Aid to Israel

Isn’t it ironic that on the day (April 3) that the State Department charged that Israel had violated the Geneva Convention of 1949 when it transferred 1,100 Lebanese detainees from southern Lebanon to Israel, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to increase aid to that country by $1.5 billion, bringing the total aid to Israel to $4.5 billion?

By law, foreign aid is supposed to be withheld from countries that violate human rights, but in the case of Israel that country is being rewarded as it violates human rights. In fact, the foreign aid that Israel will receive this year is equal to one-third of the total foreign aid package to be distributed to all the poor nations of the world.

The irony does not stop here. While American farmers are being told that our government cannot help them, and thus they have to declare bankruptcy and abandon farms they had farmed for generations, aid to Israel is being channeled into the illegal building of settlements and farms in the occupied West Bank. These settlements are displacing Palestinian farmers who had also farmed that land for generations.

I think it is obvious to every one as to who the winners and who the losers are in this tragedy, but, unfortunately, our politicians don’t seem see beyond their narrow self-interest when they succumb to the pressures of the Israeli lobby.

Z.S. SIDAWI

Costa Mesa