Moral blindness, dhimmitude, naivete, and more. Will the recipients of this largesse now realize that the Jews are not as bad as they have thought? No. They will laugh at their weakness and continue the jihad. “How Old Friends of Israel Gave $14 Million to Help the Palestinians,” from the New York Times, with thanks to Ruth King:
It was perhaps an odd request to make of a man noted for his commitment to Israeli causes and his fierce criticism of the Palestinian Authority.
Please raise $14 million to help buy the Jewish settlers’ lucrative greenhouses in the Gaza Strip so that the Palestinians can take them over when the settlers are gone. Oh, and can you get it done by the weekend, before the pullout starts? If not, the settlers will destroy the greenhouses on their way out of Gaza to keep them out of Arab hands.
Last Wednesday, though, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, real estate magnate and publisher of The Daily News, received just such a pitch from his friend James D. Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank, current Middle East envoy for the White House and would-be broker of the deal.
Mr. Zuckerman, who is also former head of the American-Israel Friendship League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and the Soviet Jewish Zionist Forum, said he thought about the ironies. But not for too long.
“Despite my skepticism,” Mr. Zuckerman said in an interview on Tuesday, “I thought to myself, ‘This is perhaps the only illustration or symbol of what could be the benefits of a co-operational, rather than a confrontational attitude.’ ”
So he in turn picked up the phone and called a few of his friends and fellow billionaires, who also happened to be prominent Jewish philanthropists.
Not all of them shared his enthusiasm. “Some people said, ‘Well, if these people are so anti-Semitic, why should we do anything to help them?’ ” Mr. Zuckerman said.
But Lester Crown of Chicago, whose family owns General Dynamics, said yes. Leonard Stern, the chairman of the Hartz Mountain real estate empire and former owner of The Village Voice, called Mr. Zuckerman back from a cruise ship in the Mediterranean and said yes. A foundation that prefers to remain anonymous said yes.
Within 48 hours, Mr. Zuckerman said, he had his $14 million. And the Palestinians had a shot at inheriting relatively intact the greenhouses whose vegetables and flowers have been a major source of Israeli export income, and, not incidentally, about 3,500 desperately needed Palestinian jobs.
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