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CA Demos Including Pelosi, Maxine Waters Vote For War Esalation Bill That Funds Israel

by repost
California Democratic politicians including Pelosi and Maxine Waters voted form more war funding to Israel while US workers get budget cuts
CA Demos Including Pelosi, Maxine Waters Vote For War Esalation Bill That Funds Further Israel Militarization Paid For By US Taxpayers
It Will Lead To War
By Ron Paul
May 9, 2012
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31301.htm

Statement on H.R.4133 United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012, May 9, 2012

Mr. Speaker: I rise in opposition to HR 4133, the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act, which unfortunately is another piece of one-sided and counter-productive foreign policy legislation. This bill's real intent seems to be more saber-rattling against Iran and Syria, and it undermines US diplomatic efforts by making clear that the US is not an honest broker seeking peace for the Middle East.

The bill calls for the United States to significantly increase our provision of sophisticated weaponry to Israel, and states that it is to be US policy to "help Israel preserve its qualitative military edge" in the region.

While I absolutely believe that Israel and any other nation -- should be free to determine for itself what is necessary for its national security, I do not believe that those decisions should be underwritten by US taxpayers and backed up by the US military.

This bill states that it is the policy of the United States to "reaffirm the enduring commitment of the United States to the security of the State of Israel as a Jewish state." However, according to our Constitution the policy of the United States government should be to protect the security of the United States, not to guarantee the religious, ethnic, or cultural composition of a foreign country. In fact, our own Constitution prohibits the establishment of any particular religion in the US.

More than 20 years after the reason for NATO's existence the Warsaw Pact has disappeared, this legislation seeks to find a new mission for that anachronistic alliance: the defense of Israel. Calling for "an expanded role for Israel within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including an enhanced presence at NATO headquarters and exercises," it reads like a dream for interventionists and the military industrial complex. As I have said many times, NATO should be disbanded not expanded.

This bill will not help the United States, it will not help Israel, and it will not help the Middle East. It will implicitly authorize much more US interventionism in the region at a time when we cannot afford the foreign commitments we already have. It more likely will lead to war against Syria, Iran, or both. I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill.
________________________
Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr4133

California
YEA D Thompson, Michael “Mike” CA 1st
YEA R Herger, Walter “Wally” CA 2nd
YEA R Lungren, Daniel CA 3rd
YEA R McClintock, Tom CA 4th
YEA D Matsui, Doris CA 5th
PRESENT D Woolsey, Lynn CA 6th
YEA D Miller, George CA 7th
YEA D Pelosi, Nancy CA 8th
PRESENT D Lee, Barbara CA 9th
NO VOTE D Garamendi, John CA 10th
YEA D McNerney, Jerry CA 11th
YEA D Speier, Jackie CA 12th
PRESENT D Stark, Fortney “Pete” CA 13th
NO VOTE D Eshoo, Anna CA 14th
YEA D Honda, Michael “Mike” CA 15th
YEA D Lofgren, Zoe CA 16th
YEA D Farr, Sam CA 17th
YEA D Cardoza, Dennis CA 18th
YEA R Denham, Jeff CA 19th
YEA D Costa, Jim CA 20th
YEA R Nunes, Devin CA 21st
YEA R McCarthy, Kevin CA 22nd
YEA D Capps, Lois CA 23rd
YEA R Gallegly, Elton CA 24th
YEA R McKeon, Howard “Buck” CA 25th
YEA R Dreier, David CA 26th
YEA D Sherman, Brad CA 27th
YEA D Berman, Howard CA 28th
YEA D Schiff, Adam CA 29th
YEA D Waxman, Henry CA 30th
YEA D Becerra, Xavier CA 31st
YEA D Chu, Judy CA 32nd
YEA D Bass, Karen CA 33rd
YEA D Roybal-Allard, Lucille CA 34th
YEA D Waters, Maxine CA 35th
YEA D Hahn, Janice CA 36th
YEA D Richardson, Laura CA 37th
YEA D Napolitano, Grace CA 38th
YEA D Sánchez, Linda CA 39th
YEA R Royce, Edward “Ed” CA 40th
YEA R Lewis, Jerry CA 41st
YEA R Miller, Gary CA 42nd
YEA D Baca, Joe CA 43rd
YEA R Calvert, Ken CA 44th
YEA R Bono Mack, Mary CA 45th
YEA R Rohrabacher, Dana CA 46th
YEA D Sanchez, Loretta CA 47th
YEA R Campbell, John CA 48th
YEA R Issa, Darrell CA 49th
YEA R Bilbray, Brian CA 50th
NO VOTE D Filner, Bob CA 51st
YEA R Hunter, Duncan CA 52nd
YEA D Davis, Susan CA 53rd
Add Your Comments

Comments (Hide Comments)
by Vote Peace & Freedom and Green
Both the Democratic and Republican parties are 100% pro-Israel. Some of their representatives voted "present" because they are feeling the pressure from their constituents, but they are not allowed to vote for the only viable option: NO US AID TO ISRAEL.

