Here’s something to think about over the weekend:
The Palestinian Authority is facing a budget crisis. It has reached its borrowing limit and has a 585 million dollar deficit. So naturally its leaders are asking the West for another handout…
But do “Palestinian People†really need billions more in aid? The World Bank report for 2011 found that only 16 percent of the West Bank under PA control was living below the poverty line.
How serious is a 16 percent poverty rate? It’s better than the poverty rate in Washington D.C. which hit 18.9 percent. That means that politicians in Washington D.C. are diverting money that could have been used to help needy Americans a few miles from their offices, to help the comparatively better off terrorist populations in the West Bank…
Last month the PA passed a law putting all imprisoned terrorists, even members of Hamas, on its payroll. Now the Palestinian Authority is having payroll problems and expects foreign donors to bail it out– so it can continue paying money to convicted murderers. — Daniel Greenfield, “The Palestinian Muslim Money Hole“
Read the article to find out what else your money is buying for the Palestinian Arabs.
Now, everyone knows that Greece, whose poverty rate is 20%, has suffered a massive economic crisis, and the harsh terms of its bailout are likely to push that number even higher. But after all, these are the Greeks, a real people in a real country, with a real, albeit struggling, economy.
Palestine, Greenfield suggests, has become a failed state before it’s been declared.
So the question is, why is it so important that these particular Arabs, who have given the world so much — airline hijacking, suicide bombings with rat-poison laced shrapnel, the Qassam rocket — should have a state of their own?
Indeed, why is it seen as an enormous problem that they presently do not have a state, since they turned down several past opportunities?
Who are they, anyway? They are mostly the descendents of Arabs from Syria and Egypt who moved to Palestine during the latter part of the 19th century and the Mandate period, mostly to take advantage of better economic conditions there — thanks to the Zionists — than in their homelands.
In the years since 1948, and particularly since 1967, they have created a mythology of a ‘Palestinian’ civilization that extends back hundreds, indeed thousands, of years. But that’s what it is, a myth. ‘History’ invented from whole cloth.
They have developed themselves into a people only in opposition to another people — the Jews who ironically made it possible for them to be ‘Palestinian’ in the first place. And it seems that much of their culture — their literature, poetry, music, their politics and their heroes — are all based on their opposition to the Jews. They are the ‘anti-Jews’ in every way. Do I need to add that they aspire to destroy the Jews’ state? Do I need to add that they try to kill Jews every chance they get?
So why is this ‘people’ important enough that its political entity should be maintained by the taxes collected from people who are less well off, in Washington DC, Greece and California (poverty rate: 15.3%)? Why is it important enough that European and American heads of state have called for statehood for them as soon as possible?
Why are ‘activists’ from all over the world converging on Israel this week, by air and sea, on behalf of them?
Indeed, when there are other peoples around the world whose situation is objectively far worse — in Southern Sudan, in Syria, etc. — why is so much attention, money and effort focused on the “Palestinians?”
Only a paranoid Jew would say that it’s precisely because they are the anti-Jews.
Technorati Tags: Palestinians, Israel
The Palestinian Arabs are a historical failure. Nonetheless, they still receive international support anyway precisely because they hate the Jews. Quite simply, they are a convenient stand-in for the world’s long-standing hatred of Jews. No one would care about them if they didn’t have the Jews for an enemy.
That says it all.