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Dry Bones
Paying For Peace
T
BANNING COMPANIE,
FOR WORKING WITH
ISRAEL.
IS CALLED A
SECONDARY
BOYCOTT...
he United States, a number of European
countries and some of the Arab nations —
apparently in a fit of joy brought on by the
death of Yasser Arafat — are reportedly considering
a vast increase in the amount of aid they give each
year to the Palestinians. Under some scenarios, the
per-capita foreign aid they get, already the highest
in the world, could double, to $600 annually.
Excuse us while we deal with the shock.
Over the last four years, Palestinian terrorists mur-
dered more than 1,000 Israel residents and visitors
and injured thousands of others. Their intifada
brought down on their fellow Palestinians an Israeli
defensive response that, by extension, has shattered
the Palestinian economy. The intifada also
has resulted in the death of more than
3,000 Palestinians. During the terrorism,
most of the 3.5 million Palestinians in Gaza
and the West Bank either openly approved of the vio-
lence, sat passively by or were too scared to collective-
ly stand up. All the while, suicide bombers were
recruited and gunmen were armed and children were
indoctrinated with the jihadist morality of death.
For this, the world wants to reward them.
The world has been paying off the Palestinian
since 1948 when the Arab world rejected the plan
that the United Nations had approved to divide the
Holy Land into two states. The Arabs preferred war
then, and they have never had to pay for the conse-
quence of that decision nor of any of the subse-
quent wars that they fought in hopes of destroying
the Jewish nation. Instead, the world decides it must
increase its handouts.
As if the handouts would make the Palestinian
leaders behave honorably.
The billions that have been funneled into the
West Bank and Gaza through the inept United
Nations Relief and Works Agency, through non-
governmental agencies and, most recently, through
the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) haven't brought
prosperity. They made Arafat and his gang of klep-
tocrats rich, to be sure, and they allowed other
funds to be used for arms instead of schools and
roads and housing and medical care. The money
provided government jobs for 130,000 P.A. employ-
ees, but the only real uptick in the Palestinian econ-
omy came during the years after Oslo when up to
125,000 Palestinians found jobs in Israel.
Which makes it hard to understand
why so much of the world, blaming Israel
for the plight of the Palestinians, seems
ready to go down that same path again.
This time, the donor nations say that the
Palestinians want to reform, that they are being
more open about their finances and that they are
willing to accept meaningful oversight by the
donor nations. The donors say the likely election
next month of Mahmoud Abbas to succeed Arafat
as head of the P.A. shows that democracy and mod-
eration are going to replace tyranny and terror. The
donors suspend skepticism when groups like
Hamas, which exist solely to work for the extermi-
nation of Israel, promise that this time the truce,
the hudna, is going to be permanent.
And what's really worrisome is that America,
Israel's only true ally, may try to deflect attention
from the mess exacerbated by the insurgency in Iraq.
America must not cave in when Arab and European
Can't We All Get Along?
common problems" is difficult for many
appeasement. Islamic terrorists have mur-
Americans to get their minds around. Surely,
dered a Dutch filmmaker, altered the out-
people of good will can get along.
come of a Spanish election, instigated
There was, for example, a recent article in
repeated attacks on French Jews. Europe
the Sunday Detroit News and Free Press that
averts its eyes. It wants to be reasonable and
seems to illustrate the point. It told how
refuses to comprehend.
Jehovah Witnesses were cheerfully canvassing
All he wanted, Hitler said, was the
Dearborn for Muslim converts. It also quoted
Sudetenland. Only that portion of the
an imam as saying benignly that Muslims
Czech state where Germans, he said, were
GEORGE
really enjoy a good religious debate.
being abused and deprived of their rights.
CANTOR
This is fatuousness to the point of being
Europe gave it to him. The Czechs were
Reality
slaphappy. From what I can see, such debates
not a people worth going to war over.
Check
usually involve the use of explosives.
All we want, say the Islamists, is Israel,
The article also neglected to mention what
unjustly taken away from poor, unoffending
would happen to the Witnesses should they make
Arabs who are being abused and deprived of their
the mistake of using the same tactic in most Islamic
rights. We are reasonable people. We love a good
countries. Any attempt to convert a Muslim there
religious debate. Just hand over Israel.
is a criminal act, and the imams are not quite as
And Europe swoons in sympathy.
reasonable.
The Czechs, according to Mosley, had a formi-
I plucked the Kennedy quote from a book I read
dable army and defenses. They could have given
several years ago. On Borrowed Time: How World War
Hitler all he wanted in an invasion. But they were
II Began was written by Leonard Mosley, a British
so shocked at the betrayal by their presumptive
journalist who was an eyewitness to many events of
allies that they lost the will to fight.
those years. It is painful reading. So many times Hitler
Israel doesn't have the luxury of losing that will.
could have been stopped.
But there remains a serious danger in getting
In the intervening 65 years, Europe seems to have
too close to people who think they can reason
learned almost nothing about the outcome of
with killers.
AND THAT
VIOLATES U.S.
FEDERAL
LAW...
EDIT OR IAL
W
e are children of the Age of Reason.
We want to believe that there are no
differences that cannot be bridged by
appeals to good faith and the cords of our
common humanity.
As the American ambassador to Great Britain put it:
"Instead of hammering away at what are regard-
ed as irreconciliables, [we] could advantageously
bend our energies toward solving common prob-
lems by an attempt to re-establish good relations
on a world basis.
"It is true that we have important and fundamen-
tal divergences of outlook, which in certain areas go
deeper than politics. But there is simply no sense,
common or otherwise, in letting these differences
grow into unrelenting antagonisms."
Of course, the ambassador who said that was
Joseph P. Kennedy and the year was 1938, a few
weeks before Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia.
Then as now, however, the idea that we are con-
fronted by an enemy who has no interest in "solving
George Cantor's e-mail address is
gcantor@thejewishnews.corn
12/24
2004
30
www.drybonesprojectoom
nations insist that the next "peace process" start on
terms that do not assure Israel's security and do not
block resumption of Palestinian terrorism.
The Palestinians would be better off if they were
weaned from their five decades of dependence on the
world's charity and made to stand on their own feet.
If the world really cared about them, the conversa-
tions would be about ending the aid, not doubling it.
But don't hold your breath.