The Smile and the Dagger
The European Union will continue to fund the Palestinian Authority, according to the BBC, so long as "its new government is committed to peace with Israel".
The European Union says it will continue funding the Palestinian Authority so long as its new government is committed to peace with Israel. EU ministers renewed their call for Hamas to renounce violence and recognise the Jewish state following the militant group's election victory.
The BBC article also provides a good breakdown of the Palestinian Authority's sources of foreign funding providing further detail into the information already supplied in a previous post.
| World Bank | $85m |
| Isr/Pal integration | $12m |
| UN relief (UNRWA) | $77m |
| Food aid | $35m |
| Humanitarian aid | $33m |
| Special projects | $24m |
| Infrastructure | $72m |
| Member states | $262m |
| European Total | $600m |
| 2003/04 rollover | $175m |
| PA debts | $20m |
| Gaza infrastructure | $50m |
| USAID projects | $155m |
| US Total | $400m |
Update
I came across this link at MSNBC which describes rioting and threats against EU citizens in the West Bank and Gaza for refusing to punish a Danish cartoonist who caricatured Mohammed.
The Danish Red Cross said it had pulled two employees out of Gaza ... Ten Palestinians armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers rallied outside the European Union headquarters in Gaza City and fired in the air, demanding an apology and saying Danes and Norwegians there would be at risk of attack.
“We warn the citizens of the above-mentioned governments to take this warning seriously because our groups are ready to implement it across the Gaza Strip,” one of the gunmen said, reading from a prepared statement. Militants set fire to Norwegian and Danish flags and painted a footprint on the Danish flag, a severe insult for Arabs.
Thousands of protesters in the West Bank town of Qalqilya marched through the streets, demanding an apology and burning Denmark’s flag, a white cross on a red background. Militant groups linked to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction issued a statement saying, “We call upon all Danish citizens in (Palestine) to leave immediately.” Hamas, the militant Islamic group which won Palestinian elections last week, urged Islamic countries to take “deterrent steps against idiotic Danish behavior”. “We call on Muslim nations to boycott all Danish products because the Danish people supported the hateful racism under the pretext of freedom of expression,” it said in a statement.
Does the boycott include refusing Danish money?
Commentary
One cynical way of paraphrasing the EU statement is that the PA can continue to shoot for so long as they go through the motions of talking -- and receive money into the bargain. This course can be justified by arguing that without the money there would simply be shooting without the talking. It might make sense were the policy not discredited by fifty years of continuous failure. If insanity is been defined as repeating an action continuously in the expectation of different results, cluelessness may be characterized as paying for a farce while being presented with a tragedy.
***
Fearless prediction: The boycott does not include refusing Danish money and Europe will keep forking over the dough. The only part which remains doubtful is whether the Danish cartoonist will get a jail sentence, be forced to apologize or left alone. Anybody want to start a betting pool?
posted by wretchardthecat at 1/30/2006 06:30:00 PM
22 Comments:
The PA under Hamas control would face an unprecedented crisis if Western aid were conditionally denied.
"Disequilibration" is the sine qua non of education and a prime agent of change.
Gee, a great opportunity to apply unprecedented pressure to a zit just when it's most inflamed. I'm sure this no-brainer will be no-brained by Europe -- doubtless leading the charge will be "nuke 'em till they glow" and
"no blood for chocolate" and "host Ms. Arafat and cater to her whims" France.
Good grief. Will it never end.
Give the freedom to the palestinians to self destruct...
time to stop paying for this drunken brawl.....
time to allow them to fail...
can you imagine how the other poor peoples of the world would fare if given so much per person?
time to stop thinking the palestinians are europe mid 1950, they do not need a marshall plan, they need a swift kick in the ass for PUNISHMENT since they are such SHITS....
In Mary Mape's account of Rathergate, a visitor from the East Coast comes to Texas and while at a private home glimpses some people on their knees "mumbling". The visitor asks Mapes what those people were doing. Mapes explained that they were praying.
If that visitor were ignorant of what, what understanding might such a person have of Islam?
A beaten wife will either leave her husband or die.
But what if the Children start beating her, too?
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Ralph Peters writes an excellent essay. Thanks for the link.
