the Jewish Agency, and later president of the Jewish Executive, thereby became the de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine. Be Gurion Led the Jewish Agency in its struggle for an independent Jewish state under the British Mandate.  As the country's first leader he realized that it's first meager resources were urgently needed to foot the cost of the War of Independence. Ben-Gurion knew the crucial importance that an effective properly trained and armed army was needed to defend the fledgling state. Means of production were urgently needed and as all tested leaders in times of crucial leadership Ben Gurion made decisions which were not popular but helped to form a nation. In the post War of Independence years Israel began to develop but under an iron fist of draconian financial measures. A nation with no real natural resources and nearly bankrupt had to build the infrastructure of a state. Ben-Gurion who was a member of Socialistic Mapai (Labour) party won the largest number of Knesset seats in the first national election, held on 14 February 1949 and was elected Prime Minister of Israel. He would remain in that post until 1963, except for a period of nearly two years between 1954 and 1955. 

During the first two decades of Israel's assistance it had no extra income to splurge on "luxuries" the lifestyle was extremely "Spartan". There were few job opportunities. Many places of work were government or labor Union- Histadrut financed factories. Farming and produce came from co-operatives with Kibbutzim to provide badly needed foodstuffs for the country. As Prime Minister, he presided over various national projects aimed at the rapid development of the country as he oversaw the establishment of the state's institutions, the construction of the National Water Carrier, rural development projects and the establishment of new "Development towns" pioneering settlements that housed the mass immigration of Jews from Arab lands -"Sephardim" in outlying areas, especially in the Negev and the Galilee peripheral areas.

The animosity of the Sephardim developed from the program to settle them in Maabarot- Transit Camps of these "Development Towns" far from the center of the country due to the housing shortage. The level of education was inferior in the outlying areas due to the level of the overall population. Public and medical services were few and far between. Transportation was nearly non existent. The Government -represented by the Labor party was occupied with the building of a viable state under the constant threat of war. It was not until after the June 1967 War that the economy began to flourish and with it cases of abuse also identified with those aligned with the Labor Party.

Since its birth Israel has been plagued by a series of prolonged ‎systemic failures that have affected our civil system of governance, law enforcement, ‎justice, education, welfare and health. With the formation of the Likud governments they allowed the new survival-of-the-fittest capitalistic economics to develop at the cost of government subsidized businesses. Which were the only companies or businesses that existed in peripheral Development Towns. Those businesses that did open in peripheral areas took the government subsidies and paid minimum wage to workers. And as soon as the government benefits finished they would close leaving tens of families unemployed.

The “Free economy policy” of the Likud has allowed ‎multinational corporations and obscenely wealthy individuals to manipulate the economy ‎to their gain against the benefit of the Israeli populace and society on the whole.‎ 

At an increasing speed over the past decade - Israel has had its sense of purpose and ‎solidarity eroded by the insatiable greed of its economic elite of the descendants of the Bourgeoisie class of ‎the Liberal Party who formed part of the Machal for inflated profits at the cost of the Israel workers. Politicians of the Likud  have benefited from serving them. ‎Israel's original Labor party orientated socialist roots have been washed away to form a society that has the ‎largest gap in income between rich and poor of any Western country. The development of multiple political parties each with their own agenda, have created through the wheeling and dealing to achieve political office in pass elections led to large cabinets packed with ministers who were empty chairs. Therefore there is a drastic need to reduce the size of the cabinet to enable government to manage its vital ‎tasks, such as law enforcement and security.

Thousands of new Israeli millionaires were given blanket tax exemptions on stock ‎exchange earnings, while hundreds of thousands of us in the middle classes can barely ‎eek out a living for our family’s, while having large amounts of our income confiscated ‎for taxes. Many Banks and companies, pay their executives obscene wages and ‎retirement packages through government guarantees and subsidies. Small businesses ‎must be liberated from strangling regulation and taxation. Educators are paid next to ‎nothing. Our schools have forty children to a classroom. Only parents who can afford to ‎finance the extra hours of "gray education" can insure their children's future. 

