Israeli Palestinian Conflict
(posts on, newest first)
Posted 1/26/06
Hamas
Election Victory Shocks World
1/26/06 AP Islamic militant Hamas' landslide victory in
Palestinian elections unnerved the world Thursday, darkening prospects for Mideast peace and ending
four decades of rule by the corruption-riddled Fatah Party.
Hamas won a clear majority in Wednesday's vote, capturing 76 of the 132 seats in parliament, according to official, near-complete results released Thursday. The results of the popular vote were not announced.
The parliamentary victory stunned even Hamas leaders, who mounted a well-organized campaign but have no experience in government. They offered to share power with President Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah chief, who said he may go around the new government to talk peace with Israel.
Now, I am writing about his because my opinion of this event is much different than that offered by the media. While this is not surprising, my thoughts differ even from those of the Bush Administration, which I generally support on foreign policy issues.
But leaders across the world demanded that Hamas, which is branded a terror group by the U.S. and European Union, renounce violence and recognize Israel.
"If your platform is the destruction of Israel, it means you're not a partner in peace, and we're interested in peace," President Bush said in Washington.
However, President Bush (the State Department) and the European Union have no one to blame but themselves. It is they who perpetuated the terror of the Palestinian Authority on the Palestinian people. It is they who gave millions to the PA, a terrorist organization, an organization filled with terrorists, thugs and common criminals, and it is they who endorsed the present socialism throughout the PA territories, bought with outside American, European, and Arab money.
How can they be surprised when the Palestinian people vote out the thieves and scoundrels who have been decimating and robbing them?
The group [Hamas] campaigned mainly on cleaning up the Palestinian Authority downplaying the conflict with Israel and Zahar said Thursday that Hamas planned to overhaul the government.
"We are going to change every aspect, as regards the economy, as regards industry, as regards agriculture, as regards social aid, as regards health, administration, education," he said.
It also could jeopardize hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign donations to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority.
Good. This aid is a large part of the problem. Perhaps the Palestinian people are not as stupid as some think...
A look at our government's own bunglings:
Palestinian Candidates Condemn U.S. Program
1/23/06 AP The Bush administration's effort to increase the popularity of the Palestinian Authority and its governing Fatah party before critical parliamentary elections this week came under intense criticism Monday from a number of candidates, some of whom charged that the program amounted to illegal interference in the democratic process.
Although $2 million is a fraction of the U.S. development budget in the Palestinian territories, the funds are significant in the context of the campaign.
The program calls for funding Palestinian Authority events and projects and announcing those projects in the days before the vote. Included are a national youth soccer tournament, street-cleaning campaigns, computers for classrooms and free food and water at border crossings. The effort has been coordinated through the chief of staff of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president and leader of Fatah.
The US government's action has, again, resulted in the opposite of their intentions, which ironically in this case, might be a good thing. However, if US funds flow to Hamas in the same way they flowed to the PA, we can be assured the terrors of corruption and socialism will follow. Actually, bureaucrats have already started to use American tax dollars to hurt the Palestine people again.
12/20/05 Ynet News While the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution calling for a halt in funding to the Palestinians if Hamas wins upcoming parliamentary elections, the U.S. government is currently in the process of funding a Gaza town run by Hamas.
Anna Litvak, a public affairs officer for U.S. AID's regional headquarters in Tel Aviv, told WND development of Bani Suhaila was in the works long before Hamas won the town's elections.
Hamas gunmen have taken charge
"Leaderships change all the time," said Litvak. "We are here to benefit the Palestinian people, not Palestinian groups. We don't want to deal with Hamas."
They are there to hurt the Palestinian people. Yet, here in the United States there seems to be little distress that government is forcefully confiscating money from your family in order to perpetuate terror and socialism upon the Palestinian people.
(Posts about the Israel Palestine Conflict have been grouped together in a new 'Israel Palestine Conflict' post grouping.)
Posted 1/11/06
World Bank official: Palestinians on verge of bankruptcy
10/1/06 Haaretz The Palestinian Authority, the largest employer in the territories, is facing a fiscal crisis that could result, as early as next month, in it being unable to pay the salaries of its 130,000-plus officials and security staff, Nigel Roberts, the World Bank's man in the West Bank and Gaza Strip said in an interview to Haaretz.
Reminds me of the previously posted story that stated the Iranian government owned 80% of all industry in Iran. It is not surprising that the Palestinian authority is the largest employer in town, but what is surprising is that the next largest private employer is the Oasis Casino, with 800 Palestinian employees.
