Israel Matzav

Unmitigated arrogance

The Gulf News has a whole new take on Hamas: The terrorist party is entitled to all the EU money gives to the Palestinians regardless of its failure to adhere to the Oslo agreements.

In an editorial titled “Forcing Hamas into a corner,” the editorial geniuses of Gulf tell the world that:

With the European Union (EU) temporarily halting aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government, a new and dangerous signal is sent out: It is tantamount to interference in another country’s affairs, while not accepting the democratic choice of the people.

Withholding foreign aid money is now “a dangerous signal” and “tantamount to interference in another country’s affairs.” This is the voice of a Mafia extortionist: Give me your money or you’ll make me do something dangerous.

But it doesn’t have much to do with democracy and the rule of law. If anything, it shows that Natan Sharansky was right: It’s not elections that make a democracy, but protection of free speech. The PA election had no dissenters from the hate-Israel policy, only a choice between a corrupt war party and a less corrupt but even more dangerous war party. Peaceful Palestinians just kept their heads down and kept quiet. This is not a free society. It is a fear society.

So the Gulf News has its own idea of democracy. Not a big surprise, for medieval sheikhdoms. But the editorial conclusion is interesting:

“For Hamas to retain its newly-won grip on power, it must now turn to Arab nations for increased financial support. (italics added).

And now the cat is out of the bag: The UN—- paid by the US—- and Europe have been supporting the Palestinians for sixty years. In those six decades the Palestinians have multiplied but never bothered to establish a self-supporting economy. They had no need to: The UNRWA is a permanent welfare agency, the only permanent UN refugee bureaucracy in existence. Millions of refugees have come and gone all over the world, but only the Palestinians have become permanent welfare clients of the West. Meanwhile their Arab brethren in the oil states became billionaires and did nothing for but whip up more hatred.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:38 PM