By Ken Blackwell on 5.11.09 @ 6:08AM
The folly of sending more U.S. tax dollars to the Palestinian
Authority.
Does Secretary Hillary Clinton read the reports issued by her own
State Department? It's a fair question. She recently argued
passionately at a summit at the Egyptian resort center of Sharm
el-Sheikh for increased Western and Arab financial aid
to an entity called the Palestinian Authority. To show the Obama
administration is taking the lead, she pledged $900 million in
U.S. taxpayer funds to jump start the re-building of Gaza and to
underscore American commitment to the "two-state (Israel and
Palestine) solution."
The most recent State Department report on religious freedom in
the Palestinian Authority-administered (PA) areas includes these
from Bethlehem, on the West Bank of the Jordan River. "The PA did
not take sufficient action… to remedy past harassment and
intimidation of Christian residents of Bethlehem by the city's
Muslim majority. The PA judiciary failed to adjudicate numbers
cases of seizures of Christian-owned land in the Bethlehem area
by criminal gangs. PA officials appear to have been complicit
in property extortion of Palestinian Christian residents,
[emphasis added] as there were reports of PA security forces and
judicial officials collude[ing] with gang members in property
extortion schemes. Several attacks against Christians in
Bethlehem went unaddressed by the PA…"
In Gaza, which we are paying to rebuild, Muslims attacked
Christians with impunity. The Lighthouse Baptist School in Gaza
City has been attacked repeatedly, as has the YMCA. Rami Khader
Ayyad was abducted on the way home from work at the Baptist Holy
Bible Association and murdered and the association offices were
bombed.
Remember, Secretary Clinton is sending $900 million of
your tax money to the people who pulled off these
attacks, or who failed to investigate the attacks, or who were
complicit in these attacks.
That's the Christians. How about the Jews? The Palestinian Media Watch, run by
Arab-speaking Israeli Itamar Marcus tells a jarring story. The
new 12th grade Palestinian schoolbooks urge youngsters
on to jihad and to "the ribat for Allah." Students who
kill Israelis are "worthy of a great reward from Allah." It's
part of their Islamic Education texts.
Those texts are interesting. They have no Israel in their maps.
But the United States is there; we are identified as "enemy of
the Palestinians and the Arabs."
Eight of their schools are named "Al Khansah," the Mother of
Martyrs School. The Mother of Martyrs is a woman who expressed
joy that her four sons had died in jihad. We may assume
they are not charm schools.
Another school is actually named for Saddam Hussein. This man
killed 400,000 Arabs and Kurds, most of them Muslim. Can anything
good from funding such a school?
Daniel Patrick Moynihan once ridiculed the U.S. Supreme Court for
its church-state rulings. The high court said state aid could go
to religious schools to purchase books, but not maps. "What about
Atlases," Moynihan asked with a twinkle: "They are books
of maps." U.S. taxpayer money can now go to pay for
Atlases -- but over there, in Gaza, where Israel has been
eradicated, and the U.S. is vilified.
All of this has been documented, again and again. Our State
Department has been filing Religious Freedom reports on the
Palestinian Authority for a decade. And just as long, it has been
ignoring them. Secretary Clinton is ignoring them now.
The Palestinian Authority, of course, has no authority. Where the
locals get to vote, they willingly choose Hamas, the terrorist
outfit.
Is this the new diplomacy? Is this the new direction of U.S.
foreign policy? We're supposed to cheer when our new leader bows
low before the Saudi king. Of all people! The report on religious
freedom in Saudi Arabia could be written on one side of a
postcard: there is none. (Save the postage.)
Can anything good come from Nazareth? Or from a policy that pays
the people who have turned the hometown of the Prince of Peace
into a war zone?
topics:
Religious Persecution, Religious Freedom