A lot of people who survived the internet bubble understand where he is coming from.
The population of the West Bank and Gaza comnbined is only about 3.5 million, so given these figures the US and the EU between them were paying cash to the Palestinians in 2005 at a rate of almost $300 per capita (probably about $1,800 on average per family).
According to the CIA World Factbook there were five countries in this world whose entire national income per capita in 2004-2005 was $600 or less (excluding Gaza: Malawi, Somalia, Comoros, and East Timor). The combined population of Malawi, Somalia, Comoros, and East Timor is 20 million. Are the US and the EU giving them a corresponding $6 billion a year? I didn't think so.
Is there some reason why the Palestinians deserve to be singled out for special generosity? Not that I can see, unless murderous aggression is now a moral virtue.
Wretchard, I'm afraid you left a very real possiblity off of your list - the twelve Danish cartoonists will likely be personally threatened with murder. At least, that seems to be the standard European religious/facist reaction.
In any case, I hope they fare better than Theo Van Gogh did.
I am reminded of reading about certain of Stalin's gulag prisoners, sick, half- starved, hoisted by guards out to the execution yard (usually a hammer to the head - no use wasting bullets on the nearly dead); they would groan and cry, "just let me talk to Stalin one more time. There has been a terrible mistake. Please just let me talk to Koba - one more time!" Stalin, by the way, reveled in these tales of demented loyalty; these anecdotes were the cause of great after-dinner hilarity for him.
I feel the western intelligencia is in an analogous relationship with Jihad Murder Inc. Everyone thinks one more big attack will turn the western left towards its liberal enlightenment foundations (towards the light in other words); I'm not so sure anymore; I think the battle lines have been drawn.
The reason policymakers persisted in the policy of appeasement in the 1930s was the huge investment in the status quo. For electoral reasons the Left wanted to pander to their pacifist wing. The Tories were committed to keeping expenses down to "keep the pound sound"; the Foreign Office saw Hitler as a bulwark against Bolshevism. The intellectual elite saw Germany as pushing back against the unjust peace of Versailles. In 1937 aping Hitler's haircut was actually in vogue as a statement of protest against "militarism". Everyone was having such a rollicking good time that it was impossible to change course.
In retrospect, appeasement was not the triumph of stupdity so much as the victory of the inertia. Only when the system actually fell apart were there readjustments.
The policy of supporting the Palestinian Authority is such an article of established faith that it may be impossible to contravene it. And unable to admit error, the International Community must hold to its fatal course until imminent catastrophe forces them to swerve. Whether there will then be time to change course is anybody's guess.
how about some blogger making a contest to design a danegelt award. One for giving to the islamists for being allowed to keep breathing (and paying ummah) a little longer.
Wretchard, as we write Jill Carroll is being tortured by Jihad throat specialists while the west stands by. An entire international political/media establishment stands aside, just "relaying the message". We are all being tortured along with Ms Carroll - I do not mean that in the fluffy, hippy-dippy sense of "We Are the World'. I mean that the Jihadi throat specialists understand that the strongest response we have permitted ourselves so far is that of helpless anguish. The whole hand -wringing apparatus seems to part of the inertia that you write about.
What will the imminent catastrophe look like? I shudder...
It's hard to appreciate the corrupting power of loose dollars in the Third World. Consider this story about a suspected terror bomber trying to board a Philippine commuter train.
"MANILA - Philippine police said they arrested a man with two sticks of dynamite, blasting caps and a timing device at a commuter railway station in eastern Manila on Monday but that a second suspect had escaped. ... Based on statements by guards at the station, police said Munda offered a
bribe of 2,000 pesos ($38) to allow him and his companion to pass without
the backpack being searched."
Thirty eight bucks buys a lot of grief in the Third World. How many security doors would you think stay closed for a hundred?
I don't think the Islamists are irrational--unless you impose your own framework of rationality upon them.
A suicide bomber is wholly understandable and depressingly regular within the context of radical Islam.
They are beyond reason I think if you would argue from a clinical secular-humanist perspective. In fact I think in that case you might be at a unique disadvantage when it comes to understanding Islam.
