Netanyahu Responds

Even those who aren’t particularly sympathetic to Israel ‘s Benjamin Netanyahu, could get a good measure of satisfaction from this interview with British Television during the retaliation against Hamas’ shelling of Israel .
The interviewer asked him: “How come so many more Palestinians have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?”
Netanyahu: “Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?”
Interviewer: Why not?
Netanyahu: “Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the war was caused by Germany ‘s aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London , the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden , burning to death more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima … Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen , some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children’s hospital, killing 83 little children. Perhaps you have another question?”

Benjamin Netanyahu gave another interview and was asked about Israel ‘s occupation of Arab lands. His response was, “It’s our land”. The reporter was stunned – read below “It’s our land… It’s important information since we don’t get fair and accurate reporting from the media and facts tend to get lost in the jumble of daily events.”

“Crash Course on the Arab-Israeli Conflict.”

Here are overlooked facts in the current & past Middle East situation. These were compiled by a Christian university professor:

BRIEF FACTS ON THE ISRAELI CONFLICT TODAY… (It takes just 1.5 minutes to read!)
Facts:

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem : Israel became a nation in 1312 BC, two thousand (2000) years before the rise of Islam.

2… Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BC, the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand (1000) years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 lasted no more than 22 years.

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem , they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders
did not come to visit.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Koran.

7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem . Mohammed never came to Jerusalem .

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem . Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem .

9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: in 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews . Sixty-eight percent left (many in fear of retaliation by their own brethren, the Arabs), without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. The ones who stayed were afforded the same peace, civility, and citizenship rights as everyone else.

10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.

11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.

12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own people’s lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel , a country no larger than the state of New Jersey …

13. The Arab-Israeli Conflict: the Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.
14. The PLO’s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the
Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.
15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

16. The UN Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel .

17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel .

18. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.

19. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives .

20. The UN was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like a policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

These are incredible times. We have to ask what our role should be.
What will we tell our grandchildren about what we did when there was a turning point in Jewish destiny, an opportunity to make a difference?

By: Diane Sori
Published: Sun Sentinel

The recent article about competitive bidding does not accurately portray a process that takes away a Medicare beneficiary’s right to quality home health care, and will not save Medicare money nor cut waste in the program.

Quality, dependable service beneficiaries will become a thing of the past once the few suppliers awarded the bid become so bogged down that they cannot handle the sheer volume of patients, forcing them to cut back services or equipment to the very people who need them the most: the old and the sick. And by Medicare accepting low-ball bids, this puts over 100,000 longstanding, accredited suppliers and their employees out of business, thus adding those 100,000 to the ranks of the unemployed and stressing an already-overburdened system.

Also, taxpayers will see no savings in tax dollars used to fund Medicare, because most Medicare beneficiaries already have private supplemental insurance picking up the dollar (20 percent) amounts for services and costs that Medicare does not cover. This always resulted in no monies being laid out by the patient, and will continue this way. Thus, the Medicare beneficiary and taxpayers save nothing.

Lastly, competitive bidding will lead to longer, more expensive hospital stays, shifting costs from Medicare Part B to Part A, actually increasing Medicare costs. Home medical equipment is the most cost-effective solution, and is preferred to expensive hospital care. It is also the slowest-growing portion of Medicare. For example, a day of home oxygen therapy costs less than $7, while a day in the hospital costs more than $5,500.

f competitive bidding is not repealed before going into effect in January 2011, the very people dependent on life-sustaining supplemental oxygen are the ones hurt the most. Just think of your elderly parents or grandparents being forced to depend on a company that the government, not their physician or family, says they must use in order to stay alive. This is morally and ethically wrong, and denies patients their legal right to choose who they want to attend to their health care needs.

Competitive bidding was an ill-conceived solution to the government’s failure to reign in suppliers who abused and defrauded the system. Instead of just shutting down those suppliers, they chose to place the burden of their mismanagement on legitimate suppliers whose only goal was, and is, to serve those in medical need and to make a legitimate living by doing so.