Bill Maher, Conservative, Liberal Progressives agree whose to blame for ...

Israel has been the BIGGEST welfare state in the history of humanity!

Using the year 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $3 trillion in 2002 dollars (PRESENT VALUE SCALE). If divided by today's population, that is more than $11,400 per American citizen that has sent his money to Israel in taxes. This is an amount almost four times greater than the cost of the Vietnam war, also in 2002 dollars.

Israel has never been self-supporting. It has always required massive subsidies from the outside - above all from the United States. In addition, Germany and other European states and companies have paid out many billions in "restitution," and wealthy Jewish communities, especially in the US, have provided tax-deductable substantial financial assistance-"a net drain" on the USA economy.

--US Jewish charities and organizations have remitted grants or bought Israel bonds worth $60 billion. Though private in origin, the money is "a net drain" on the United States economy.

--US help, financial and technical, has enabled Israel to become a major weapons supplier. Weapons make up almost half of Israel's manufactured exports. US defense contractors often resent the buy-Israel requirements and the extra competition subsidized by US taxpayers.

-- US policy and trade sanctions reduce US exports to the Middle East about $5 billion a year, costing 70,000 or so American jobs. Not requiring Israel to use its US aid to buy American goods, as is usual in foreign aid, costs another 125,000 jobs.

Israel was founded on terrorism, massacres, ethnic cleansing and the dispossession of its native Palestinian population. Even now it violates international law, inflicts a harsh collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza, and continues to deny Palestinians their human and national rights. In accord with its Jewish supremacist ideology, Israel's discrimination against non-Jews is systematic and institutional. It is the only country in the region that occupies territory of its neighbors, that refuses to define its borders, and which possesses a large and illegal arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Even as a Jewish sanctuary, Israel cannot be regarded as a success. Jews are less safe and secure in Israel than almost anywhere else in the world. The great majority of Jews in the world have preferred not to live in "their" country.

Around the world, including the United States, loathing of Israel is widespread and steadily mounting. In Asia and Europe, political and business leaders increasingly regard Israel and its policies as harmful to global order and stability.

Regional demographic trends are also important. In Israel and its occupied territories, the Arab population is growing at a faster rate than the Jewish population, and within 20 years non-Jews will almost certainly be the majority.

Very few persons in 1985 foresaw the collapse six years later of the mighty and seemingly solid Soviet Union. But its end was predictable because it was an essentially artificial entity based on an inhumane and impractical ideology. Although Israel is a formidable military power, it is an aberrant, crisis-prone state, artificially kept alive with outside support, and based on an unworkable ideology.

Given its artificial character and built-in problems, as well as global political-economic and regional demographic trends, Israel's future in the next 60 years is not bright.

I still give it 5 stars because the writing style is good. But read it as a work of fiction.