Chesterton's wit comes to mind, on the subject of the irrational: "If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment." http://snipurl.com/m32o
Just today I heard another reporter questioning a Hamas leader about Sharia and the territories. "If you institute Islamic law, will Christians need to abandon consumption of alcohol?" Evasion ensued, but the kind of evasion that seemed convinced that not telling the truth was being truthful, and that the reporter was the one being obtuse. It's these glaring inversions, when I hear such people interviewed or hear that a significant number of Arabs believe that Jews crashed the planes into the towers etc., that leave me flabbergasted.
Wretchard: I think that it was not only the commitment to the status quo that drove appeasement in the 1930's. There was also simple fear.
The Great War had proved just how horrible wars could be, and technological advancements appeared to make it far worse.
"The bomber will always get through." was an airpower theory that ultimately proved to be both right and wrong, but those kinds of ideas seemed to offer terrible consequences to peace.
In the early 1930's the student body of Oxford voted that "they would not fight for King and country." In France the socialists argued that it was morally wrong to fight the Germans, whatever the consequences.
In the end, the men of Oxford mostly did go to war, and the socialists in France formed their own resistance units.
Fear and the appearance of cowardice, even when it was not the real norm, seemed to reinforce appeasement. No one wanted to fight away, and besides, it would bring only certain carnage.
There are a couple of people in the Netherlands who basically live in prison because that is the only way to protect them from Islamic murderers who dislike what they have said or written.
Interesting approach - in WWII we locked up the people thought to be a potential danger. Today the Dutch lock up the potential victims and let the potential murderers run free.
The Danish newspaper apologized for hurting their feelings. NOt for what they did. In fact, they set it up publicly as an experiment to see if a free press existed in Denmark, since the lights are going out in the rest of Scandanavia.
At the moment, the newspaper bldg. has guards, as do the publishers. Don't know about the 12 cartoonists, they may have been anonymous.
The Danish court did not back down. Said the paper could publish such material as it chose...that's when the hissy fits really started.
The PM is doing the same "sorry your feelings are hurt" but no one is actually apologizing. The crazies who are instigating all the heat without light probably can't read the difference.
I found two interesting images originally on a Saudi website. Big, bad threats about what fate awaits Denmark:
Avenging Mohammed: They'll Blow Up Denmark
And thanks to The Brussels Journal, I've been able to keep up with the story. It's been resolutely ignored by the MSM through all the insanity, including the Danish government's warning back in ?October, perhaps, that its citizens should stay away from Pakistan.
Danish citizen imams have personally traveled the ME telling outrageous lies about Denmark. A little taqiyya to keep things stirred up.
The Astute Blogger offers interesting reasons for this deliberate strategy on the part of Muslims vis-a-vis Denmark. Hint: it has to do with some upcoming shuffling in the UN.
Never forget: it's about the ummah, folks.
Given the fate of filmaker Theo Van Gogh, such is no longer as amusing at it once was.
Time for some collective responsibility. Each time a native Dane is injured or killed by a Muslim fanatic, strip all the family and associates (including fellow mosque members and their Imans) of their Danish citizenship, and send them straight back to their country of origin.
It would reduce the problem considerably.
Well, that gives a new meaning to Dane-Gold.
Personally, I think Dymphna touched on the most important, and almost utterly unmentioned, thing the West has forgotten about war - propoganda is a real, potent weapon, one which is capable of generating enormous force multiplication in the right circumstances.
Somehow, we in the west have lost the capacity to wage war on that level - or to consider those who use the weapon against us what they really are: enemies.
From around the world Muslims threaten murder, bloodshed and terrorism over the publication of the Danish cartoons and, as the google news search shows, the media writes:
Apology Met With Anger Over Danish Cartoons
Arabs ministers want more action on Danish cartoons
Israeli-Arabs protest Danish cartoons
Syrian Demonstration Against Danish Cartoons Insulting Prophet
Muslim anger over Danish cartoons of Mohamed grows
Danish cartoons termed ‘cultural terrorism’
Iraq attacks blamed on cartoons
..never mentioning a word of the Islamic/Muslim blackmail, the threats against the cartoonists, the newspapers or the States which published them in their headlines?
Is this not ominous, foreboding and deeply chilling?
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