We have borne witness to government officials rushing to "privatize" the land that ‎Zionist pioneers and their supporters sacrificed so much to redeem. These unscrupulous ‎officials sell the land off to wealthy contractors in order to build suburban housing for the ‎offspring of the well-off. Young couples are being strapped with ever increasingly high ‎mortgages. Public housing for the poor has been ignored or placed at the very bottom of the social ‎agenda. A public transportation system and a highway system that would connect the ‎peripheral areas to places of job opportunities are slow to develop or go under-funded and under-developed for the sake of new roads in the "West Bank". The ‎only reason that there is any movement in developing the transportation system is to ‎satisfy the greed of car importers and building contractors who want to put up ‎McDonalds and shopping malls off the highway exits like on the new toll road highway Kvish 6 or the Haifa bypass tunnel.‎

Today's pampered Israeli hedonistic teenage children of the very rich in Herzilya or Ramat Aviv can ‎afford to hang out in malls, they can have a bite at McDonalds ‎or Pizza Hut while texting to their friends on their newest iphones. They sit around discussing their latest ‎purchases of electric powered bicycles and their trips to Europe and beyond. You will not ‎be hearing that many of them plan on going to the army. They don't have too much ‎feeling for Zionism, and most could not care less. Like their parents many have a deep ‎and profound identification with Western “Liberal” values.

Now speak to any of the approximately 50 percent of Israeli children who will ‎never have a chance to graduate from high school with a matriculation degree because of ‎slashed funding to schools and the lack of funds to pay for enrichment after school ‎programs. Those kids to those who reside in Ramle, in the neighborhoods of Jaffa or in ‎Hadera, in Shlomei, in Shechuna Dalet of Beersheva or a hundred other impoverished and lower class ‎neighborhoods and Development Towns. Let us not forget that many of the family’s of these children will not be able to ‎afford to pay for food let alone enrichment classes for their children.

Many of these disadvantaged young people will not be able to go to the army because ‎some of them will already have police records, meaning the army won't even want them, ‎and some because they don't want to fight for a country that can't be bothered to give ‎them an education. They cannot see a positive future for themselves or their families.‎

Yes, we do have a values problem here in Israel. Our children learn quickly. They see what is going on in this country, and that is what determines their ‎attitudes. The media here idolizes those who have "made it" they all know of the reality shows and escapism it offers from the reality of the Israeli situation. They spend their childhoods under the very real threat of annihilation. That wars are fought on a regular basis because our neighbors have an insatiable thirst for ALL the land. Our children have witnessed dear ones: close friends, brothers, sisters and fathers go off to fight and die.They know the sounds of "Code Red" and the Iron Dome. They have seen the torn flesh and damage wrought upon our civilian population by "Falestinian" mortars and rockets. Yet still we still desire peace but NOT just at ANY cost. 
Oh yes there are many successes in Israel technology and in start ups, but what is equally as important is to strengthen the Jewish identity of the youth. Above all we need to elect government officials who will take bold steps not just in the quest for a just and lasting peace but those who will strive to make our lives and those of our children better.

We Israelis will not continue to allow economics based ‎on naked greed and ignore the educational, health, ‎employment and housing needs of millions of Israelis. Do not expect to us to continue voting for those who will not change. We need new leaders who will show us the way out of the financial quagmire and to help us improve our image and standing in the world.So we do not need rhetoric alone we need action.

  

US Aid to Israel

"Don't threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid." 

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin during his Senate Foreign Relations committee testimony June 22 1982, regarding Senator Joe Biden threatening to cut off aid to Israel.

A Facebook friend of mine asked me about a photo comment reply of mine to the libelous lie that has been told for years; by those seriously demented mentally deprived anti-Israeli trolls  group of ignoramuses who sufferer from Falestinian Bamboozled Derange Syndrome (BDS), regarding the "Level of US Aid to Israel, I have replied that before ranting, raving and screaming at Israel they should consider this tidbit:

"Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip receive one of the highest levels of unrecorded aid in the world. Aid has been offered to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and other Palestinian Non-governmental organizations (PNGOs) by the international community, including International Non-governmental Organizations (INGOs) and the funds are largely unaccounted for.

