‘My trip to israel’ - a Washington tradition
New office on Capitol Hill? Check.
Orientation to congressional protocols? Check.
All-expense paid trip to Israel? Add that to the freshman lawmaker's calendar.
Next year first-term members of Congress could be initiated into an unofficial Washington tradition -- flying to Israel, one of the top foreign destinations for privately sponsored congressional travel.
Every two years -- the years between elections -- the American Israel Education Foundation invites House and Senate members to gain firsthand knowledge about a region they will influence through legislation.
The education foundation is a nonprofit [which means we subsidize them] arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee -- AIPAC, one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. A 2005 National Journal survey of congressional insiders ranked AIPAC second most influential lobbying group among Democratic lawmakers and fourth among Republicans.
The pro-Israel organization made headlines in August when two of its former lobbyists were charged with conspiring to pass on national defense information to the Israeli government.
AIPAC's education foundation is the third largest private sponsor of congressional travel, having spent more than $1.5 million sending lawmakers and their staffers on trips since Jan. 1, 2000, according to a Medill News Service analysis of travel disclosure forms from 2000 through mid-August 2006. Most of the trips -- worth nearly $1.4 million -- were to Israel.
"Being on the ground in Israel, seeing the terrain, being there in person provides the perspective that one can't get from being in classrooms and reading media coverage," AIPAC spokesman Josh Block said.
Block declined to provide a full itinerary for any trip, saying AIPAC does not customarily release such agendas to the public. [what the hell is that about?] But he said a typical trip would include meetings with Israeli and Palestinian elected officials, academicians and journalists.
A trip three years ago included an afternoon at a Holocaust Memorial and visits with then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, then-Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, according to Block.
Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., who went on the trip, said that new members of Congress who accompanied him were shocked by Israel's small size.
"Many realized for the first time that their districts were bigger" than Israel, he said. "Why would Israel [ever] want to give up land? They could never see that unless they went."
Using that twisted logic Delaware could legitimately invade and occupy Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee urges lawmakers to go see what life is like for Palestinians, but generally can't afford to pay for the congressional trips, said spokesman Tony Kutayli.
Which is precisely why lobbying in this country MUST be ABOLISHED.
Democracy based on money is not democracy - it's FASCISM.
It's a fact that Washington politico have sold its soul to the State of Israel.
Not surprising.
The traitorous politicians who dare to vigorously defend Israel in spite of the damning evidence of Israel's atrocities and criminal deeds in carrying out genocidal acts of land thievery, terrorism and murder like my Arizona "representative senators" John McCain and Jon Kyl regardless of political affiliation deserve repuke and impeachment to remove each and every one who states his/her loyalty to Israel even ABOVE U.S.'s sovereign rights until the Congress is clean-swept of brainwashed-for-Zionist-agenda scum.
America is officially a gigantic mammal (think the largest elephant) with a parasitic host (think a poisonous elephant armor-piercing mutant lice the size of a large rat) controlling every point of its thought and movement to commandeer the mammal to blindly support the suppression of liberty and encouragement of fascism, terror and destruction committed by the army of mutant Zionist lices.
U.S.'s continuing support of Israel's terrorism is irrefutably proven by the Congress's overwhelming passage of legislative support for State of Israel's terror attack on Lebanon this summer and never-ending veto of U.N. resolutions delivered against Israel's depraved aggressions.
The queen lice of Israel will be exterminated in the near future when the Truth is exposed to shine the light on its vile black evil of reproducing sons and daughters of Zionism to carry out the Queen's agenda in controlling the Americas until the conquest of the world is complete, with the subdued and intimidated answerable to the massive WASP nest of Zionist State of Israel.
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My blog Last Throes of US Empire
thanks!