Yesterday in Poland, Holocaust survivors, students and others totaling 8000 remembered the atrocities at Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps. They participated in the annual March of the Living. What major city in the Western world doen't have a Holocaust memorial? It's serves as a reminder and a bill of guilt served to all.. And it has worked. Israel's existence is in large part due to the debt that the West felt it owed to the Jews for their hardships.
That's what made an article carried by the Associated Press interesting. According to the article, there are 90,000 Holocaust survivors living in poverty in Israel today. Israel is a rich country thanks in large part to U.S. aid that is part of the guilt trip that Israel's lobby has us on. For example, Israel's long-term debt to the U.S. totals over $ 42 billion. But the debt service is offset by the 1983 Cranston Amendment. That amendment provides that any repayment of debt to the U.S. should be equal to any economic assistance that the U.S. gives to Israel. So its a wash. This does not count the $ 2.5 billion that America gives Israel yearly because of Pres. Carter's Camp David Accords. Israel's GDP is app .$ 140 billion. The governments budget is app. $ 58 billion of which $ 10 billion is for the military.
Israel's Holocaust Survivors Welfare Fund distributes app. $ 35 million per year for medical benefits. Of that total Israel only pays $ 3 million. The rest is payed by Germany and Austria through the New York- based Claims Conference. It is part of reparations. The article also says that about 10,000 survivors are eligible for aid but don't get it. Israeli Holocaust survivor Zeev Factor, 80, said, " The government of Israel has received money from the German government but I think the [ Israeli ] government didn't use enough for survivors."
Israel is shameless. It markets Holocaust guilt and shame to the world as a branded product. But domestically it doesn't pay its own obligation to the Holocaust survivors.
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