The United States on Friday ended all funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees,” and it is instructive to look back at the “Palestinian” fury at the American government earlier this year for cutting its contribution to UNRWA from $125 million to $60 million; it was something to behold. It was full of dire warnings about what terrible things would ensue for these “refugees” (that is, the five million people whom UNRWA calls “refugees,” even though only 20,000-40,000 are still alive of those who actually left Palestine in 1947-1949; the rest are the ever-multiplying descendants of the 700,000 Arabs who left). There were repeated warnings of “devastating consequences.” Apparently these desperate “Palestinians” have no other conceivable sources of support to call on, such as, for example, several of the richest countries, per capita, in the world — Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar. Between them, they can’t come up with an extra $65 million for their “Palestinian” brothers. This is strange, especially when you consider how very deeply they feel for the “Palestinians,” as is shown by their rhetoric and votes at the U.N. And it can’t be for want of money. Why, in the last year, the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman bought a $500 million dollar yacht, a $300 million dollar chateau, and a $450 million dollar painting by Leonardo, without batting an eye. Could it be that the P.A. insists that the money must come from the Americans, and not from other Arabs, to reinforce the idea that the United States “owes” the “Palestinians” this aid? From a January Al Jazeera report:
“If the wakala [UNRWA] goes away, there will be no education, no healthcare, no sanitation,” Yazan Muhammad Sabri, an 18-year-old Palestinian refugee in Dheisheh camp told Al Jazeera last week.
“There won’t be anything – everything will disappear.”
Salah Ajarmeh, a 44-year-old refugee living in Aida camp, had said that “if the services stop, there will be a revolution”.
“Palestinian uprisings began in the refugee camps in Jordan and Syria, and this will happen again.”
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, also urged the US government to reverse its decision.
“The move will have devastating consequences for vulnerable Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, including hundreds of thousands of refugee children in the West Bank and Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria who depend on the agency for their education,” he said in a statement.
“It will also deny their parents a social safety net that helps them to survive, and undermine the UN agency’s ability to respond in the event of another flare-up in the conflict.”
There have been no “devastating consequences,” no “Palestinian uprisings.” Just the usual whines from those with a sense of permanent and total entitlement. Apparently the Americans have no right to stop funding the “Palestinians” to an extravagant degree, and must keep funding them no matter what their behavior. What have been the “dire consequences”? Some “Palestinians” working for UNRWA, with its much-overstaffed, very well-paid bureaucracy, will have lost their jobs, and forced to accept — life is so unfair! — less cushy employment, a loss of a great many sinecures, and less exalted salaries.
By cutting aid to UNRWA, the Trump administration is making the point that UNRWA’s definition of what constitutes a “Palestinian” refugee — the administration is not accepting the claim that the term refers not just to anyone who was himself a refugee, but also to anyone who is the descendant, no matter how any generations removed, of someone who was a refugee. Under this definition, which is UNRWA’s, the number of “refugees” will forever increase. The “Palestinian refugees” are the only “refugees” in the entire world who are permitted to be defined in that way, and the American government has lost patience with this colossally expensive farce.
In late August, when the Trump administration dropped the other shoe and declared that it would cut aid to the Palestinian Authority itself by more than $200 million, the response was sheer fury. How dare the Americans cut aid that they owe the “Palestinians” in perpetuity, to judge by the apoplexy of Mahmoud Abbas? Abbas needn’t worry about himself — he and his two sons have accumulated between them $400 million, skimmed from the foreign aid intended for the “poor Palestinians,” and which they will hold onto no matter what. But he doesn’t like this new policy in Washington of outrageously daring to link American aid to changes in “Palestinian” policy. How dare the Americans make demands when they should simply be handing over the sums, and not presuming to dictate what the Palestine Authority does or does not do?
If the administration had first been trying to change the policy of UNRWA with its ever-expanding rolls of “refugees,” it was now trying to change the policy of the Palestinian Authority itself, its policy of paying large, ever-increasing sums to the families of terrorists killed, wounded, or imprisoned in Israeli jails. Families of individuals killed by Israeli security forces are paid stipends of about $800 to $1,000 per month. These payments go on forever. The families of convicted Palestinians serving time in Israeli prisons receive $3,000 or higher per month until they are released. Large sums are involved. For example, payments to the families of just one terrorist, sentenced to life at 20 and expected to live to the age of 80, would be close to $2 million.
But the payments received by terrorists’ families from the “Palestinian Martyr’s Fund” are only one of the ways that the PA encourages terrorists. Another way is to honor the memories of those terrorists who have been killed, by naming streets, squares, parks, schools, and even summer classes after these “Palestinian” murderers, who are held up as models of conduct on children’s shows on “Palestinian” television, where the sweetest-faced little Arab girls lisp songs in praise of those who murder Jews, and express the wish that when they grow up they can do the same thing themselves.