Now, lets compare that with the United States (2004), where 11,046,023 local government workers, 5,355,490 state government workers, and 3,572,640 federal government employees give us 15,154,153 total government workers, which is far, far too many. For example, when we compare this to the next largest employer, Wal-Mart, which employs 1.1 million people, we get a ratio of 15:1, again, unacceptable in a society that was founded on Liberty. Private companies should always be the leading employers.
However, when we do the same calculation for the PA territories (130,000/800), we get a ratio of 162:1.
Interestingly, I was hoping that 162/15 = 10.8 would be equal to the ratio of a per capita difference $ between the Palestinians and US citizens, but this correlation does not pan out, perhaps the graph is exponential, as the actual per capita is $1,100 in the PA territories and $40,000 in the US, a ratio of 40:1. It would be interesting to calculate this ratio for a number of different countries and see what we find. :)
Anyway, to continue with the article:
Roberts notes that the
amount of assistance the Palestinians are getting - $5 billion in five years, or $300 per capita
annually - is the highest granted to any entity since World War II. "To maintain the deep
involvement of the donors, and their diplomatic attention, as well as the desire of the private
sector to invest additional money, the PA must improve its performance," Roberts states.
Of course, what Roberts does not note is that money is not the problem
(well actually it is, but not because there isn't enough of it!,
wealth is never created through government, government does not raise
people out of poverty, and the efforts of the donors and the international community are most
likely harming, not helping the prosperity of the Palestinian people.
Were the donors not to hold
the PA responsible, they would lose the confidence of their taxpayers that enough control can be
exercised to prevent the money from being used to finance acts of terror.
They are forgetting about the terror of government.
Posted 10/14/05
Palestinians Loot Gaza Strip Greenhouses
9/13/05 Associated Press I post this story as an example of why private ownership and laws protecting property are so important. In this case, privately owned assets are being transferred to a 'state'. Let's look at the intentions:
American Jewish donors had bought more than 3,000 greenhouses from Israeli settlers in Gaza for 14 million US dollars last month, and transferred them to the Palestinian Authority. Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, who brokered the deal, put up 500,000 dollars of his own cash.
The greenhouses are a centerpiece of Palestinian plans for rebuilding Gaza after 38 years of Israeli occupation. The Palestinian Authority hopes the high-tech greenhouses left by the Israelis will provide jobs and export income for Gaza's shattered economy.
During a tour of Neve Dekalim, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia implored Palestinians to leave the structures intact. "These greenhouses are for the Palestinian people," he said. "We don't want anyone to touch or harm anything that can be useful for our people."
"We expect the security to protect the assets properly," he said.
Of course, these assets were not 'owned by the Palestinian people', they were owned by the Palestinian government. Previously they were owned by the Israeli people, not the Israeli government. This makes all the difference. Let's look at the results:
Palestinians looted dozens of greenhouses, walking off with irrigation hoses, water pumps and plastic sheeting in a blow to fledgling efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip. Al-Wazir said the greenhouses did not suffer structural damage, but that looters got away with irrigation pipes, plastic sheeting and most troublesome, water pumps. He said authorities were trying to recover the expensive pumps. In some instances, there was no security, and in others, police even joined the looters, witnesses said.
This is the difference between 'state' and 'private' ownership, the difference between socialism and capitalism, the difference between the equal rule of law and corruption, and illustrative of the misunderstanding and appeasement of the Jewish donors and the world bank president.
The Palestinian mobs also torched 19 Jewish Synagogues. Did you hear or see any of this on the news? Similar to what happened in areas of the Muslim world after false rumors about a Koran being flushed down a toilet were aired by western media, did Jews riot in outrage? No, they did not. (Neither did Muslims when Mohammad's home was bulldozed in Mecca, by the Saudi Arabian government.) The disparities in these incidents reflects the desire by the foreign political powers that be to influence our media and public opinion. The difference in reaction between Jew and Muslim is not based on their religion, but the political differences in their governments.
Two more stories to compare:
IDF troops arrest would be suicide bomber
6/20/05 Haaretz The woman, who was carrying 10 kilograms of explosives in her pants, had a permit to enter Israel to receive medical treatment. Ibrahim had been in the past to the Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva to receive medical treatment for severe burns she sustained from a gas balloon that exploded next to her six months ago. She needed to reach the hospital for medical tests. When Ibrahim realized she had been caught, she tried to detonate the explosives she was carrying, but was unsuccessful.
