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USA and Israeli flags together...in Pennsylvania?

 Joined at the hip is a thought which immediately comes to mind.....

"It's odd to see an Israeli flag flying in rural Pennsylvania.

Still, until very recently, the Israeli flag flew right alongside the American flag against the bucolic landscape of Jamestown, Pennsylvania. The nondescript warehouse-like buildings surrounding the two flags are not the factories of a local Pennsylvania Jewish-owned business, as one might guess. Rather, they are the headquarters of Combined Systems, Inc.—one of the largest manufacturers and international suppliers of teargas, stun grenades and other "non-lethal" crowd control devices in the world.

Israel, or more accurately, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), is their most frequent client. And Combined Systems' relationship with the IDF is an emblem of a global system that binds together US weapons companies, repressive governments and taxpayer money."


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"At the individual level, US military aid to Israel alone costs each American taxpayer $21.59—funding $300 worth of weapons for every Israeli man, woman and child. Of course, this money is not spent by individual Israeli citizens, but the numbers illustrate the US taxpayer’s role in making the IDF one of the more formidable armies in the world.

"Everything that the Israeli military does—every time a Palestinian civilian is killed, every time a Palestinian is prevented from going to work or farming his or her land or has their land stolen to build illegal Israeli settlements—all of these actions are executed with US weapons that are paid for by us, the taxpayers," Ruebner emphasized.

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has also broken down US aid to Israel at the state level, and published how many affordable housing vouchers, green jobs training programs or early reading education programs could be funded if this money were redirected to domestic programs. In California, over 42,000 low-income people could have affordable housing vouchers and more than 57,000 unemployed workers could be trained for the green jobs economy if US aid to Israel were redirected domestically.

Israel receives massive amounts of US aid despite the fact that it is not a poor country. According to the International Monetary Fund, Israel is the 28th wealthiest country in the world, ranking higher than New Zealand, South Korea and Saudi Arabia. If Israel wished to sustain the military occupation of Palestine on its own time, it would be more than financially able to purchase weapons, internationally or domestically, on the open market."


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