Previous administrations have been fully aware of this PA policy of “pay for slay” and for glorifying terrorists, but until now no American administration has done something to punish the PA for these practices. The administration has done the only thing that gets the attention of the “Palestinians”: it has unceremoniously cut American aid. The Trump administration has had it with the “pay for slay” policy of the PA, and with its grotesque honoring of mass-murdering terrorists.
Even if there were no such “pay for slay” policy, and no honoring of terrorists by naming public places after them, American aid to the “Palestinians” should be stopped. It has no convincing justification. Such aid only appears to confirm the PA in its denunciation of the Americans as responsible for the establishment of the state of Israel, and therefore they owe the “Palestinians” some kind of recompense.
The idea that the Americans are simply being generous to those they have been persuaded need help is something the “Palestinian” mind refuses to comprehend. If aid is given, it can only be because it is owed. And it is owed because the Americans are responsible for the State of Israel coming into existence. It offends Arab amour-propre to believe that the despised Jews could have held out on their own against so many Arabs; surely the Americans must have been supplying the Jews with indispensable support of all kinds.
But that isn’t true. Let’s go back to the founding of the Jewish state or even earlier, back to the establishment by the League of Nations of the Mandate for Palestine. Great Britain, not the U.S., was the Mandatory authority, thereby committing itself to facilitating Jewish immigration and close Jewish settlement on the land. The U.S. not only had no responsibility for the Mandate but, despite Woodrow Wilson’s enthusiasm for the League, never even became a member of the League. No aid from the American government was extended to the Jews of Mandatory Palestine.
In 1947-49, the United States, like many other Western powers, established an embargo on weaponry for both sides, weaponry that might have helped the Jews in their fight for survival. Great Britain did supply Egypt, Iraq, and especially Jordan with arms. It was Jordan’s Arab Legion, armed and trained by British officers under the celebrated Glubb Pasha, that was the most effective fighting force on the Arab side.
While some Jewish American soldiers did volunteer to fight for the Zionist cause, that was their individual decision. The Israelis did have some Sherman tanks from sources in Europe. There were also shiploads of small arms smuggled into Palestine from Europe, almost all from Czechoslovakia, by the Jewish Agency, which were to prove decisive in Israel’s war. Here were the shipments:
Total deliveries (confirmed until October 1948)
Infantry weapons
34,500 P-18 rifles
5,515 MG 34 machine guns with 10,000 ammo belts
10,000 vz.24 bayonets
900 vz. 37 heavy machine guns
500 vz. 27 pistols
12 ZK-383 submachine guns
10 ZK 420 semi-automatic rifles
500 vz. 26 light machine guns
Infantry ammunition
91,500,000 7.92×57mm Mauser cartridges
15,000,000 9mm Parabellum cartridges
375,000 13mm cartridges for MG 131
150,000 20mm cartridges for MG 151
375,000 7.65mm cartridges for vz. 27 pistols
Aircraft
Israeli Avia S-199, 1948
25 Avia S-199 fighters
61 Supermarine Spitfire Mk. IX fighters
Only 18 of the Spitfires arrived before the cessation of hostilities.
The Czechs also provided training for Israeli pilots.
There were no significant shipments of weaponry from the U.S.
Nor did the U.S. intervene to help Israel in the early period of its existence. 19,000 separate attacks by Egyptian fedayeen, encouraged by Nasser, did not lead to any softening of the American position. When Israel finally went to war against Egypt in the Sinai Campaign of 1956 to stamp out those attacks, it was France and Great Britain, for their own good and sufficient reasons, that briefly allied with Israel in order to deal Nasser a stinging defeat that might curb his leader-of-the-Third-World aggressiveness. President Eisenhower, however, not only did not join this alliance, but pressured Israel in 1957 to pull its troops back from the conquered Sinai, without obtaining any guarantees from Egypt to halt the fedayeen. Ben Gurion refused at first. Eisenhower voted at the U.N. to denounce Israel’s “occupation” of the Sinai (only two states voted against the resolution: France and Israel). He then went on nationwide television to criticize Israel’s refusal to withdraw. Still Ben Gurion would not budge. Finally, Eisenhower threatened that if Israel did not withdraw, he would approve trade sanctions against the country and might also cut off all private assistance to Israel, which amounted that year to $40 million in tax-deductible donations and $60 million annually in the purchase of bonds. Ben Gurion relented, and the Israelis pulled out completely from the Sinai, without having obtained any guarantees from Egypt.
