On Jan. 26, the Times-Union printed a letter soliciting pity for the "tiny" country of Israel. We can agree that Israel is tiny, however, Israel creates problems in the world greatly disproportionate to its size.
Israel has the most powerful military force in the Middle East. Their military force has been financed by billions and billions and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. That military force has made Israel more and more arrogant and aggressive. In just the past few weeks they have invaded the Gaza refugee-concentration camp they created.
Reports are that 12 Israelis have been killed or wounded and several Israeli buildings have been damaged or destroyed in the fighting, but 1,284 Palestinians have been killed, thousands more wounded and 20,000 buildings deliberately destroyed, including schools, hospitals and UN buildings. These reports are eerily similar to results of fighting when Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006. During that fighting 43 Israelis were killed and 300 Israeli buildings were reportedly damaged, but the Lebanese suffered 750 killed, thousands wounded and 16,000 buildings damaged or destroyed. And on and on.
That writer also stated that Israel is a democracy like ours. That is wrong. On May 14, 1948, in the Declaration of Establishment of the State of Israel, they explicitly described themselves as the "sovereign Jewish people settled in their own land." The rational of "shared democracy" is further eroded by the fact that, in Israel, whether a person is regarded as Jewish ordinarily depends on verifiable ancestry, and Israeli leaders have repeatedly emphasized their desire to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel. Some Israelis have stated that at least a 75 percent Jewish majority must be maintained. On the other hand, the U.S. is a republic wherein people of any race, religion or ethnic background have equal rights.
The letter writer also throws at us that tired, old "fear factor" that nuclear Iran will attack Israel and then the U.S. Iran's simple nuclear weapon against the estimated 200 advanced nuclear weapons and other WMD that Israel has? Or against the thousands of nuclear weapons the U.S. has? That writer has to be joking or attempting misinformation. All Iranians aren't crazy. They know their whole society would be destroyed in retaliation.
Many factual books are available that report more about Israel and its policies, for example, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" (Mearscheimer and Walt) (2008) has more than 100 pages of documented notations.
I don't care what the Jews do internally in Israel. What they do outside Israel (and outside the U.S.) should be controlled by the United Nations. The Jews and their supporters within the U.S. can send their money to Israel if they like, but the U.S. government should immediately and permanently stop funding Israel with U.S. taxpayer's dollars for giving them military assistance.