Israel is an American military base that exists to defend US oil profits in the Middle East. It is the 4th largest military power in the world, courtesy US tax dollars, to the tune of $6 billion a year. It is also a theocratic state with no separation of church and state, where marriage and divorce are under religious supervision, where one must know the fiction book, the bible, to graduate from high school, and much more. While their pretext today is the Holocaust, the Zionists were Nazi collaborators, just as their descendants collaborate with Nazi USA. The murder and torture by the Zionists of the Palestinian people, theft of Palestinian homes and land, all would make Hitler proud, and this is all done with our tax dollars. Capitalist USA supports the 5 million Zionists of Israel because it is profitable and maximization of profit is the primary goal of capitalism. THIS IS NOT VIABLE; THIS IS GENOCIDE. For references, see the end of this article.

If you want viable parties, you have to vote Peace & Freedom or Green, the two parties that support the Palestinian liberation struggle and the two parties that need you to stay on the ballot right now. For more information on these two parties, see:
1. Peace and Freedom Party
http://www.peaceandfreedom.org/home/
From: http://www.peaceandfreedom.org/home/about-us/platform/full-platform
Peace and International Justice

The drive for greater profits by multi-national corporations which direct U.S. foreign policy is a major cause of war. We stand for peace between nations and the right of all peoples to self-determination. We support an ongoing socialist transformation everywhere. We therefore call for: The U.S. to renounce nuclear first strike, and take the initiative toward global disarmament by eliminating all of its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
No U.S. intervention anywhere. End all support and aid to repressive regimes and all military and police training aid everywhere. End efforts to destabilize foreign governments. End U.S.-directed economic warfare against other countries. Abolish the CIA, NSA, AID and other agencies for interference inother countries' internal affairs. Withdraw all U.S. troops and weapons from all other countries.
Stop all U.S. arms exports and trade.
Dissolve all military pacts.
Convert from military to peaceful production; reallocate the resulting "peace dividend" for social benefit.
Abolish the Selective Service System.
No weapons in space.

2. Green Party
http://www.cagreens.org/
http://www.gp.org/index.php
From: http://www.gp.org/committees/platform/2010/democracy.php#313976
2. A Real Road to Peace in the Middle East
The Green Party of the United States recognizes that our greatest contribution to peace in the Middle East will come through our impact on U.S. policy in the region.

Our commitments to ecological wisdom, social justice, grass-roots democracy, and non-violence compel us to oppose U.S. government support for “friendly” regimes in the region when those regimes violate human rights, international law, and existing treaties. We call on congressional intelligence committees to conduct comprehensive public hearings on the development and deployment of weapons of mass destruction by all states in the region. U.S. policy should support the removal and/or destruction of all such weapons wherever they are found there.

The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
Our Green values oblige us to support popular movements for peace and demilitarization in Israel-Palestine, especially those that reach across the lines of conflict to engage both Palestinians and Israelis of good will.