This history has certainly not been acknowledged by the “Palestinians,” so determined are they to paint Israel as a creation of the Americans, which in turn is supposed to explain and justify present-day American aid to the “Palestinians.” Even in the Six-Day War, though Israel did have some American weapons, notably Sherman tanks, Israel’s victory was secured in the first day of the war, when Israeli pilots, flying not American but French (Dassault) planes, managed to destroy almost the entire Egyptian Air Force, some 338 planes.
Israel was not, pace Abbas and his henchmen, America’s creation, not in the Mandate period, not during its War for Independence, not during the Sinai Campaign, not in the Six-Day War. Nor has it been hopelessly dependent on America since. In fact, over time, the Israelis with their ever-increasing technological marvels — remember Stuxnet? — have been the greatest foreign source of military advances for the American forces, giving, in the literal sense, as good as they get. And no other country has been as helpful to the United States in sharing valuable intelligence about the Islamic world as Israel. Think only of the daring Israeli raid earlier this year, when 100,000 Iranian documents pertaining to its nuclear program, held under the tightest possible security, were located and smuggled out of the country by Israeli agents, “one step ahead of the Iranian authorities.” These documents were, of course, shared with the United States.
The American government owes the “Palestinians” nothing. Enough absurd claims about “five million refugees.” The Americans will help pay for 20,000-40,000 refugees who left Palestine/Israel between 1947 and 1949, but not for five million children and grandchildren of those refugees. We’ve done more than enough. As for the aid given directly to the “Palestinians,” if they do not halt their “pay for slay” policy, and refuse to end their practice of honoring murderers by naming public places after them (and do not rename those already so named), then why are they entitled to anything? They are promoters of Islamic terrorism. They subsidize, and honor, Muslim terrorists. End of story. They are not different in kind, but only in degree, from those in Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. They can forget about America, and instead make the rounds of their Arab “brothers” in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates, Qatar, none of whom have in the past been exactly generous with the “Palestinians” — including those who have lived in their countries for decades, but have been prevented from obtaining citizenship, and barred from many occupations. Let the Palestinian Authority hold out its begging bowl everywhere it goes. It will be fascinating to see the response.
Tony says
This strange embedded sense of entitlement baffles me.Their rage is like that of a mad person.
infidel numero uno says
This should have happened decades ago.
abad says
Agreed.
If the “Palestinian” Moslems want a nation they can move to Saudi Arabia and Allahu Akhbar all they want to. They are not in any way descendents of the original people in that region.
infidel says
There are two countries today going around the world with begging bowls and yet feeling superior and doing terror all over and both start with the letter P… Pakistan and Palestine… SHAMELESS HATE FILLED SAVAGES…
VRWC member77 says
But “palestine” is not and never was a country. And this makes their pipsqueak squawking all the more worthy of loud in-your-face high profile recognition of contempt……….tell abbas to go pound wet sand on a beach.
Pakistan is somewhat more dangerous by virtue of the fact they have nukes.
Garry says
Totally agree. Sanctions were never going to work. Just a total withdrawal.
Renate says
The U.S. doesn’t owe anyone anything. Let the people who are always going on about the poor Palestinians put their money where their mouth is.
Buraq says
Cutting funding is kinda like BDS in reverse. However, as usual, double-standards apply: BDS for Israel is OK, according to the fascist left, but BDS for the PA is a crime against humanity, unfair, illegal, immoral ……… etc, etc.
Trump’s new policy in dealing with recalcitrant Muslim States and Islamic political entities could be summed as “I came, I saw, I stopped writing cheques!”
And as Islamic economies turn to dust, not a shot has been fired, not a US soldier, sailor or airman lost!
“Suck my d-d-d- dollar!” Mohamed!
Raja says
Buraq, With all due respect to you, the Saudi Arabian economy is still doing well though others like Turkey and Iran have faltered.
History has shown that Muslims are well behaved under brutes and tyrants e.g., Egypt under Mubarak, Iraq under Saddam, Syria under Assads, Libya under Gadaffi, Saudi Arabia under the Saud family with a heavy dose of Sharia (for family hegemony’s sake). and so on. They can come to their senses if they lose battles or when confronted seriously. e.g., Attaturk seriously considered “taming” Islam when Turkey was battered during WWI.
Islam must be eradicated. The world will be a better place without the oldest foe of liberty and mankind.
dsinc says
slam must be eradicated. The world will be a better place without the oldest foe of liberty and mankind.
Hear, hear, couldn’t agree more..
Koose E Mack says
Does anyone remember a time when “Palestinians” weren’t enraged? Many Palestinians refuse to fly…they claim discrimination because at times, the WC’s on planes say “Occupied”.
TKF says
Palestinians…better call the Whaaaaaabulance. The US shouldn’t give these filthy troglodytes another red cent. They can get their filthy, troglodyte god, Allah to provide. He always come through. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
`RonaldB says
This article was a very good reminder of much of the US role in the establishment of Israel, which was not too much militarily. However, the US was one of the first to recognize the Israeli government de facto after the declaration of independence.
