Obama - be sure to answer the phone next January,
when
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen from Florida calls!
My Note: In case some may have the idea that Obama's administration handing over the latest "gift" of $150 Million to the Palestinians has set my teeth on edge (you would be correct in that assumption), the following article has some thoughts worth pondering, when you next hear Obama speak in support of the Palestinians. Bee Sting
Source: INVESTORS
Middle East: Washington is handing out $150 million in direct aid to help the Palestinian Authority with its budget deficit. This would be asinine even if we didn't have profound budget problems of our own.
The funds will come out of a $200 million aid package — part of an even larger $900 million lump of aid — that the Obama administration plans to send the PA during the fiscal year that just began.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday proudly said that the advanced aid shows the U.S. is standing "with our Palestinian friends even during difficult economic times as we have here at home."
Or maybe the White House is just trying to shuttle to the West Bank as much aid as it can before the House turns Republican in January and the GOP starts asking the administration questions about its Palestinian aid plans.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen from Florida has a record of opposing aid to the Palestinian Authority, which she considers a terrorist sanctuary, and is likely to be the next chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Ros-Lehtinen sees the Palestinian problem with a clear eye. Instead of talking emptily of America's "Palestinian friends," she thinks the U.S. should demand that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah party "reform their charter, renounce and combat violent extremism, stop using Israel-free maps, and recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state."At one time, the Palestinians were the world's biggest recipients of foreign aid. From sources all over the world, each of them received a yearly average of $300, according to Daniel Pipes, president and founder of the Middle East Forum and a Hoover Institution fellow.
Aid ended briefly when Hamas, the unrepentant terrorist group with direct ties to Iran's radical regime, defeated the Fatah Party in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in 2006. Aid resumed in 2007.Humanitarian reasons exist for helping Palestinians who've suffered under poor leadership. But sending money to the PA is not the same as sending money to Haitians who have been devastated by an earthquake.
Aid poured into PA coffers might as well be addressed to Hamas, which recognizes neither the state of Israel nor, as Ros-Lehtinen noted in her statement, its right to exist.
The Fatah Party, the Hamas rival founded in 1959 by the late Yasser Arafat and Abbas, is no better alternative. It may not be recognized by the CIA as a terrorist group, but it too is dedicated to Israel's destruction.
Its constitution, largely ignored by Western media, says "the Israeli existence in Palestine is a Zionist invasion" and vows that the Palestinian-armed "struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated."
Here we insert the usual reminder that Israel, that "Zionist state," is the Mideast's only elected government outside the fledging Iraqi state and one of our strongest allies.
Since the 1993 Oslo peace accords, "the U.S. has showered $2.2 billion in bilateral aid on the Palestinians," Heritage Foundation senior research fellow James Philips noted last year. And what has all that bought us?
Those billions, according to Philips, have "contributed to a culture of victimization and shrill anti-Israeli and anti-Western radicalism" and "freed up some Palestinian groups to focus on destroying Israel rather than on providing for and advancing the long-term interests of the Palestinian people."
So Hamas is a terrorist group and Fatah can't be trusted. What about moving aid through the United Nations? Forget it. The "U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees," Philips reported, is "a notoriously opaque and dysfunctional institution that has been infiltrated by Hamas supporters and other Palestinian radicals."
For these and other reasons, sending American dollars to the Palestinian Authority makes no sense. Prior aid hasn't brought peace or ended the threat of terrorism against the U.S. It's time we acknowledge this and act accordingly.
Note: I have read that the amount given the PA's is 3.2 BILLION DOLLARS! And that does not include the amount spent on military training by our own US military, in Jordan, for the Fatah Palestinians. Be sure to questions that one, when you speak to Obama next January. Imagine! Training the Palestinians, who cannot be trusted and want the demise of Israel ... how stupid can we get?
Bee Sting
