Friday, March 18, 2005

What do you do with "extra babies"? Well, you toss them across the border, of course. George W. Bush initiated a new American policy according to which the US government now officially supports the preservation of the Jewish majority in Israel to maintain Israel as a Jewish state. But nobody in the US media bothered to ask the President about the consequences of the higher birth rate among the (much poorer) Palestinian citizens of the state of Israel. What will the US do when the Palestinians in Israel, due to natural growth, become the majority. Will the US call for their extermination or expulsion across the border, or will the US mercifully support an Israeli policy of restricting birth rates of Palestinians? I thought about that when I heard the Maronite Patriarch talking on LBC-TV yesterday. As you know, the Maronite Patriarch is treated by Bush as a representative of all of the deeply divided Lebanese people. This Patriarch said that Palestinians in Lebanon should not be allowed to settle in Lebanon (not because he cares about their right to return) but because it disturbs the delicate "balance" of Muslims and Christians in Lebanon. Of course, there is no such balance as the Muslims have constituted a majority of the population for...decades. There is a myth of a "balance" in Lebanon to justify the 50-50 ratio in the allocation of parliamentary seats according to sectarian affiliation. So according to this patriarch, what should Lebanon do with the "extra" babies of the Muslim side who have a high birth rate? Would somebody ask him for me? Also, he added that the US is known to be generous with countries that need aid. That explains why Israel (which is far poorer than Zambia and Angola) receives more aid than any country in the world.