According to certain analyses, Palestinians are the largest per capita recipients of international development assistance in the world (Lasensky [2004], 211, Lasensky-Grace [2006])."

"Until his death in November 2004, former PA President Yasser Arafat controlled Palestinian finances and faced widespread criticism for his lack of transparency, corruption, and misuse of foreign aid. Some observers described Arafat’s use of the PA treasury as his “personal cashbox” and allege that almost half of the $7 billion provided to the PA since its creation in the early 1990s may have been diverted by Arafat to political patronage and kickbacks."

Although the extent of Arafat’s misuse of PA money was never fully known, Israeli leaders, Palestinian reformers, and others repeatedly accused Mohamud Abbas and his inner circle of corruption; nevertheless, his total domination of Palestinian political life made him indispensable to those seeking his cooperation in achieving regional peace and many were forced to ignore such charges." David Samuels, “ In a Ruined Country,” Atlantic Monthly, September 2005.

So here is the truth behind US foreign military aid to Israel and how it actually benefits the US Taxpayer.

 "Currently, Israel receives $3 billion annually in US assistance through Foreign Military Financing (FMF). Seventy-four percent of these funds must be spent on the acquisition of US defense equipment, services, and training. Thus, "United States military aid to Israel is seen by many as a subsidy for U.S. industries", according to Kenneth M. Pollack."

Though President Harry Truman is fondly remembered for his part in the creation of Israel, few note that he had an unwillingness to supply arms to the Jews fighting for independence.

This total arms embargo, continued from 1948 until 1966 despite persistent pressure from US supporters of Israel, until the Kennedy Administration.

It was finally in 1962 that Israel was "allowed to purchase cash on the barrel", the HAWK anti-aircraft missiles system, its first major weapons system from the United States.

The State Department which was led by highly anti-Semitic members, was opposed to the sale. 

Kennedy felt justified in ordering it's execution after he failed to dissuade Egyptian President Nasser from escalating the arms race and after he learned that the Soviet Union had supplied Nasser with long-range bombers. 

The HAWK sale was significant not only because it was the first major direct arms transfer to Israel but also because that system required that Israeli soldiers be given extensive training in the United States and that spare parts be supplied to Israel. These were the first steps on a path which made Israel increasingly dependent on U.S. arms.

Very few remember the "next deal" of the sale of USED -read post US Military use "surplus" A-4 Skyhawk and how the decision to do so came only seven months after the United States had, for the first time, sold Israel offensive arms 200 NEW US Manufactured M-60 "Patton" tanks from a sales contract with the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) had withdrawn. 

President Lyndon Johnson and his "administration" did not want to add jets to the hardware that it had already sold Israel. The Johnson administration, like its predecessors dating back to 1948, wished to avoid, if possible, entering into any strategic partnership with Israel. 

However, by early 1966 the United States decided that strategic exigencies, principal among them that of selling combat jets to Jordan in order to block Soviet influence in the region, dictated the transfer of these aircraft to Israel.  

The significance of the sale was explained by Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Warnke in a discussion with Yitzhak Rabin.

The United States had avoided becoming Israel's arms supplier, he said, because it wanted to reduce the risk of a U.S.-U.S.S.R. confrontation in the Middle East. 

The U.S., he said, would have preferred to continue that policy but could not because of the refusal of the Europeans, especially the French, to arm Israel. 

"We will henceforth become the principal arms supplier to Israel, involving us even more intimately with Israel's security situation and involving more directly the security of the United States" (emphasis added). 

It was not just the agreement to provide 50 Phantoms that was significant, he said, but also the sale of the Phantoms plus 100 Skyhawks and other equipment requested by Israel, which made the policy a distinct change from that of the past.

The sale was announced on December 27,1968. Israel was to receive 16 Phantoms in late 1969 and another 34 in 1970. It was the largest single arms deal signed to that point by Israel. The cost was $285 million and Israel paid in cash to avoid the need to pay interest on loans.

