Thursday, May 28, 2009
http://joshuapundit.blogspot.com/
Will Obama Flout US Law To Fund Abbas And The Palestinians?
Mahmoud Abbas, the capo del tutti of Fatah is scheduled to be in DC today, meeting with President Obama on Middle East peace and -oh yes - that proposed $900 million aid package to the Palestinians pledged by the Obama Administration on our behalf that the Senate is now mulling over.
This is over and above the money they're already getting from us via UNRWA, USAid and the World Bank.
Aside from the dubious wisdom involved in shelling out well over a billion dollars in taxpayer funds to Abbas who is not even the legal president of the Palestinian Authority any longer, there's the slight problem that funding the Palestinian Authority openly flouts existing US law.
American law expressly prohibits funding of Palestinian buildings and projects that use any portion of their budgets to aid, promote, glorify or honor terrorists or terrorism. That's been an entrenched principle since Oslo. Yet Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have done exactly that with impunity for years, even under 'moderate' Mahmoud Abbas.
Samir Kuntar, the Lebanese child killer who was recently freed in a swap for the mutilated and tortured bodies of two Israelis kidnapped by Hezbollah was named an 'honorary Palestinian citizen' a mere two years ago while Abbas was in power. He was was publicly celebrated by ,Mahmoud Abbas,Israel's supposed peace partner, who referred to Kuntar as `heroic' and to his having won 'a big struggle.' The Palestinian media ran numerous programs touting him as a hero and role model.
Another Palestinian hero who's been honored as a role model and has had numerous US funded projects named after her is Dalal Mughrabi,who's remains were also part of the same swap that freed Kuntar.
She was the leader of what became known in Israel as the Coastal Massacre. On March 11, 1978, Mughrabi led a band of eleven terrorists who murdered several people in cold blood, including an American photographer, Gail Rubin. They then hijacked a bus filled with families going on an outing.
When the IDF unit managed to stop the bus, Mughrabi and her gang began shooting the helpless men, women and children at point-blank range and then firebombed the bus itself, turning it into a death trap. At least 35 were killed, including 13 children and a number of Americans.
In 2002, Fatah began building a girls' school in Hebron named after Mughrabi, funded by US money. When this came to light, the Palestinian Authority promised to change the name, but as soon as the school was completed, the name change was rescinded and the school is still named after Mughrabi as I write this.
She's also had a few streets and a number of other government institutions like summer camps named in her honor, and there have been a number of books, television and radio programs in the PA controlled media about her 'heroic martyrdom.' She's regarded by Palestinian Arabs as a role model.
Back in 2004, the US spent $400,000 of your tax money through USAid to construct the Salakh Khalaf soccer field.
Interesting fellow, Khalaf. He headed the Black September group that murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, and later tortured to death two American diplomats in the Sudan in 1973 on Arafat's orders, Cleo Allen Noel and George Curtis Moore.
Once that got out USAID publicly acknowledged the error and claimed they would demand that the name be changed. It never was.
Under existing US law and numerous precedents, the Palestinian Authority should have had its US funding yanked a long time ago.
But wait, there's more. On top of all this, the US is in the middle of a $350 million commitment to train, arm and fund a Fatah army. This effort is being directed by US general Keith Dayton, who's been working on this for two years. Apparently the last attempt which did so well in Gaza and resulted in Hamas obtaining millions of dollars in gently used ('only dropped once') American military equipment that it encouraged even more of an investment. Except this time, according to General Dayton the probable target isn't Hamas, but Israel.
Dayton, in a talk at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy talked about the three battalions of Fatah soldiers he's already trained and the plans for eight more.
And according to Dayton, unless the Israelis decide to commit national suicide by giving in to all of the Palestinian's demands, they could rebel...or in other words, they'll simply turn their weapons on Israel, something Abbas has eluded to a number of times .That's exactly what Abbas' old boss Yasir Arafat did before.
In other words, we're paying through the nose to build an army that could menace one of our allies in the hopes of creating a country...and one that, given the realities, will probably be ruled by Hamas as an Iranian proxy.
It's enough to make me want to vomit in disgust, frankly.
Friday, 29 May 2009
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