Wednesday, September 3, 2008
A European MEP states what should be the obvious: EU aid to Palestine is funding the conflict
...Still, the EU's generosity with our money - it has paid the Palestinian Authority €256 million so far this year - creates two problems. First, the PA is run by Hamas, which is on the EU's list of designated terrorist operations. Under Brussels rules, funding such an organisation is a criminal offence. Euro-lawyers have sought to circumvent the letter of the law by funnelling aid money through NGOs, but this is sheer sophistry. Many of the PA's officials are Hamas militants, whose salaries are being paid while they serve their sentences in Israeli jails.
Second, it is becoming increasingly clear that overseas aid is arresting a political settlement in the region. (This goes equally for American subventions to Israel which, as Ron Paul argues, have sapped the enterprise of the Jewish state; but that's another story.) Palestinians receive more assistance, per capita, than any other people on Earth, and live in one of its most violent spaces. The two facts are connected.
The idea that aggression can be buried under a landslide of euros sounds reasonable, but it is based on a false premise, namely that political violence is caused by economic deprivation. This notion derives ultimately from Marx and, like many of his ideas, it looks plausible on the page, but turns out to be specious...
Well, almost right...the Ron Paul bit fails since Israel is not the perpetuator of the conflict, Hamas, the PA and the Arab cheer-leaders are. Our aid is also all military, which allows the Israelis to maintain a deterrent and be more precise when they do need to strike. So if not an apples to oranges comparison, it is at least an apples to crab-apples one -- looks similar, tastes totally different.
[Via A7, which clips the Ron Paul bit.]
It's not just the aid to the Palestinians, but having let the Arab world dictate policy that has led to much misery.
One can certainly argue that US military aid has allowed Israel to drag heels on reaching a settlement with the Palestinians and the Arab world. But what ignoramus questions "the enterprise of the Jewish state"?
I totally agree with the last par abiyt mrx theory.
terrorism doesnt cme from deprivation only.
take bin laden when h was roaming america in private jets. politics also cause trorism.
on the other had its not welfare is I see it, its futuistic investment, and a bit of feeling of guilt by the french and british also.
althugh the french see the palestinian case as centralto the medeteranin union.
so lets keep well fare t the africans, middle easterns if a world war happens wont die from hunger.
Ah. It's the old West Side Story - Officer Krupke song "We're depraved because we're deprived" defense.
Beyond just the EU funding (or should there be a term funging {fungible} - as all this money eventually fills the terror belts), there must be weighed in the doling out of welfare to citizens and immigrants alike in "social democracies" of Europe. Family coverage may filter out to villages in Yemen, Pakistan and who knows where.
Now we have concessions beiing made by these same countries to accept polygamous marriages with all the permutations run out.