Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Says Jonathan Tobin, and he's right:
Though many thought Washington would quickly fold on this issue, the administration is sticking to its hard line against sending a cent to Hamas. And Congress is poised to enact aid restrictions that may act as a break on any State Department impulse to weaken on the issue.
But along with this comes the bad news. The United States and the European Union (which is also considering an aid cutoff to the P.A.) will be diverting a lot of the money that supported the P.A. kleptocracy to humanitarian aid. That way, it is reasoned, innocent Palestinians won't be forced to suffer from the crimes of their new masters.
That rationale sounds compassionate and logical. The only problem is that the humanitarian group that will receive the lion's share of the aid is one of the most thoroughly politicized and terrorist-infiltrated organizations in the world: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
For 56 years, UNRWA has been the symbol of the world's double standard about the war on Israel by the Arab world...
...What should the United States do about this? Let's start with the fact that the plentiful cash that flows from the United States Treasury to UNRWA (30 percent of the agency's $400 million budget comes courtesy of American taxpayers) is actually a violation of U.S. law. The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act requires UNRWA to assure that American money does not go to terrorists. That is an assurance that UNRWA cannot credibly give.
Superficial reforms of the group won't work. Given the almost complete infiltration of UNRWA's bureaucracy by terrorist supporters, nothing short of a complete overhaul will do...
Nice set of posts on the U.N. today. Sudan, the Commission on the Status of Women, UNRWA and the Arab refugees - all speak to a deep-seated duplicity and moral corruption of huge magnitude. The Sudan situation is especially prominent in this regard, though the UNRWA/refugee situation is not far behind and in some ways reflects an even deeper set of status quo, ideological and institutional problems. The most telling comment in the three posts is your paraphrase of Charles Jacobs, referring to Sudan, such that "if these people were enslaved by whites, there would have been thousands of people there carrying banners."
Strictly as an aside, Tears of the Sun (Antoine Fuqua directing, Bruce Willis and Monica Bellucci) uses some of the "lost boys of Sudan" (Sudanese victims of the Arab/Islamic regime who endured a long trek out of the country) as support and character actors. A strong flick, well done, genocide a primary point focal point; a quality action genre piece (Navy SEAL rescue) and Fuqua's commentary on the DVD is thoughtful and well paced.