About those refugee camps

TownHall.com ^ | Friday, May 3, 2002 | by Mona Charen

[JohnHuang2]

As the Jenin "massacre" takes its place alongside other Arab myths -- Mossad or CIA responsibility for the crash of Egypt Air Flight 990 in 1999, the suspicious "fact" that 4,000 Jews failed to show up for work at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, the Jewish practice of using human blood in their holiday cakes -- some on this side of the Atlantic and this side of sanity have been asking: "What's with these refugee camps? Why do people remain in camps 54 years after Israel's founding?"

This is key to understanding the conflict. The Arab refugees remain in camps because of the cynical decision by Arab governments and the PLO to keep them miserable and poor. Refugee camps are distributed among Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Only Jordan has offered citizenship to them. Before June 1967, when Egypt controlled Gaza and Jordan held the West Bank, neither nation gave the land to the Palestinians for a state because the idea was that they would eventually return to the real Palestine -- Israel. A Syrian-sponsored conference in 1957 declared that "... a solution of the Palestine problem which will not be based on ensuring the refugees' right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people. ..."

Who supports the Palestinians living in these camps? Mostly, the Europeans. We pay approximately 30 percent of the bill for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the U.N. agency that administers the relief. The Palestinians are the only people on earth who live on international welfare. In 1948, the United States contributed $25 million and Israel gave $3 million (though the identical number of Jewish refugees who fled Arab states got nothing). All of the Arab nations combined gave $600,000.

For the next 20 years, the United States provided two-thirds of the funds for the Palestinians. The Arab governments, who claimed that no issue was closer to their hearts than the "plight" of the Palestinians, gave a pittance. They increased their contributions somewhat during the 1980s. But last year, according to Fox News, the United States gave $83.6 million to UNRWA. Saudi Arabia gave $1.8 million. All of the Arab nations combined contributed only 2 percent of UNRWA's budget.

We are told repeatedly that the Palestinians are "desperate" and that Israel's act of self-defense will only create more suicide killers. This is doubtful. Weakness is provocative, and defeat can be a wonderful teacher. Besides, passivity in the face of daily murders is something no society can tolerate. Only the certainty that she would be universally condemned stayed Israel's hand for 18 months.

But this also raises another question: Why are the Palestinians desperate? Since the Oslo Accords of 1993, 97 percent of them have been living under the sovereignty of the Palestinian Authority, not under Israeli "occupation."

And what did Arafat and his brethren do with this freedom? Did they welcome investment, build the infrastructure, settle people permanently in Arab villages and towns, and in general begin to behave like a people eager for a peaceful state next to Israel? No. In fact they spurned many offers of development aid in favor of building breeding grounds for fanatics and terrorists, importing massive amounts of weapons and preaching jihad. The suicide killer has become a heroic symbol of Palestinian "struggle." Arafat's wife lamented that she had no sons to send to their deaths.

In this, the United Nations is complicit. At schools funded and run by the UNRWA, depictions of Jews as monkeys and Israelis as Nazis are common fare. U.N. employees have abetted the vehement anti-Semitism that is bread and butter to the Palestinian Authority. A few days ago, the U.N. Human Rights Commission voted (without the approval of Canada, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany or Guatemala) to condemn Israel for "acts of mass killings" (which never happened) and endorsed Palestinian "armed struggle" (i.e., terrorism).

The cruel decision by Arab governments to use the Palestinians as ticking time bombs against Israel has paid off more handsomely than they could have imagined in 1948. Their metaphorical bombs have become real. What a victory for their people.

[JohnHuang2]

Friday, May 3, 2002

Quote of the Day by Maceman 5/3/03

[My Identity]

Sow the Wind; Reap the Whirlwind!

Thanks to TomGuy for much of the above.

MORAL CLARITY
An honorable, moral solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Isn't the only honorable way to "solve" the Arab-Israeli conflict through the use "ethnic cleansing?" (And by that term I mean the polite, but forceful removal of all 3 million Pali from Eretz Yisrael -- which is not "genocide", as some on the Left misuse the term.) Let me explain.

The current wave of "suicide" bombers (a misnomer, since their primary goal is not suicide but the mass murder of civilians) is unprecedented and unrelenting. But it should not be unexpected. It is the direct (and obviously planned) result of brainwashing that started with Pali children as young as kindergarteners. Look at the faces of the babies in the pictures above. What vomitous horror - visiting this upon their heads. What unspeakable evil.