We reaffirm the right of self-determination for both Palestinians and Israelis, which precludes the self-determination of one at the expense of the other. We recognize the historical and contemporary cultural diversity of Israeli-Palestinian society, including the religious heritage of Jews, Christians, Muslims and others. This is a significant part of the rich cultural legacy of all these peoples and it must be respected. To ensure this, we support equality before international law rather than appeals to religious faith as the fair basis on which claims to the land of Palestine-Israel are resolved.
We recognize that Jewish insecurity and fear of non-Jews is understandable in light of Jewish history of horrific oppression in Europe. However, we oppose as both discriminatory and ultimately self-defeating the position that Jews would be fundamentally threatened by the implementation of full rights to Palestinian-Israelis and Palestinian refugees who wish to return to their homes. As U.S. Greens, we refuse to impose our views on the people of the region. Still, we would turn the U.S. government towards a new policy, which itself recognizes the equality, humanity, and civil rights of Jews, Muslims, Christians, and all others who live in the region, and which seeks to build confidence in prospects for secular democracy.
We reaffirm the right and feasibility of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in Israel. We acknowledge the significant challenges of equity and restitution this policy would encounter and call on the U.S. government to make resolution of these challenges a central goal of our diplomacy in the region.d. We reject U.S. unbalanced financial and military support of Israel while Israel occupies Palestinian lands and maintains an apartheid-like system in both the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in Israel toward its non-Jewish citizens. Therefore, we call on the U.S. President and Congress to suspend all military and foreign aid, including loans and grants, to Israel until Israel withdraws from the Occupied Territories, dismantles the separation wall in the Occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem, ends its siege of Gaza and its apartheid-like system both within the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in Israel toward its non-Jewish citizens.
We also reject U.S. political support for Israel and demand that the U.S. government end its veto of Security Council resolutions pertaining to Israel. We urge our government to join with the U.N. to secure Israel’s complete withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries and its compliance with international law.
We support a much stronger and supportive U.S. position with respect to all United Nations, European Union, and Arab League initiatives that seek a negotiated peace. We call for an immediate U.N.-sponsored, multinational peacekeeping and protection force in the Palestinian territories with the mandate to initiate a conflict-resolution commission.
We call on the foreign and military affairs committees of the U.S. House and Senate to conduct full hearings on the status of human rights and war crimes in Palestine-Israel, especially violations committed during Israel’s 2008-2009 invasion of Gaza (“Operation Cast Lead”) as documented in the 2009 “UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict” (“The Goldstone Report”) authorized by the UN Commission on Human Rights.
We recognize that despite decades of continuous diplomatic attempts by the international community, it has failed to bring about Israel’s compliance with international law or respect for basic Palestinian human rights; and that, despite abundant condemnation of Israel’s policies by the UN, International Court of Justice, and all relevant international conventions, the international community of nations has failed to stop Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights in Israel and the OPT, while Israeli crimes continue with impunity. We recall that ending institutionalized racism (apartheid) in South Africa demanded an unusual, cooperative action by the entire international community in the form of a boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against apartheid South Africa, and that BDS can become the most effective nonviolent means for achieving justice and genuine peace between Palestinians and Israelis, and for the region, through concerted international pressure as applied to apartheid South Africa; and that Palestinian resistance to ongoing dispossession has mainly been nonviolent, including its most basic form – remaining in their homes, on their land; and that while Palestinian armed resistance is legitimate under international law when directed at non-civilian targets, we believe that only nonviolent resistance will maintain the humanity of Palestinian society, elicit the greatest solidarity from others, and maximize the chance for future reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. However, we also recognize that our appeal to Palestinians to continue to resist nonviolently in the face of ongoing existential threats from Israel is hypocritical unless accompanied by substantial acts of international support. We recall that in 2005, Palestinian Civil Society appealed to the international community to support a BDS campaign against Israel;and that in response the Green Party of the US endorsed this BDS campaign in 2005. Therefore, we support the implementation of boycott and divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era, which includes pressuring our government to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel; and we support maintaining these nonviolent punitive measures until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
Ending its occupation and colonization of all Palestinian lands and dismantling the Wall in the West Bank;
Recognizing the fundamental rights of Palestinian citizens of to full equality; and
Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
We recognize that international opinion has been committed to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet, we view the two-state solution as neither democratic nor viable in the face of international law, material conditions and “facts on the ground” that now exist in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Given this reality, we support a U.S. foreign policy that promotes the creation of one secular, democratic state for Palestinians and Israelis on the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan as the national home of both peoples, with Jerusalem as its capital. We encourage a new U.S. diplomatic initiative to begin the long process of negotiation, laying the groundwork for such a single-state constitution.
We recognize that such a state might take many forms and that the eventual model chosen must be decided by the peoples themselves. We also acknowledge the enormous hostilities that now exist between the two peoples, but history tells us that these are not insurmountable among people genuinely seeking peace.

As an integral part of peace negotiations and the transition to peaceful democracy, we call for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission whose inaugurating action would be mutual acknowledgement by Israelis and Palestinians that they have the same basic rights, including the right to exist in the same, secure place.
******
History homework:
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe
(2006) Oneworld Publications, ISBN 978-1-85168-555-4
(Has full details on the 1948 to present mass murder of boys and men, rape and murder of girls and women and theft of Palestinian land all planned by David Ben-Gurion, first president of Israel, and cohorts, as Ben-Gurion described in his diary quoted in Pappe’s book.)