The account of arms embargoes calls, for me, the question of the wisdom of arms US embargoes at all. During the Yugoslavian civil wars, the US enforced arms embargoes against Serbia, which already had sufficient stockpiles of arms, and against the Bosnian fighters, who did not. The US ended by bombing Serbia, through NATO, into submission to the Muslims and the Croats. The US is like the bull in the China shop when trying to fine-tune events. It would do better to simply allow events to take their course, which probably would have been a quick victory by the Serbs, followed by a some migrations on both sides, and then a Serbian state composed of the ethnic Serbian territories. Europe has seen many such adjustments, and the major instabilities created when the adjustments are left incomplete.
The US is not obligated to give tax money to every country and refugee, just because they need it. Cutting the Palestinians off is a great start, not simply because they support terrorism, and not simply because the leadership is totally corrupt and a kleptocracy, but because people have to sort themselves out. Nobody wants the Palestinians in their country because of the history of treachery of the “Palestinians” when shown sympathy. So, they just have to live ( or not live ) with that.
The next step, of course, is to cut off all foreign aid from Israel, our largest recipient of foreign aid. If Israel makes money by selling us technology, or military intelligence, fine. It’s a commercial transaction, value given for value received. But, lets put our financial dealings with Israel on a commercial basis, and not simply making it aid, with Israel granting us favors in return.
PRCS says
“Salah Ajarmeh, a 44-year-old refugee living in Aida camp, had said that “if the services stop, there will be a revolution”.”
Good! And long overdue.
That may be the real reason Abbas bought that new bizjet.
IanB says
The so-called Palestinians are enraged because the jizya payments have been stopped. Great news.
Indiana Tom says
“There won’t be anything – everything will disappear.”
I have a dream….
FYI says
God gave Israel to the Jews.
Out of nothing they built a nation under God.
“allah” gave Gaza to the “palestinians”.
out of nothing they built nothing under “allah”
Baucent says
Actually Israel gave Gaza to the Palestinians some years back in a failed land swap for peace. The Israelis had built advanced irrigated vegetable farms and greenhouses, which were destroyed by the Arabs, rather than utilize them for food production and export revenue. Some people, it doesn’t matter how much or how often you help them, they will fail. Maybe the rich Arabs know that.
Blangwort says
They were going to rage anyway –with or without our funding. Since it was going to happen regardless of what we do, I prefer we not give them any additional funding to go rage.
Bezelel says
We could give them something to cry about. How about a DNA criteria in order to claim pali-hood? Even the suggestion of it would set them off.
brane pilot says
Go cry me a river.
The Palestinians breed like rabbits and UNRWA is directly funding demographic Jihad.
The ‘dire environmental conditions’ of Gaza and the West Bank are direct results of explosive population growth.
Let the Arabs pay for their own expansionist fantasies.
The USA has been played for fools long enough.
Georg says
They openly cheered in the streets on 9/11. Ask the Saudjihadists to fund the venom. For Americans to respond to that episode only by withdrawing money is freakishly lenient.
Investigate Gov Corruption Now says
OK. Now are the EU going to pick up the tab like it did with Iran? LOL!!
carpediadem says
Yes.They are already planning to. The Europeans must be thrilled and all the terror groupies are.
Investigate Gov Corruption Now says
OK. Now are the EU going to pick up the tab like it did with Iran? LOL!!!!
Anne Smith says
Thank God for President Trump
if only we had a leader like him in UK and could stop grovelling to the rest of the world.
Meturaf says
The true refugees are small in number after 70 years. These guys are like generational welfare.
Twerzig says
Who may claim first nation status.
Both are transmigrated populations.
One is more ancient than the other.
But which one.
Some are drawn from Syria others Egypt..
Still more from Saudia Arabia and even Turkey
and Bosnia.
Many will have family and clans
in their ethnic homelands.
What is the basis for their claim
if their history is not rooted in the Bible.
I think of those two women in scripture
who love the same baby.
But which is the Mother the king asks.
Surely it is the one who weeps the most
for the child.
carpediadem says
Jews were there thousands of years before Muslims. They are indigenous to Israel despite all the invasions.
Richard Courtemanche says
Abbas will have to dip into his accumulated personal $US reserve.
Bacherbazistan says
Saudi, time to financially support your “brothers”.
Berengaria says
A BIG, BIG Thank You to President Donald Trump for kicking the Phony Palestinians Off The Backs of the American Taxpayers.
The So-Called Palestinians are Nomadic Terrorists, that no Muslim Country will claim or support. For more than 25 years, we have had Pro-Muslim Presidents in the WH, who have catered to these Murderers, now Thank God, that has come to an end.