President Johnson's reluctance to sell Phantoms to Israel was based  on the reluctance to harm America's relations with the Arabs, particularly Nasser, whom the U.S. was still trying to court.

This actual FACT is revealed, for example, in Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearings held on June 9, 1967 

" It is a fact, is it not, that neither Soviet Russia nor the United States has given any material amounts of arms to Israel, and, if that is true, are they not relatively independent in their thinking at this point?

US Secretary of State Dean Rusk (from 1961-1969):

No, we have provided tanks and Hawk missiles and certain other kinds of equipment to Israel , but their principal arms supplier has been France ... The Israeli air force is almost all French supplied."

The Israeli lobby and its supporters in Congress saw the national interest from a different perspective asserted that U.S. -Arab relations would not be hurt by the sale of arms to Israel since the Arabs already considered U.S. policy unbalanced, and since repeated efforts to bring Nasser into the Western camp had failed. Finally, the notion that supplying Phantoms to Israel would undermine efforts to limit arms sales to the region was rejected as hypocritical because both the Soviet Union and the United States were pouring weapons into the Arab states.

Today when the US Government gives out military aid the great majority of it does not leave the shores of the US: for example the latest news of the F-23 sale. 

Trillions of hard earned dollars from US taxpayers are used to fund the Defense Department each fiscal year. Much of the money goes to buy new weaponry. 

In order to provide up to the date equipment, all arms manufacturers of the US military industrial complex and military contractors need to make sells of arms abroad. They do this in order to raise enough funds to continue their research and development and to make a profit to employ thousands of US taxpaying citizens. 

These US Defense Contractor employees salaries go to purchase necessities and services from companies and businesses in their hometowns that employee thousands of other tax paying US residents.

The funds allocated to foreign countries each year by Congress, go to shore up regimes "Friendly" to the USA. Countries like Iraq and Lebanon receive millions in US AID that is NOT ever spent in the USA or returned. 

There are NO demands made to them to REPAY.

Yet, when it comes to Israel the AID package money goes to purchase US military equipment, some new and some surplus. Like these mothballed F-14 Tomcat fighter jets awaiting demolition at 

Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, in Tucson, Ariz. U.S.

For example, basic necessities like ammunition -from 5.56mm bullets to 155mm Artillery shells, Hellfire missiles and even army boots and uniforms MADE IN THE USA by US employees. Israel uses it's "AID Package" to purchase so as to not forgo any alloted funds. 

If you have a basic knowledge of production you would know that in all forms of production you do not produce, or put into production the exact amount of items needed. Due to the strict demands of "ISO" quality control restrictions you always add, let us say 10 to 15% more to your production line in case of rejection or ruin.

So what happens to those let us say one thousand extra boots or ten Humvees or M-16's? 

What do you think? The US Government sells them off as surplus.

As US Citizens please note, YOU paid the company with your tax money to produce them, by contract. Ergo in order to recuperate your investment the US Government earmarks them as military aid for Egypt or Lebanon. Then you deduct the money from "their" aid package, however unlike with the "AID" givent the "Jewish State" these "Gifts" are never repaid.

As for Israel, Israel orders from US suppliers and their orders give jobs and taxes back into the US economy. 

In addition to which the US military gains valuable research and development knowledge from the usage performed under combat conditions by the IDF. 

Of course you will not like this part but this exchange of technical knowledge has saved hundreds of millions of US tax dollars and US military lives.

Since the US military orders the production each year of numerous items for strategic reserve it cannot keep some equipment for extended periods in storage without renewal. Many of these items are sold off at reduced prices to recuperate partial production cost. 

This cycle of renewal prevents the closure of many factories and production lines, thereby giving jobs to many good hard working patriotic Americans.

Through the US AID packages the United States had gained the needed leverage on Israel by 1975 in its resupply of badly needed military supplies and equipment through the air-lift. 

The Yom Kippur war made it clear to Israel that the scale of military engagements in the Middle East had altered radically since 1967, and that it could therefore no longer be independent militarily. 

The dramatic lesson that was learned by Israel in the intensive fighting of the Yom Kippur War was that the quantities of arms and materiel consumed in just a few days of fighting demanded an industrial capacity that could not be provided by the Israeli military industries. 

