An Open Letter to ECI

Posted by Nowhere Man

To: The Powers-That-Be at Emergency Committee for Israel
Re: Queensborough Bridge Not For Israel Billboard.

I recently came across your billboard as I was heading into Manhattan, showing a picture of President Obama shaking hands with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas with the caption, "Telling Jews They Can't Build in Jerusalem. Not Pro-Israel."

The people of Israel are also divided on the building of more settlements on the West Bank. Do you consider them to be traitors or just simply not friends of their own country? Why is it that a President of the United States isn't considered a friend of Israel unless he kowtows to every single Israeli right wing policy? If your friends disagree with something you do or say, are they no longer your friends? President Obama didn't say anything critical, although he should have, about Israel's massacre of 1,500 Palestinians in the Gaza conflict, did he?

Did I miss something or has President Obama stopped sending Israel $3 billion a year in aid? Newsweek is reporting that President Obama sold Israel bunker-buster bombs in 2009 - something even former President Bush wouldn't do - and yet it is Obama that isn't a friend of Israel?

The real injustice is that the Arab Spring has dramatically changed the Middle East but the US is impotent to try to forge broad relationships with these new governments because as always, the President and his State Department are the marionettes of Israel and are not allowed to freely conduct broad relationships with other Arabs and Muslims... you know,the people who "attacked" us. Your billboard is so pathetically disingenuous that it reminds me of the propaganda the Nazis used to hide the truth. What Israel is doing to the Palestinians is no different from the apartheid that was practiced in South Africa. I would also appreciate it if for once you'd let us be free to conduct our own independent foreign policy without the typical smears and maliciously intended misinformation.