Israel still gets $10 million a day

Consider some facts in the tempest blown up over President Barack Obama’s decision to allow passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and the part of Jerusalem occupied by Israel since it captured the territory from Jordan in 1967.

In allowing the resolution to pass, The United States effectively endorsed the position it has held with the rest of the international community, under all administrations -- Democrat and Republican -- that the settlements represent an illegal colonization of occupied territory and a real obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinians as envisaged under a so-called two-state solution.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has done everything he can to obstruct attempts by the Obama administration to get real negotiations going between the two sides, has condemned as “shameful” the Security Council resolution and the U.S. decision not to veto it. And certainly it’s true that his ability to resist real progress toward peace has been facilitated by a militant, corrupt Palestinian leadership.

So what impact will the U.N. resolution have on Israeli settlement activity?  Probably none. It will not stop Israel from expanding colonization. In fact, given the condemnation of the resolution and of President Obama from Donald Trump and his supporters, including some leading Democrats on this issue, settlement activity is more likely to accelerate.

And what of the notion that President Obama’s action represented an abandonment of Washington’s historic strong support for the State of Israel?

Answer: 38.5 billion dollars.

That’s the record amount the Obama administration agreed recently to give Israel over the next ten years in military aid. That works out to $3.85 billion a year, or more than $10 million a day from the U.S. taxpayer to the State of Israel -- $10 million a day, every day for the next 3,650 days. Israel has long argued that U.S. aid is not used to support activity the U.S. historically has opposed, like settlements, but getting $3.85 billion a year from the U.S. frees an equal amount from other revenue sources to pay for the settlements.

How much would that cost be? According to the Macro Center for Political Economics, a progressive Israeli think tank, the cost of support for the  “settlers and local governments running settlements” in 2015 totaled $368 million.

The U.S. gives that much in military aid to Israel in less than 40 days.

Chemi Shalev, a columnist writing in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, put it this way:

“In recent years, after President Obama desisted from efforts to advance the peace process, Netanyahu, his ministers and settler leaders had behaved as if the battle was over: Israel built and built, the White House objected and condemned, the facts on the ground were cemented in stone.

“You can have your cake and eat it too, the government implied: thumb your nose at Washington and the international community, build in the West Bank as if there’s no tomorrow and still get $38 billion in unprecedented [US] military aid.”

Gilding the tangerine

The New York Times today reports that it takes only six minutes for Alec Baldwin to make-up as Donald Trump for his performances on Saturday Night Live. That brings to mind an obvious recommendation for the Donald, who must spend at least two hours every morning arranging to look like himself:

Stop the Twitter assaults on Baldwin's performances and ask him how he does it. Once you're playing President of the United States you need to devote as much time as possible to the job.

On second thought maybe the less time he spends on the job, the better.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/arts/television/a-tangerine-wig-and-a-tightrope-walk-alec-baldwin-as-donald-j-trump.html?

Absurd, you say? What isn't absurd these days?

Annexation blowback

Donald Trump loves people who love annexation. One is Vladimir Putin who -- whether or not Trump noticed -- invaded and annexed Crimea. Others include the far-right of Israel, including most of the governing coalition, who believe they are entitled to annex the West Bank and the Golan Heights, captured from Jordan and Syria respectively in 1967 and illegally colonized in the last half-century by Israelis in large, modern communities called “settlements” as if they were some sort of frontier outposts. In that half century, every U. S. administration -- Republican and Democrat -- has held along with the rest of the international community, that the “settlements” are illegal under international law, specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Trump’s acceptance of the Israeli hardline view on the settlement issue is manifest in his nomination yesterday of his friend, bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman, to be his ambassador to Israel. Friedman has been a forceful supporter of Israel’s right to settle and even annex the West Bank . He has compared Jews who challenge that position to “kapos,” as Jews who collaborated with the Nazis in concentration camps were called.

As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (adamantly not related to David) told CNN Friday morning, the Iranians must be popping champagne corks on Trump’s selection of David Friedman, hugely offensive as it will be to Iran’s bitter rivals, Saudi Arabia and Egypt whom Washington views as important allies.

But here’s a question:

Given Trump’s precedent-setting endorsement of annexation, what would his response be to an announcement by Chinese President Xi jinping that China now will annex Taiwan which after all was a part of China at least as far back as the Qing dynasty more than three centuries ago? And that he would take it back by force if necessary, just as Putin did in Crimea.

Or, how might Trump respond to Xi’s saying to him, “Look, it’s not the South U.S. Sea; it’s not the South Philippines Sea or the South Vietnam Sea. It’s the South CHINA Sea and we’re gonna do whatever we want there. See?!”

What, for that matter, might he say to his friend  Vladimir Putin if the Russian dictator were to demand the removal of all NATO troops from all countries near Russia that Moscow has historically claimed to be in its exclusive sphere of influence: such as the Baltic states and Poland. If we can put troops on the Russian border, why, then, would it not be reasonable for the Russians to put troops on our border with Mexico if Mexico decides it needs protection from Trump’s agents trying to collect on the cost of the wall?

Absurd, you say? Of course, but what isn’t absurd these days?

A suggestion for flag burners

     Don't burn the flag. Just fly it at half-mast for the duration.

Message to America from a Holocaust survivor and his son

     Speaking at a ceremony at the Holocaust Memorial in Washington, honoring the late Elie Weisel, one of the Nazi Holocaust's most famous survivors who came to America as a refugee 56 years ago, his son, Elisha, had this to say:

     "When Syrian refugees need our help, we must help them. When Muslims in our midst are made to feel that they won't have the same rights as the rest of us, we must embrace them. When children of hard-working, law-abiding undocumented immigrants fear deportation, we must insist on compassion."

     Elisha Weisel spoke standing in front of a wall etched with his father's observation that "One person of integrity can make a difference."

     True. And as no one knew better than Elie Weisel, one person of no integrity can make a difference, too. Horrifically.

Breitbart flakes v. Corn Flakes

Resist! Buy Corn Flakes. Buy Apple Jacks and Froot Loops (whatever the heck they are!)

From the Los Angeles Times:

The Breitbart News Network is seeing some of its advertisers head for the exit doors and is responding in typical Breitbart fashion: by going on the counteroffensive, labeling one of them as “un-American” and calling it a war on conservatism..   . 

Breitbart is fighting back at one of the advertisers — the breakfast cereal maker Kellogg Co. — by launching a Twitter campaign #DumpKelloggs that encourages its readers to sign a petition and boycott the maker of such favorites as Froot Loops and Apple Jacks.

On Wednesday, Breitbart placed an article about its #DumpKellogs campaign in the top slot of its homepage. By early afternoon, the article had drawn more than 6,000 reader comments, many in support of the boycott.

"Kellogg's decision to blacklist one of the largest conservative media outlets in America is economic censorship of mainstream conservative political discourse. That is as un-American as it gets,” Breitbart said in a statement.

For the full story, go to:

http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-breitbart-kelloggs-advertisers-20161130-story.html

More twaddle from the twit

Trump twitter twaddle on the discovery that the presidency may be more important than the Trump business empire:

I will be holding a major news conference in New York City with my children on December 15 to discuss the fact that I will be leaving my . . .

Great business in order to fully focus on running the country in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! While I am not mandated to . . .

do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses. . .

. . . The Presidency is a far more important task!

Wow, Donald. Really? Or is it just all about the visuals?