The technological innovations that were needed at that time were beyond the capabilities of Israel. 

Kissinger may have persuaded Nixon to resupply the Israelis in 1973, however Kissinger then used this leverage purchased by resupply to push for Israeli withdrawals in Sinai. 

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was apparently the only one who had read the Middle East policy map correctly. He understood that if he could move Egypt into the American orbit and offer a "diplomatic horizon" for peace, he would be able to get back the Sinai Peninsula.

For the standard anti-Zionists of all kinds, it is very convenient to point to the large amounts of foreign aid given to Israel as Mr. Dean alludes to. Of course, that aid is given to ensure that Israel will remain compliant with US wishes, and prevent a repetition of the Six Day War scenario, as mentioned above in the Senate hearings, which was a nightmare for the US State Department. 

Israel's' appearance as an independent regional player in 1967 showed that it was in a position to dictate the course of it's own affairs. This was in direct contradiction to what an imperialist power could allow.

It is a historically documented fact that Israel paid cold hard cash for all military equipment it received up until the Yom Kippur War of 1973. 

Israel uses it's "Military Aid Package" to purchase fighter aircraft, like the F-23, made in America by American workers at the cost of billions of US tax dollars. 

What the "Haters of Israel" fail to mention is that the billions in US aid given to Israel allows Israel to use the “credit loans” or "monetary aid funds" to purchase military supplies and equipment made in American factories by American Working men and women thereby creating a need/market to keep Americans at work!

What is never mentioned is that Israel's purchases of new equipment, light arms ammunition, shoes and clothing in the US has been done at the expense of the closure of Israeli businesses and industries. This has caused the lost of jobs for thousands of Israelis many of whom were from financially depressed "Development Towns".

Just this year the US House committee approved the additional $175 million for funding the Iron Dome missile defense system on condition that parts and components are purchased from American contractors thereby returning more than half of the funds provided for it by the Pentagon to the US economy!

On the left you can see a Tamir interceptor rocket of the Iron Dome System, which is needed to prevent civilian deaths due to the utter hatred of our Arab neighbors by local and Iranian Made explosive laden missiles. This "life saving interceptor is not cheap like the missiles sent by Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Regretfully, the Tamir is an expensive item costing some $+70,000 each. 

The "Detractors (Haters) of Israel and Zionism" Asshats, who just love throwing the litany of "billions given to Israel in the US Aid package" fail to note (or are so full of hatred and are ignorant) do not mention (intentionally), is that the US Defense Systems supplier Raytheon is the major U.S. partner in co-production of major components for the Iron Dome's Tamir intercepting missile.

The U.S. Defense Contractor supplies components through various US owned and subcontractors -with US workers - in a Tamir missile manufacturing facility in East Camden, Arkansas USA NOT JUST FOR ISRAEL BUT for the US Marine Corps and partner forces.

Meaning that the US employees of those contractors, who pay taxes, are actually keeping their jobs thanks to Israel!

More importantly the warding off of missiles fired at Israeli citizens against non military civilian targets within Israel is an act of a  blatant "International War Crime".

Yet, one wonders where is this mentioned in the Mass Media of the world? 

Another item the "Haters of Israel" consistently fail to mention is that the "Palestinians" have received billions in “humanitarian aid" which has disappeared into private Swiss accounts of corrupt "Palestinian" Authority officials or it goes to buy Russia, Chinese and North Korean weaponry. 

Neither do these detractors mention that the Arab countries around Israel have consistently ignored the plight of their "Palestinian" Arab brothers and have kept those displaced in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence in squalid UN (read hundreds of millions in US funding over the past 70+ years) refugee camps.

Has any one EVER pointed out or asked WHY the Arab countries; Lebanon, Syria and Jordan that these "refugees" live in, forcibly keep them in the camps and NEVER allowed them to become viable citizens of Arab countries? 

Emile Ghoury, secretary of the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee, in an interview with the Beirut Telegraph published on Sept. 6, 1949, stated:

"The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the act of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agree upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem.”