The Palestinian descent into barbarism does not have some dimly-lit origin. The homicidal-bombers are not some unforseen phenomenom that sprung forth from the "hopelessness" of the populace (as the PA "leaders" would have us believe). They are part and parcel of the war machine created by the PA to wreak systematic havoc on Israel. Someone paid to have the Pali youth trained -- or more accurately, brainwashed -- in "martyrdom". Someone paid to have the explosives acquired and the bombs made. Someone paid to have surveillance put on weak spots in Israeli defenses. Someone paid to have these weapons stored and then distributed to the homicidal-bombers. Someone paid to have videotapes made of the bombers' farewell messages. Someone paid to have these homicidal-bombers transported across security lines. Someone paid to have the deeds of the homicidal-bombers favorably publicized. Someone paid the family tens of thousands of dollars specifically for the "martyrdom" of their children. And, as we are now learning, those paymasters include Yassir Arafat, Saddam Hussein and the Saudi elite.

The PA has not been preparing its people for peace, but radicalizing them for the sole purpose of destroying Israel. The PA has appointed militant clerics who preach hate and "martyrdom". By doing so, they have knowingly turned this into a religious war, one in which compromise is heretical. And in doing so, the Palestinians have rejected the Oslo premise that the conflict is about borders, about which compromise is required. Indeed, as Henry Kissinger has noted:

In reality, the number of Palestinian leaders... who want peace in the Western sense -- as a point after which the world lives free of tensions with a consciousness of reconciliation -- is minuscule. The fundamental schism is between those who want to bring about the destruction of Israel by continuing the present struggle, and those who believe that an agreement now would be a better strategy to rally forces for the ultimate showdown later on.

The result of Arafat's strategy of hatred is now known: Pali society cannot co-exist in peace with Israel. Recent polls tell the story clearly. Over 87% of the Palis support the murder of Israeli men, women, and children, even babies. Given these numbers and the underlying religious fervor, there is NO POSSIBILITY of a negotiated settlement that would be honored by the Palis within their lifetime. Arafat has filled the Palis with visceral hate to prepare them for unrelenting war. He has brainwashed an entire generation of youngsters to become terror-bombers. He has unleashed almost 10 years of official "judeo-nazi" indoctrination on the Pali people. Arafat has committed crimes not only against the entire populace of Israel, but against Palestinians and their children as well. Truly, these are Crimes against Humanity.

Current conditions make ethnic cleansing not only justified, but morally required. As antithetical as it sounds to liberal ears, ethnic cleansing is literally the only humane solution. To pursue a negotiated settlement is akin to locking a tiger and a human with a gun in the same cage. Assign the roles to whomever you wish, but the result is the same. Someone in the cage is eventually going to be killed, maybe both.

The world community's role in this to date has been to create this inhumane spectacle, this caged, semitic death match. The world community's response going forward ought to be the equivalent of an "Allied invasion of Nazi Germany" because nothing less will suffice to rid the world of this monstrosity. Eject all Arab peoples from Gaza and the West Bank (because once you eliminate the terrorists, their supporters and their families, virtually nobody is left). Then round up the PA "leaders" (including "clerics" and "teachers"), and put them on trial for their Crimes against Humanity. If they are found guilty, hang them in public.

And to the extent that this PA policy was conducted, funded, supported, promoted, or otherwise enabled by their Arab bretheren (notably Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia) then it is incumbent upon these countries to pay for their sins by taking in the Palis. Arabs created this mess. Let Arabs bear the toll for the human misery they created.

Even Tom Friedman of the New York Times has come around, finally grasping the global ramifications of Arafat's evil:

"...all they [the Palestinian leaders] can agree on is what they want to destroy, not what they want to build... Let's be very clear: Palestinians have adopted suicide bombing as a strategic choice... This threatens all civilization because if suicide bombing is allowed to work in Israel, then, like hijacking and airplane bombing, it will be copied and will eventually lead to a bomber... with a nuclear device threatening entire nations."

What is needed is the elimination of this cancer on humanity. End it quickly before more innocent lives are lost. End it now or it will escalate to Weapons of Mass Destruction. End it clearly and with finality so that there is absolutely NO ambiguity that civilization finds this abhorent. If nothing else, as a sop to liberal sensibilities, end it for the children. Moral clarity demands nothing less.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Can U.N. Relief and Works Agency be trusted?