T N Thoughts
A MON
George Cantor's Reality Check column will return next week
Fund The Palestinians?
Philadelphia
L
avishing funds on Mahmoud
Abbas and the Palestinian
Authority to achieve peace has
been a mainstay of Western, including
Israeli, policy since Hamas seized Gaza
in June. But this open spigot has counter-
productive results and urgently must be
stopped.
Some background: Paul Morro of the
Congressional Research Service reports
that, in 2006, the European Union and its
member states gave $815 million to the
Palestinian Authority, while the United
States sent $468 million. When other
donors are included, the total receipts
come to about $1.5 billion.
The windfall keeps growing. President
George W. Bush requested a $410 mil-
lion supplement in October, beyond a
$77 million donation earlier in the year.
The State Department justifies this lordly
sum on the grounds that it "supports a
critical and immediate need to support a
new Palestinian Authority (PA) govern-
ment that both the U.S. and Israel view as
a true ally for peace." At a recent hearing,
Gary Ackerman, chairman of the House
Subcommittee on the Middle East and
South Asia, endorsed the supplemental
donation.
Not content with spending taxpayer
money, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice launched a "U.S.-Palestinian Public
Private Partnership" on Dec. 3, involv-
ing financial heavyweights such as
Sandy Weill and Lester Crown, to fund,
as Rice put it, "projects that reach young
Palestinians directly, that prepare them for
responsibilities of citizenship and leader-
ship can have an enormous,
positive impact?'
One report suggests the
European Union has fun-
neled nearly $2.5 billion to the
Palestinians this year.
Looking ahead, Abbas
announced a goal to collect
pledges of $5.8 billion in
aid for a three-year period,
2008-10, at the "Donors'
Conference for the Palestinian
Authority" attended by more
than 90 states on Monday in Paris. (Using
the best population estimate of 1.35-mil-
lion Palestinians on the West Bank, this
comes to a staggering amount of money:
per capita, more than $1,400 per year,
or about what an Egyptian earns annu-
ally.) Endorsed by the Israeli government,
Abbas immediately raised nearly that
amount for 2008 at the donors' conference.
Well, it's a bargain if it works, right? A
few billion to end a dangerous, century-
old conflict — it's actually a steal.
But innovative research by Steven
Stotsky, a research analyst for the
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East
Reporting in America (CAMERA) finds
that an influx of money to the Palestinians
has had the opposite effect historically.
Relying on World Bank, International
Monetary Fund, and other official sta-
tistics, Stotsky compares two
figures since 1999: budgetary
support aid provided annually
to the Palestinian Authority and
the number of Palestinian homi-
cides annually (including both
criminal and terrorist activities,
and both Israeli and Palestinian
victims).
Graphed together, the two
figures show an uncanny echo.
The correlation is even clearer
when the aid of one year is
superimposed on the homicides of a year
later. In brief, each $1.25 million or so of
budgetary support aid translates into a
death within the year. As Stotsky notes,
"These statistics do not mean that foreign
aid causes violence; but they do raise
questions about the effectiveness of using
foreign donations to promote moderation
and combat terrorism?"
The Palestinian record fits a broader
pattern, as noted by Jean-Paul Azam and
Alexandra Delacroix in a 2006 article,
"Aid and the Delegated Fight Against
Terrorism:' They found "a pretty robust
empirical result showing that the sup-
ply of terrorist activity by any country
is positively correlated with the amount
of foreign aid received by that country"
— i.e., the more foreign aid, the more ter-
rorism.
If these studies run exactly counter to
the conventional supposition that poverty,
unemployment, repression, "occupation:'
and malaise drive Palestinians to lethal
violence, they do confirm my longstanding
argument about Palestinian exhilaration
being the problem.
The better-funded Palestinians are,
the stronger they become, and the more
inspired to take up arms.
A topsy-turvy understanding of war
economics has prevailed in Israel since the
Oslo negotiations began in 1993. Rather
than deprive their Palestinian enemies
of resources, Israelis have been follow-
ing Shimon Peres' mystical musings, and
especially his 1993 tome, The New Middle
East, to empower them economically.
Rather than further funding Palestinian
bellicosity, Western states, starting with
Israel, should cut off all funds to the
Palestinian Authority.
affairs in this country, and for good reason
— "no religion should dictate the state,
nor should the state interfere with the free
practice of religion?'
Third, "a person should not be
elected because of his faith, nor
should he be rejected because of
his faith?' And finally, no presi-
dent should put the doctrine of
any church above "the sovereign
authority of the law?'
We welcome these four points,
but there was a subtext to the
speech that provided some cause
for concern. But the speech was
not truly a reaffirmation of the
importance of the separation of
church and state. Rather it reflected an
effort to appeal to religious voters on the
basis of shared religiosity.
Unlike candidate Kennedy's appeal to
voters, candidates this year are not seeking
to convince the American people that one's
religious beliefs should not be a test for
office. Rather they are emphasizing that
their strongly held religious beliefs are yet
another reason to vote for them.
The Anti-Defamation League has
previously called on Americans to judge
candidates on the basis of their views on
issues and their qualifications, and not the
nature or depth of their religious commit-
ment.
Appealing to voters along religious lines
can be divisive, contrary to the American
ideal of including all in the political pro-
cess, and can open the door to promises
that violate the separation of government
and religion.
We believe there is a point at which an
emphasis on religion in a political cam-
paign becomes inappropriate and even
unsettling in a religiously diverse society
such as ours.
Anyone who legitimately aspires to
the presidency of the United States must
be prepared to set an example and be a
leader for all Americans, of all faiths and
of no faith. II
Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director
of the Middle East Forum.
A Troubling Precedent
New York/JTA
R
epublican candidate Mitt
Romney's speech to the
American people about his
Mormonism and faith in America was an
important contribution to our ongoing
national dialogue regarding the appropri-
ate role of religion in politics.
We agree there is no place in our society
for bigotry and that one's religion should
never be a test for political office. We
also realize that Gov. Romney is fighting
an unacceptable prejudice against him
because of his faith and understand his
need to proclaim himself a Christian.
Yet the December speech was also a
reminder that it has become part of our
political culture for candidates to be
forced into asserting their religiosity.
Forty-seven years have passed since
then-presidential hopeful John F. Kennedy
found it necessary to openly declare he
was "not the Catholic candidate for presi-
dent" but "the Democratic Party's candi-
date who happens also to be a Catholic?'
Who would have thought the same nag-
ging questions raised about Kennedy's
fitness for office would surface in the 2007
campaign, especially after the
2000 campaign when Sen. Joe
Lieberman of Connecticut
proved that an observant Jew
could run for the office of vice
president without his religious
faith being a factor in determ-
ing the outcome.
It is disturbing that any
candidate should feel com-
pelled or even pressured to
explain his religious views to
voters. And it is disconcerting
that some candidates are now
engaged in a dangerous game of political
one-upmanship in an effort to win over
the "religious vote?'
In his address, Gov. Romney made four
points that should resonate with every
candidate and with all Americans. First,
our nation has a "grand tradition" of reli-
gious tolerance and liberty.
Second, we separate church and state
Abraham H. Foxman is national director of the
Anti-Defamation League .
December 27 2007
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