9/26/05 Ynet News Physicians for Human Rights complain that it is Israel's responsibility to let potential suicide bombers like the one above into Israel for treatment. The Palestinians don't have advanced medical centers because their government is corrupt, socialistic, and run by thieves. Yet this liberal group are apparently impervious to this and place the blame on the Israeli authorities rather than on the Palestinian Government and/or the suicide bombers!:
In post-pullout Gaza the sick pay the price: Palestinian Gaza residents suffering from illness are not receiving proper treatment in the wake of Israel’s withdrawal from the area, according to a report issued by the Physicians for Human Rights organization.
Hundreds of sick Gazans have been left untreated and trapped in the Strip and are waiting for its gates to open, the report says.
The doctors noted that cancer patients who used to receive treatment in Israel nowadays hardly receive permits allowing them to reach the hospitals. Only seven out of 40 patient requests to enter Israel for treatment in the last two weeks have been approved.
If one of these seven blows himself up what do you tell the mother of the soldiers or innocents she kills? (on a side note, this violates the 'Sanctuary' of Mercy.)
(Posted 5/31/05)
Israeli Police Baffled by Local neo-Nazi Ring
5/31/05 Daily Maariv A little lesson in freedom from the Israelis:
Israeli police have discovered a ring of about 20 local neo-Nazis, young emigrants from the former Soviet Union, but are uncertain how to proceed against them as Israel has no specific laws against supporting Nazi beliefs, the Israeli daily Maariv reported Tuesday.
Why is this a lesson in freedom? Here is a country in which a majority of citizens belong to the same religious group that suffered 6 million deaths at the hands of the Nazi ideology. In fact, many of those who founded the state of Israel were survivors of this atrocity. These same people have enough respect for Freedom to allow this pathetic group of neo-Nazis to espouse their views freely. Meanwhile, if you venture outside of Israel, you can be killed for 'desecrating' a Koran, running for political office, criticizing the government, preaching, and in some cases (Saudi Arabia), practicing, another religion. The difference is so stark and so stunning that it is beyond comprehension that the media and international opinion is always against Israel. The Arab countries that sided with Germany during World War II and have engaged in a conventional and unconventional war with Israel for the last 50 years have the gall to fund news organizations that put out stories like this one from:
Israel accused of Nazi tactics
5/10/04 Al Jazeera Again, precisely the opposite is true. Mufti Al Husseini corroborated with Hitler and spread the ideology of Nazism and Fascism throughout the Middle East. Arafat continued where Husseini left off, doing Moscow's bidding. The Bathist parties of Syria and Iraq have Nazi roots as did the 'great Arab Nationalist', Egypt's Nasser. Socialism and Tyranny now rule the Middle East - see 'Arab Governments and Causes of Terrorism' for more.
This double standard applied to Israel is also consistently applied to the United States. Can you believe this question Terry Moran of ABC asked President Bush in a press conference today??!!:
"Mr. President, recently Amnesty International said that you have established a, quote, 'new gulag of prisons around the world beyond the reach of the law and decency.' I'd like your reaction to that, and also your assessment of how it came to this, that this is a view not just held by extremists and anti-Americans, but by groups that have allied themselves from the US government in the past, and what the strategic impact is that in many places in the world the United States these days under your leadership is no longer seen as the good guy?"
President Bush rightly called the Amnesty report 'absurd' and Vice President Cheney said, "I don't take them [Amnesty] seriously."
I don't take the mainstream press of this country serious either.
Returning to Israel, I think it was best said by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld:
Q
[Palestinian Official]: Mr. Secretary, You
talked about countries that were trying to produce weapons of mass destruction. You talked about
Iraq and you talked about Iran and North Korea. I have a question, a direct question to you. What
are you doing with Israel? As far as Israel is concerned, Israel has more atomic weapons in the
region than any other country. Why do you remain silent in regard to Israel? I think it’s
important to answer this question because this has to do with the world, the strategy that we are
pursuing today. I think that if the position towards Israel were different then the situation would
be different in the Near East, and this is a great problem.
Rumsfeld: You know the answer before I give it, I’m sure. The world knows the answer. We take the
world like you find it; and Israel is a small state with a small population. It’s a democracy and
it exists in a neighborhood that in many -- over a period of time has opined from time to time that
they’d prefer it not be there and they’d like it to be put in the sea. And Israel has opined
that it would prefer not to get put in the sea, and as a result, over a period of decades, it has
arranged itself so it hasn’t been put in the sea.
Of further possible interest, 'Middle Eastern Governments and Causes of Terrorism'.
See also, 'The Israeli Lebanon Conflict'