Israel-Palestine on Record by Howard Friel and Richard Falk
(2007) Verso, ISBN 978-1-84467-109-0 (Contains eyewitness testimony for 2000 to 2006 of Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes and the horrors of daily life in Occupied Palestine due to daily Israeli terrorism, all paid for with $6 billion US tax dollars annually, making Israel the 4th largest military gang in the world).

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/

Zionism in the Age of Dictators by Lenni Brenner at
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/

The Iron Wall by Lenni Brenner at
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/ironwall/

The Hidden History of Zionism by Ralph Schoenman at
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/schoenman/

Boycott, Divest, Sanctions Movement against Zionist Israel at
http://bdsmovement.net/

Gaza Freedom Flotilla
http://gazafreedommarch.org/cms/en/Solidarity.aspx

The Israeli Military State starts in childhood at:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/04/indoctrinating-israeli-youths-to-be.html

Israel’s nuclear war capacity and history of threatening the former Soviet Union in an excellent article by John Steinbach:
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/policy/israeli-nuclear-policy/steinbach_israeli_program.pdf

51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis edited by Lenni Brenner
(2002) Barricade Books, New Jersey, ISBN 1-56980-235-1

The Transfer Agreement by Edwin Black
(1984, 2001) Carroll & Graf, NY, ISBN 0-7867-0841-7

The Third Reich and the Palestine Question by Francis Nicosia
(1985) University of Texas Press, ISBN 0-292-72731-3

Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse by Sylvain Cypel
(2005, 2006) Other Press, ISBN 13:978-1-5905 1-210-4
(A good early history of the apartheid wall and history and contemporary life of Israel and its relationship to the US as a military base. The lack of separation of church and state is evident as “All Israeli students study the Hebrew Bible in public school for several hours a week, from the elementary grades through high school (knowledge of the Bible is tested on the high school exit examination.)” (p. 177) Superstition and militarism clearly go together This is a sign of an extremely backward society).

A Wall in Palestine by Rene Backman
(2006, 2010) Picador/St. Martin’s Press, NY ISBN 978-0-312-42781-8
(Good maps of the apartheid wall and description of resistance to it; it is clearly a land grab as there are means of going through wall and thus it has nothing to do with security; also describes segregated roads and racist license system).

An Israeli in Palestine by Jeff Halper (an American who moved to Israel in 1973 at age 27, is a professor of anthropology, is the leader of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Campaign against Israel described in Appendix 4). (2008) Pluto Press, ISBN 978-0-7453-2226-1. “There is not even a civil mechanism by which Jewish, Christian, and Muslim citizens of Israel can marry each other since personal status, citizenship, marriage, death, inheritance, is regulated by religious and not civil law.” p. 76

Palestine Inside Out by Saree Makdisi, (2008, 2010) Norton Press, ISBN 978-0-393-33844-7. With a beautiful foreword by Alice Walker, comparing the racist horrors of Zionist Israel to white racism in the USA, Makdisi, a Palestinian-American professor of English literature at UCLA, writes a detailed account of the daily horrors of life in Occupied Palestine. His periodic sections “By the Numbers” offer useful statistics, his maps are plentiful, and his entire book is a ringing indictment of the mental illness that is religion and the anti-women horror of theocratic states. As Americans read it, we must remember that this is all paid for with our tax dollars and supported 100% by every single Democratic and Republican politician at every level of government. It is opposed by all socialist parties and the Green Party.

Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Vol. 3 by Alan Hart (2005, 2010) Clarity Press, ISBN 0-932863-69-8/978-0-932863-69-0. Alan Hart, a former ITN (part of British news agency that produces outstanding Channel 4 of UK) and BBC Panorama correspondent, covers the horrors of Zionism in Israel and its relationship to the United States from 1967 to January 2010 from the perspective of a non-Jewish journalist perspective with lots of worthwhile insights.

DVD-Warner Classics: The Ramallah Concert: Knowledge Is The Beginning with West-Eastern Divan Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Ramallah Concert program: Mozart Sinfonia, Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, Elgar’s Nimrod from Enigma Variations. Orchestra consists of young Jewish Israelis and Arabs of many countries, including Palestine, plus some Europeans.
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