U.S. Senator seeks to cut aid to elite IDF units operating in West Bank and Gaza

U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy is promoting a bill to suspend U.S. assistance to three elite Israel Defense Forces units, alleging they are involved in human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Leahy, a Democrat and senior member of the U.S. Senate, wants assistance withheld from the Israel Navy's Shayetet 13 unit, the undercover Duvdevan unit and the Israel Air Force's Shaldag unit.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a long-time friend of Leahy's, met with him in Washington two weeks ago to try to persuade him to withdraw the initiative.

According to a senior Israeli official in Jerusalem, Leahy began promoting the legislation in recent months after he was approached by voters in his home state of Vermont.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/u-s-senator-seeks-to-cut-aid-to-elite-idf-units-operating-in-west-bank-and-gaza-1.378800

Some congresscritter was in the Middle East promising that the US would live up to its "obligations" to Israel regardless of the state of our economy. Screw SS and Medicare, and the poor bastards that have been out of work for years, we have to give that money to Israel instead. Wonder what the tea bag people think about that?

Leahy has always struck me as way too accommodating to the other side. Good for the voters for putting some lead in his pencil.

Specifically the US military-industrial complex, but that's another issue altogether I suppose.

Leahy has been pretty consistent on these sorts of issues.

He's one of the few that hasn't historically been reflexively pro-Israel and he's been recognized as such for a long, long time. There are other issues I'd like to see him be less accommodating on, this isn't one of them, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with us Vermont voters putting "lead in his pencil".

I wish people would actually check shit out before making a (nonsensical) charge.

The Vermont senator is on the floor of the Senate now, debating the Kyl amendments on the omnibus appropriations bill. One of them bars Palestinian refugees of Gaza from resettling here, because they come from a "terrorist" land, as Leahy characterized the legislation. The senator then compared the Palestinian experience to his own ancestors in Ireland. They too were called terrorists once, because they were "fighting to keep their land," fighting for their votes and freedom, religion and language. And "hunted" for doing so– "hunted because they had fought to practice their own religion… hunted because they wanted to keep their land…

"Thank goodness the United States had open arms for them." The amendment, Leahy says, "goes against everything we stand for."

http://mondoweiss.net/2009/03/sen-leahy-likens-palestinians-to-his-irish-ancestors-hunted-because-they-wanted-to-keep-their-land.html

hunted because they wanted to keep their land...

Well, we had best better give it back to THEM first, right? Any takers here?

along with all the Latinos as well. There are 30+ countries in the Americas with brown people, why can't there be room in the Americas for one white Anglo-Saxon Protestant state.

You one-staters sicken me. All you want to see is the downfall of the United States, you don't care about the Native Americans at all.

And of course, the Native Americans should've been happy to settle for the reservations(sorry "land swaps")and with having U.S. Cavalry units always surrounding them for "defensive" purposes.

There is still a need for those who stole the continent from the indigenous to admit that the indigenous never deserved to suffer as they did and that "Manifest Destiny" was never valid.

Also, those who speak out for the Palestinians also speak out for Native Americans. There are no cases in which pro-Palestinian activists in the U.S. ignore what was done to indigenous people here. They've always seen the parallels.

No double standard, and you knew it.

....preferring to see their enemies' homeland destroyed rather than having one of their own.

since in neither of those offers was the Israeli government willing to give up Ariel, which is located almost in the middle of the West Bank and which would prevent the emergence of a contiguous Palestinian state.

...counter with something reasonable and they never did. They're more interested in denying Jews a homeland than having one for themselves. Do you really think that the Irish, Tibetans, or Kurds would turn down 100% land offers without making a counteroffer?

Do you really think that the Irish, Tibetans, or Kurds would turn down 100% land offers without making a counteroffer?

Israel never made a 100% land offer. I have pointed this out to you on a number of occasions.

Condoleeza Rice was also of the opinion that no Israeli leader would ever cede Ariel:-

http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?ID=205394&R=R1

Palestinians would have done EVERYTHING they've done if anyone else had treated them as the Israelis have. And you damn well know it.

The Ottomans taxed them, but they didn't make them leave and never come home again.

They could have acquiesced to occupation at any time.

:eyes:

Yes, I'm sure it's so mysterious how two occupied peoples who turned to armed resistance and have what they consider their homeland divided by that occupier (which also considers it his homeland) could possibly be similar.

And the Unionist population would always have been welcome to stay so long as they'd accepted becoming Irish citizens. The Unionists refused, insisting on having absolute power over the Catholic/Nationalist population in the North instead of peace, and did so almost solely out of bigotry.

I'm sticking him in the William Proxmire* Not A Fucking Hypocrite category :)

* I assume most Americans would already know this, but for anyone who doesn't, Senator Proxmire campaigned tirelessly for the ratification of the Genocide Convention by giving one speech a day throughout his entire career.

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/08/16/3089012/leahy-legislation-would-not-target-israeli-military

You right, he rocks ;)

but he's still pretty decent. Problem is he's been in the Senate for too long. He was elected Senator in 1974 at the age of 34. Alas, he'll be running again in two years- and he'll win. There are so many great potential candidates here- from our new gov and former Vermont Senate President to new State Senator Galbraith.

August 16, 2011

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The office of U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy denied an Israeli newspaper report that the Vermont Democrat is trying to cut off U.S. funds to several Israeli military units.

A spokesman for the senator told Politico that the Haaretz report “contains significant inaccuracies." Haaretz reported Monday that Leahy was lobbying for the U.S. to discontinue assistance to three elite Israeli army units in response to alleged human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A Leahy spokesman, David Carle, disputed Haaretz's characterization of the senator's efforts.

“He has not proposed legislation to withhold U.S. aid to units of the Israel Defense Forces," Carle wrote in an e-mail to Politico. Rather, Carle wrote, the Leahy amendment "applies to U.S. aid to foreign security forces around the globe and is intended to be applied consistently across the spectrum of U.S. military aid abroad."

So-called Leahy amendments are annual amendments added to foreign appropriations legislation that cut off funding of foreign military units suspected of committing human rights violations.

Carle said the State Department is "responsible for evaluations and enforcement decisions, and over the years Senator Leahy has pressed for faithful and consistent application of the law."

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/08/16/3089012/leahy-legislation-would-not-target-israeli-military

Funding for IDF units is no more sacred than funding for any other foreign military units. What the IDF does is no more inherently unchallengable than what any other army does. War is war, and it's always pretty much the same wherever any government wages it.